Capitol Ideas/Citizen Hags
Bethell, Tom
was insistent that we end military assistance to El Salvador "immediately." He was vague about where beyond our borders we might ever use force. He was poetic about how all disagreements...
...In 1980, their candidate was Barry Commoner, who was on the ballot in 30 states and received 236,148 votes...
...In the hallway outside tables were set up and women were selling feminist literature--for example, Marianne Wax's Let's Take Back Our Space: "Female" and "'Male" Body Language As a Result of Patriarchal Structures (with 2037 photographs...
...Like...
...I didn't hear anybody say anything that is not in my platform," she responded...
...She realized how they had mystified the office, and she knew what she'd do her first day in the Oval Office...
...And so Sonia was honored to present her t o u s . The Daly Woman had short grizzly hair and wore a horizontal striped rugger-bugger jersey...
...Hardcover $12.00, Softcover $6.00 Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...When asked " t o what extent does the United States go to resist the formation of a Marxist government" particularly in the Western Hemisphere, his good intentions swell...
...magazine, she became "instantly internationally famous" in 1979 when she was excommunicated from the Mormon Church for supporting the Equal Rights Amendment...
...Don 't-you-love-that...
...I have in hand a remarkable document, a page of nearly incomprehensible flummeries from the February 28, 1982 Washington Post...
...Congress, what are we going to do about Congress...
...Sonia addressed herself to the problem...
...She ridiculed the Pope, and she ridiculed St...
...Someone asked a question about Congress...
...10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 Sonia lifted up her arms like a conductor, and summoned forth some sympathetic responses, as though she were a conductor facing a familiar orchestra...
...There was an unformulated question nagging at me as I made good my escape, threading my way between the Revolting Hags and the concrete resource centers_9 Oh yes, that was it...
...Oh, that was an awful joke," Sonia agreed...
...So bitter.' These are the people who talk about 'fulfillment.'" She repeated the word prissily to stress its asininity: "Fulfillment...
...There was a warm-up speaker called Mary Daly, who would be reading from her new book, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy...
...dollars...
...Have to remember that this country was founded by a patriarchy_9 On the way out they were selling a "Wanted For War Crimes" poster of Reagan, a poster prepared by the Citizens Party...
...He says that "our interest lies in seeing (that) the entire region is not totalitarian or totally anti-American...
...I had not realized that such a place existed, although it is little more than a mile from where I live...
...Thus a modicum of anti-Americanism is permissible, but we must draw the line at "totalitarian...
...T h e y . . . they don't rise to the occasion...
...Think about it audience, do you know what she would do...
...Dragonidentified...
...Paraguay," comes the brave reply...
...She is in any event one of my favorite people...
...It's 1984, the time of Reagan & Co...
...Sonia was well pleased with her players...
...I love the fact that the federal government is going to pay me to say i t , " she said...
...He held that principle to mean that law may not discriminate among citizens, benefitting some at the expense of others...
...In fact, the poster advertising the event had Daly's name in lettering larger than Johnson's...
...Rage is like volcanic dragon-fire," the liberated theologian continued...
...The Daly woman proceeded to ridicule St...
...It contains the U.S...
...Jerome and St...
...According to Ms...
...O h , she's so bitter,' they say...
...Sonia Johnson had explained why, but somehow it had slipped my mind...
...Tap Tap Tap went the baton...
...Quoth the orator of the Texas A & M Manifesto: " I don't k now...
...Not just revolution," Sonia explained...
...Since many of the questions of principle in his day recur in our own, the editorials are of contemporary as well as historical significance...
...Was my "space" a tiny bit threatened...
...So she began to experience this incredible.., the minute she started to think about it she knew what to do, as President, that is...
...asks a Post writer...
...Not just token places, powerful places like the Supreme Court...
...as she had written in her book...
...Daly's poetry not only exposed the "motives and machinations of the masters," but helped us "remember our deep ontological wildness...
...queries the interviewer...
...A few months later Sonia ran for charlady, I mean chairlady, of NOW, but narrowly lost, to my disappointment Now she 'came to the podium--a slight figure wearing a cerise jacket over a mauve top, black trousers, and a button on her lapel reading, "Listen to a Woman for a Change...
...She mimicked her critics, speaking in a hilarious, mincing tone of ridicule, impersonating the shocked, middle class housewife who might have strayed by accident into a Daly discourse...
...Did someone ask a question about racism...
...Feminism is the most all-encompassing analysis of the human situation that we know of," she thought_9 " I f we had a feminist in the White House, the chaos would disappear...
