On Heroes and Villains: the True Mrs. America
Despite its attempts to paint Phyllis Schlafly as an unlikeable anti-hero, Hulu’s hit job comes up wanting.
Around this time last year, Helen Andrews, Managing Editor of the Washington Examiner, took to the New York Times, asking: “Where Are the Socially Conservative Women in this Fight?” Her missive began (as one would expect) with Phyllis Schlafly, the grande dame of social conservatism, a woman some second-wave feminists have described as the Antichrist. Schlafly was the brilliant, politically-savvy architect of a grassroots movement to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment—with an army of bread-making housewives.
Of course, we socially conservative women in the trenches of today’s fight (which includes a renewed effort to defeat the ERA) chafed at Andrews’s title. Still, even we had to admit: since she stepped gracefully into the national spotlight in 1972, there have been none like Schlafly.
