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Phyllis Schlafly Teaches Us Some lessons
By joelpFri Jan 06, 2006 at 10:12:05 PM EST
topic: Language and Framing section:Front Page printable version print this story
A recent book review in The New Yorker featuring a biography of 82 year old Phyllis Schlafly, the ultra-conservative Catholic and Republican activist who almost single-handedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970's, provides valuable information on how she operates, the terminology she uses, and what tactics and approaches she has used to achieve her goals. As the book "Art of War" says, "know your enemy," and progressives need to heed this advice!

left: Phyllis Schlafly, from Joel Pelletier's painting
American Fundamentalists
In a New Yorker article entitled "Firebrand," Elizabeth Kolbert reviews "Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade" by Donald T. Critchlow. Through her work running for congress, backing Goldwater, defeating the ERA, writing books, speaking to the media, founding the Eagle Forum ("Leading the Pro-Family movement since 1972", now very big on the anti-gay marriage issue) and sitting on the board of Tom Monaghan's conservative Catholic business organization Legatus, Schlafly has earned important experience and victories.One thing she has been good at is forming coalitions:
By (Schlafly's approach), it isn't the coherence of conservative ideology that matters but just the opposite - the movement was so loosely conceived that it could accommodate libertarians and religious fundamentalists, pro-gun lobbyists and pro-lifers.
In public she claimed that women, by their deference to men, had special "privileges," and her work to defeat ERA was to retain the special status women had (instead of being "equal," which would take away and lower their status). Whether or not this was a ruse, she played it up to the delight of her constituency. At one Houston rally she said, "First of all, I want to thank my husband, Fred, for letting me come. I always like to say that, because it makes the libs so mad." One of her claims to fame was influencing the choice of Senator Glodwater at the 1964 Republican Convention. Critchlow writes:
To help (Barry Goldwater) secure the 1964 nomination she composed a pocket-sized book titled "A Choice Not an Echo." In inimitable Schlafly style, "A Choice Not an Echo" mixed fact, sensational accusations, commonsensical truths, and elaborate conspiracy theories into a compelling but evidently bogus narrative... Schlafly published the book at her own expense in April, 1964, and began mailing it out, gratis, to friends and fellow anti-Communist activists. Soon the orders started pouring in. Within a month, the book had supposedly sold more than half a million copies, and, within six months, more than three million... To a remarkable extent, "A Choice Not an Echo" fulfilled Schlafly's goal. Ninety-three per cent of the delegates to the 1964 Republican Convention reported having read it, and twenty-six per cent said that they had been influenced by it.
When it came to the ERA, Schlafly has said, "I knew from the start that I had found enough seriously wrong with E.R.A. to stop it, or at least stall it, for an awfully long time." Her tactics, and the outcome, foreshadow the Bush Administration's use of the religious right for political purposes. Kolbert writes: Soon the movement began to grow, according to Critchlow, mainly by involving young women--a large proportion of them Evangelical Christians--who had never before been involved in politics... In surveys, a remarkable ninety-eight per cent of E.R.A. opponents claimed church membership, as compared with thirty-one per cent of E.R.A. supporters. Kolbert continues:
E.R.A. supporters tried at every opportunity to point out the inconsistency of Schlafly's position. Here was a woman who insisted that a woman's greatest satisfaction lay in caring for her family--in 1973, Schlafly still had four children at home--yet spent most of her time politicking. (In the middle of the STOP ERA campaign, Schlafly stunned everyone, including her husband, by announcing that, on top of everything else, she was going to start law school; she received her law degree a few years later.) But Schlafly's personal life could just as easily be taken as proof of what she was arguing: that women had no need for the E.R.A.
Kolbert sums up the article this way:
While Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham were still playing tea party, (Schlafly) recognized that deliberation was no match for diatribe, and logic no equal to contempt. She was, in this way, a woman ahead of her time.
For me, one of the most interesting quotes in the article was from one of Schlafly's opponents was from Karen DeCrow, former president of NOW: "I think what Phyllis is doing is absolutely dreadful. But I can't think of anyone more together and tough. I mean, everything you raise your daughter to be... She's an extremely liberated woman." Not that she'd admit to it in public...

Artist/activist Joel Pelletier tours the US with his painting speaking on issues including the separation of church and state, pluralism and American civil and secular society, and how the Arts can further these discussions and ideals.




Display:
I appreciate your citation of Kolbert's analysis:
While Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham were still playing tea party, (Schlafly) recognized that deliberation was no match for diatribe, and logic no equal to contempt. She was, in this way, a woman ahead of her time.

However, I would suggest that diatribe is not the only effective alernative to deliberation, and contempt is not the only effective alternative to logic. We don't need to imitate Phyllis Schlafly; we can do better. We can be more effective at message framing, organizing, and coalition building. We can take the high road, even as we study what makes Schlafly's gutter tactics work. But that doesn't mean we need to engage in shrill and contemptuous name-calling or sleazy propaganda. We should analyze the propaganda, analyze the organizing tactics, and then come up with our own more effectively-framed messages, and improve our own organizing skills and coalition building efforts. And we should keep the focus on what we're FOR, not just what we're against.