...When asked if Cuba is more or less democratic than the USSR or if perhaps it is inaccurate even to describe the land of the KGB as totalitarian, the candidate of ideas ducks the question, says "totalitarian is probably a word that I should not have used," and maunders on about the futility of using military force to protect American interests "even in our hemisphere...
...someone shouted out...
...A lot less hierarchical...
...The location was the University of the District of Columbia...
...She tried to change the metaphor...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...So, looking at the sado-society, penocracy, the product of the phallic flight from lust, transforming it into the more sublimed phallic lechery-that's what we call civilization...
...Having read my Marx and enjoyed my Yankee freedoms, I am certain that a Marxist ~overnment is quite intolerable to me...
...She concluded by saying: "We're just going to have to restructure stuff a lot...
...Extremes of the right and the left all over Latin America...
...End all dealings with racist South Africa...
...I mean look at who is President, someone on the plane had suggested that she run for President, she was going to see Barbara in Florida...
...Sonia that day was wearing a red Tshirt and sipping a soda as she admired her Jackson Pollock-like handiwork...
...I t would be a lot more democratic...
...Do you want to be a fulfilled woman...
...Simeon Stylites, the LlbertyPm_ss L rty6% Democratick Editorials Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy By William Leggett Compiled, Edited, and with a Foreword By Lawrence H. White William Leggett, writing for the New York Evening Post, the Examiner, and the Plaindealer in the 1830's based his editorial views on the principle of equal rights to liberty and property...
...Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and various other malechauvinist documents...
...Strict application of this view led him to favor minimization of government power...
...There in imperishable print your hero is ensnared sounding like a ten-year-old who either does not know the answers to the questions asked or is afraid to say...
...Paul, from one of whose Epistles she read in a tone of sing-song sarcasm, ending with the triumphant put-down: "Well, speak for yourself...
...Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh," came the appreciative response from the Revolting Hags...
...This is the real Gary Hart...
...There is the real Gary Hart...
...Well, Cuba is not totalitarian and it's not democratic...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S CITIZEN HAGS L a s t month I went down the road to hear a campaign speech--my first and I trust last this season...
...He was poetic about how all disagreements between nations can be resolved by negotiations or a check from the U.S...
...Margaret Thatcher and Jeane Kirkpatrick were mere "female impersonators...
...In 1981 Doubleday published her book, From Housewife to Heretic, thus confirming my suspicion that "heretic" has in our time become a term of approval...
...My guess is that he does not know the answers...
...us gathered in the auditorium at the appointed hour--perhaps ten men, and almost no blacks of either sex...
...Trans-formation...
...The four crimes listed were: Invasion of Grenada...
...All told there may have been 300 of Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...In these essays Leggett brings his views to bear on the issues of the Jacksonian period...
...Sonia Johnson you may know about...
...use winds and sun and biomass--"work with Earth's rhythms...
...Disarm all the missiles...
...Convene covens all over the country...
...Hooo hooo hooo hooo hoool" Oh, the Monstrous Regiment that was the audience loved every minute of it, every pun and every quip...
...What is needed, she added, is "the courage to sin," which is simply the "courage to be," according to her etymology...
...Right off she struck the live mike with her hand--Bonk!--and said: "These little phallic things...
...Clean up the environment...
...Soon the candidate of new ideas is discussing big ideas...
...Barbara Demming had said: We should run a coven for President...
...Next he is asked if Nicaragua is totalitarian...
...The audience looked a bit crestfallen when that sank in...
...And what's more she might be included in the League of Women Voters debates...
...but back to the Hon...
...The speaker was Sonia Johnson, presidential candidate of the Citizens Party...
...On the cover of her earlier book Gyn/Ecoiogy Ms...
...And Cuba...
...The United States, he solemnizes, must "deal country by country . . . . I don't think we ought to automatically assume that a self-determined Marxist government is something we can't stand...
...As Ms...
...She told us how "moved" she had been when Mary Daly, whom she evidently regarded as her superior, "recognized and approved of what I was doing...
...Hart in this interview sounds like a bright little boy full of good intentions and wonder...
...In 1982 she publicly fasted for 37 days in the corridors of the Illinois legislature, protesting the legislators' manful refusal to ratify ERA...
...Treasury...
...Whatever the truth might be, the Hon...
...Hart...
...I approached cautiously and asked her: "Did you say you would like to strangle God...
...She THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 9 might make a good line-blocker, or whatever they call it in.football...
...She had been caught redhanded in her own sexism and why was she laughing...
...Somewhere underground 1 found a luxurious auditorium...
