Now that Lands’ End has wisely backtracked, pulling a series of photos and an interview with abortion icon Gloria Steinem from their webpage, pro-abortionists are outraged by the decision of the Dodgeville, Wisconsin-based retailer of traditional clothing and/or all-too-happy to mock them for not being “hip”
Here’s how Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Hiltzik began his story (under the unbiased, non-partisan headline of “Lands’ End promotes Gloria Steinem in catalog, provokes anti-abortion freakout then bails”):
It must have seemed like a win-win at the time. Clothing retailer Lands’ End, desperate to refurbish its image into something relevant and chic, featured an interview with legendary feminist Gloria Steinem in its spring catalog, complete with a photo spread of Steinem modeling items from the firm’s latest collection. Steinem, for her part, got her new book plugged in the catalog copy.
In the course of 942 words, Hiltzik informs us that the interview given to CEO Federica Marchionni is oh-so-innocent; that having “stumble[d] into a political minefield,” Lands’ End may have been better off biting the bullet; and that “Steinem has become something of a lightning rod for anti-abortion activism,” as if this is some sort of revelation or recent development.
Hiltzik links to an interview Steinem gave NPR’s Terry Gross in which Steinem talks about her new book, My Life on the Road, which talks about her abortion. On the NPR webpage, you can read some excerpts from My Life on the Road which are so tiresome, so 50 years out of date, so full of dust-encrusted gobbledygook it makes your eyes hurt.
The point is simply this: readers of Lands’ End don’t open their catalogue or go to the company’s webpage to see celebrated someone who believes that protecting unborn children is like “pressuring” women “for organ transplants, ” and who believes calling Planned Parenthood to task for its disgusting behavior caught on undercover videos “is part of an ultra right-wing attempt to restore the basis of patriarchy or a male-dominant system and the necessity of a long-term racist system which is controlling reproduction.”
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Consider what we are learning from this and over developments over the last year–that many of the old “givens” are passing away.
PPFA’s pristine image, always wrapped in a tissue of dishonesty, is coming unraveled.
Pro-life candidates running for president are vocal about their criticism of PPFA and so committed to our cause that (as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio put it), “ I would rather lose an election than be wrong on the issue of life.”
But there’s something else that is so hard to miss that by the end of his column, even Hiltzik seems to dimly get it:
Aligning itself with a women’s icon like Gloria Steinem seemed an innocent way to give itself some style, though critics might cavil that Steinem, despite her record, may not strike a chord with youthful customers today. The fact that the company is reeling from an onslaught that seemed to erupt out of nowhere suggests that marketing today is a lot more complicated than placing svelte models in stylish clothes before the public.
Just to be clear, Steinem isn’t, and never has been, an “icon” to an awful lot of women.
But the larger point is that rolling out retreads and golden oldies–see Hillary Clinton–speaks volumes about how very little the 60s/70s generation of pro-abortion feminists have in common with their much younger sisters. The latter, for example, have little patience with the Clinton camp’s have-it-both-ways determination to portray her as a victim of “tone-deaf sexism.”
With obvious adjustments, what was said of Clinton by one young feminist could be said of Steinem and that whole cohort: “She’s your mother’s candidate.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