Our ideas are more compelling, and our vision is more inclusive. So we will win by taking the high road, and leaving the gutter tactics to those who stay in the gutter.

by jhutson on Sat Jan 07, 2006 at 08:22:44 AM EST
To mirror gutter politics even though those are effective.

Jonathan has sketched out - in his comment today on Cindy Cooper's post - one example of how to do this, how to play effectively against gutter politics without mirroring it [see boxed quote below].

Thanks, Joel, for this post : if the opposition to Christian theocracy is to be effective it will need to understand its foes. Everything old is new again - Sun Tsu is back on the shelf ( he never left the bookshelves of some ) along with Lakoff and modern political tacticians.

Schlafly's profile - as a "liberated" woman, quite modern and powerful in terms of how she has led her life - contrasts in a quite grotesque fashion with the subservient personal and shrivelled public role she has held up,  for American women, as desirable. In living that bizarre, hypocritical dichotomy of denial Schlafly is far from alone on the American Christian right.

[ Jonathan Hutson's example on effectively framing a message against STOPP ]

"...countering propaganda with data is not effective, and is actually counter-productive. STOPP has effectively framed its propaganda as an appeal to Latinos (and especially to Latina mothers) to safeguard their families and extended families....engaging STOPP about the accuracy of its effective emotional appeal is not just ineffective, it actually reinforces the message frame, and legitimates the controversy that STOPP is trying to raise.

What would be an effective message frame to counter STOPP's effective message frame? It would be more effective to say that, as it's name makes clear, STOPP is a group that aims to STOP women's clinics from providing health care for Latinas. They want to shut down Planned Parenthood clinics that provide a full range of health care that are needed for healthy children and families. By closing down these women's clinics, they want to STOP prenatal health care for Latinas and their babies, and they want to STOP mammograms that help keep Latina mothers safe from breast cancer...

.....An effective message frame would say: STOPP wants to STOP affordable, accessible health care for Latinas and their babies. By aiming to close Planned Parenthood clinics, they want to STOP the very health care services that Latina mothers need, including prenatal care for healthy babies and mammograms and physicals that nourish the mother's health.



by Bruce Wilson on Sat Jan 07, 2006 at 01:01:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I didn't read his post as suggesting at all that we imitate the Right's tactics. In fact what he said up front was:

As the book "Art of War" says, "know your enemy," and progressives need to heed this advice!

In other words, "know the enemy." He then proceeded to provide an interesting and informative post on Schlafly, clearly a major opponent. Precisely the kind of information we need to develop effective strategies for countering the Right.

by Psyche on Sat Jan 07, 2006 at 02:30:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]


Yes, in fact I did not mean to imply that we should act like the far right, only that we need to do our homework. By knowing what they say behind closed doors and the despicable (to most) tactics they use, we can then call them on it in public debates and in the media. Their actions say LOUDLY: "The ends justify the means." Let's hold them to this, and get them to admit it publicly. This will be a great start in exposing their tactics and philosophies as anti-democratic (which they obviously are). Of course we need to set a better example, but like Al Franken says, we have one thing going for us they don't - all we need to do is tell the truth.

by joelp on Sat Jan 07, 2006 at 04:50:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I couldn't agree more. To be clear, nowhere does Joel imply that we should act like the far right. What I was lifting up was Kolbert's analysis:
While Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham were still playing tea party, (Schlafly) recognized that deliberation was no match for diatribe, and logic no equal to contempt. She was, in this way, a woman ahead of her time.
And I believe Kolbert's analysis is perceptive, but incomplete, because it poses a logical fallacy known as a "false dilemma": that is, there are more alternatives available to us than just deliberation versus diatribe, or logic versus contempt. It's important that we recognize what makes diatribe and contempt effective as tactics, and that we also avail ourselves or a range of even-more-powerful tools to counter the effectiveness of low-road tactics.


And that is a perfect segue to say that one of the most effective tactics that we can use is... (drum roll please) the arts! So Joel's use of painting creates a powerful alternative way to put people and events in a big picture context. The visual metaphor of the parade of religious leaders who are presented as puffed up, preening peacocks is a powerful way to get people to see how Jesus is remote and incidental to the public spectacle. We need more paintings, more poems, more plays, more songs, more liturgical dances, more sculptures... more arts to help us frame messages and anchor them in the popular consciousness.

What is striking, too, is Joel's commitment not only to paint this major work, but to tour with it and talk about it in accessible ways. That's a great example of taking the moral high road, but in a non-elitist, publicly accessible way. Kudos are due to you, Joel!

by jhutson on Sun Jan 08, 2006 at 11:03:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]



Left Behind: Eternal Forces: Installments of Jonathan Hutson's Talk To Action expose series on the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game have been viewed by up to 1/2 million people. See our site section featuring Over 35 original articles covering the controversial "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game that has provoked a boycott by a coalition of religious groups and a letter writing campaign urging Walmart to stop selling the game. Media inquiries click here
(image: detail from Francoise Dubois' rendition of the Bartholomew's Day Massacre reveals the actual nature of religious warfare)

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