...It attested, in my opinion, to a local superfluity of tax dollars: a cluster of cumbersome concrete structures, mostly with vertically inscribed signs containing the word " r e s o u r c e s " somewhere in the title...
...This rage is what moves us into the race of wimmin . . . The whole world is groaning under phallic rule...
...Asked for an example of a totalitarian regime somewhere the Hon...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 11...
...I said i'd like to kill him," she replied...
...Then she set off resolutely down the street with her little cluster of supportive wimmin, to continue her by Tom Bethell protest at the Department of Injustice--J...
...Sonia agreed...
...The Women's Movement, she proclaimed, was the greatest movement in the history of the world, and it had come "in the nick of time...
...1 decided against buying it...
...I t ' s not a government I'd want to live under...
...Oh groan...
...That would be the right...
...and later that summer I spotted her on Constitution Avenue, when she and a group of like-minded heretics were squirting blood and red paint on the pillars of the National Archives Building...
...I couldn't help wondering if some of the wimmin who came striding down the aisles in bib-overalls were enrolled in the karate course advertised outside...
...Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't...
...Believe me, my Yuppie friends, and let no geopolitical hassling divert you from your scramble toward upward mobility and a BMW...
...I n s t i t u t e 24-hour d a y - c a r e ! " "Pass the ERA...
...The Daly Woman told us not to worry about voting for Sonia on the grounds that this would "take a vote away from Mondale--as though we should be grateful for slightly less evil...
...Pure lust does journey through three realms, the realm of archospheres, pyrospheres, recovering the volcanic virtues of wild wimmin...
...Daly is called an "associate professor of theology at Boston College," and a "Revolting Hag...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...One of the first things to undermine the racist mind, the President can make 3000 appointments, _9 . . the Secretary of Defense and the Federal Reserve Board, places with enormous status, and where money is taken care of...
...Write a new dictionary...
...Overthrowing the Nicaraguan Government_9 Killing of Civilians in El Salvador_9 Deploying First Strike Nuclear Weapons...
...If you saw her coming down the sidewalk at you, you might well decide to step aside...
...Hart is bold: "Sure...
...put it: "No one could have seemed less likely than Sonia Johnson to become a famous activist, much less a heretic...
...Learned colleagues, such as the political scientist Dr...
...I try to keep up with Sonia's antics because they are so odd and so interesting...
...Then she gazed out at her admiring audience and asked: "Are there any Revolting Hags or Spinsters here...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...S ! ~onia Johnson began by telling us that she could no longer remember how to spell her last name, and everyone understood perfectly what she was talking about...
...cooperate instead of compete...
...I gather that she was once a Catholic and perhaps still does consider herself to be one...
...All of our foresisters, past and future, so we are gathered in 1984, a period of extreme danger for wimmin, extinction by nuclear holocaust or chemical contamination which wimrain are living through to sustain a biophilic consciousness...
...She talked a bit about witches, unintelligibly to me (although I do now understand why they burned them), made another blasphemous joke about "God the flhsher, God the stud, God the holy hoax," and then began to introduce the thrilled Sonia...
...stop brutalizing the planet, raping and poisoning our embryonic fluid...
...Just when we need them, they go flaccid on U S . . . " Oh no...
...Try again_9 "They just . . . keep doing i t ! " Well, how very Freudian, my dear...
...it's certainly not democratic...
...At that point a team of charladies, armed with bristly brushes and Ajax, emerged from the Archives Building to clean up the mess...
...No, not so far as 1 know...
...This is getting really funny," Sonia worried...
...The Post's interviewer probes deeper: " I f Cuba is not a totalitarian government, what is...
...Sonia said that with a little more effort she would be getting federal matching funds...
...And you can begin to undercut homophobia by appointing gays and lesbians--you immediately attack the problem at the root...
...We should: demilitarize the planet, cut the military budget, unilaterally disarm...
...Why was it, again, that they had found the Democratic party to be so inhospitable to their views...
...Karl O'Lessker, tell me that he knows the answers but believes it indiscreet to utter them within earshot of his natural, and quite isolationist, constituency...
...They'll punish you for being a little itty-bitty feminist, so why not go the whole way...
...In response there was a sizable show of hands...
...M 101 Indianapolis, IN 46250 former having been visited by a "bevy of dancing girls in his imagination," the latter attended by a flock of faithful who "gathered the precious turds that dropped from his body...
...Fatally trapped, you see, by her patriarchal, sado-social, penocratic, life-hating upbringing...
...Edgar's old hangout...
...From here the interview goes rapidly in the direction of baby talk...
...What about the left...
Vol. 17 • July 1984 • No. 7
