I love it when I get letters like this one:

Dear Kathryn, You are probably too young to remember Phyllis Schlafly, but she was on many talk shows (Phill Donahue, Mike Douglas etc etc) and she set women back 100 years. If it was up to her we would still not have the vote. In the years she spewed most of her venom, women, myself included, were working for 59 cents to a man’s dollar. Promotions were not given in many big companies because, “you are a woman”. Things were very bad and we needed something, if not the ERA, something to make us “working equals”. You have the job you have now and probably a damn good salary to go with it because of women like me and Barbara Walters, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinham, Marlo Thomas and many, many more that fought to equalize the work force and all the benefits, you now enjoy. Before you criticize or glorify someone, please get your facts straight.

I think she’s criticizing my Schafly-was-right column from a few weeks back. But I get the same e-mail whenever feminism comes up. The Chico Enterprise-Record published this earlier in the week about my rant on Judy Warner on Betty Friedan:

“Does columnist Kathryn Lopez really think she would be editor of the National Review Online if it hadn’t been for Betty Friedan and her ‘destructive’ feminism?”

Carol Holzgrafe, MagaliaPerish the thought. I don’t think Ms. Friedan would care to be remembered in such a way!