Миссис Америка

[tijd]

Трейси Бост, жена республиканского конгрессмена из Иллинойса, придумала инициативу: собирать маленькие карточки с молитвами за Трампа. Ее муж собирает эти карточки и относит их в Белый дом.

She far surpassed her original goal of 100 cards for his first 100 days. Since then, Intercessors for America has joined in the effort, and has collected more than 1000 postcards that they give to Bost, which she passes along to the White House. She says President Trump told her husband face-to-face that the cards go to him, sometimes multiple times a day, and he is reading them.
Bost said that she is grateful that she can speak life and hope into the president-“I’ve just been blown away by what God has done”-and she believes the cards are changing Trump:
"I think we can see in his facial expressions and sometimes his softness, that prayer is really beginning to change our president, and I think it’s making him very aware of God in his everyday life and his every moment of his day life. And I think that’s huge and impactful for our nation."
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trumps-softness-shows-prayer-is-changing-him-says-congressional-wife-who-sends-him-prayer-cards/



Как должны выглядеть правильные молитвы, можно узнать у мужа Трейси. Перед выборами в Конгресс 2018 он молился за то, чтобы бог не допустил победы на выборах сатанинских нехристей.

"Lord, please, please, please. Lord, we ask you and beg you to raise your people up, that they will not allow that freedom to be taken away. That they will rise up and stand and not be ashamed or embarrassed or afraid of what the others, those that are led by another god or no god at all, that they are being led to try to-by Satan himself-to try to overrun those who are your sheep."
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/midterms-about-saving-relgious-freedom-keeping-govt-out-of-satans-hands-says-mike-bost/



В округе, который представляет этот мало чем другим примечательный конгрессмен, в свое время жила и творила другая инициативная жена и блондинка, легендарная Филис Шлафли.

Шлафли безуспешно пыталась избраться в Конгресс сама, но ее общественная деятельность за пределами правительства проложила дорогу для появления в 21 веке деятелей подобных паре Бостов.

Истории успешной борьбы Шлафли против ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) посвящен новый интересный телесериал на канале FX и Hulu, "Mrs. America".

Click to view

История кратко рассказывается в статье "She Changed America", рецензии на биографию Шлафли.

The equal rights amendment is simple and, it would seem, utterly innocuous: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
When it was approved by the House and Senate and sent to the states for ratification in March 1972, its success seemed assured. Thirty state legislatures ratified the amendment within a year. Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter all lent their support. Yet in 1982 the E.R.A. died, just a few states short of ratification. By then, it had become linked in the public mind with military conscription for 18-year-old girls, coed bathrooms and homosexual rights. That public relations coup was largely the work of one clever, charming, ambitious, energetic and forever ladylike woman: Phyllis Schlafly.
Schlafly has, for the better part of the past 50 years, been a one-woman right-wing communications empire. Through her speeches, books, radio addresses and monthly newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report, she has supported the nuclear arms race, Barry Goldwater, the Strategic Defense Initiative and phonics, and has bashed whole language learning, Communism at home and abroad, strategic arms limitation treaties, Nixon's diplomatic overtures to China, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Roe v. Wade and "Eastern elites." And, as Donald T. Critchlow attests in this biography, "Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade," she saved special venom for the "anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion" feminist movement.
Schlafly founded her (eventually) powerful Eagle Forum in 1975 as "the alternative to women's lib." She opposed the E.R.A. on the grounds that it would take away the "special protection" the "Christian tradition of chivalry" offered women -- in other words, the "right" to be "supported and protected" by men. "Those women lawyers, women legislators, and women executives promoting E.R.A. have plenty of education and talent to get whatever they want in the business, political and academic world," is how one anti-E.R.A. letter distributed to Ohio state legislators put it. "We, the wives and working women, need you, dear Senators and Representatives, to protect us."
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/books/review/she-changed-america.html



Название статьи не является преувеличением. Деятельность Шлафли действительно коренным образом изменила политический курс страны. Идея равноправия женщин, выраженная в ERA, была настолько простой и очевидной, что поддерживалась в равной степени и республиканцами, и демократами. Но с безошибочным правым инстинктом Шлафли осознала, что борьбу за равноправие можно вывернуть наизнанку и представить покушением на привилегии, а борьбу за сохранение традиционной иерархии представить в виде благородной защиты беззащитных (в ее случае - домохозяек). Шлафли пугала домохозяек и их мужей ужасами эмансипации: призывом девушек в армию, государственными детскими садами, совместными туалетами в школах, гомосексуальными браками и т.п.

В период между победой Картера в 1976 и победой Рейгана в 1980 республиканская партия ради создания победной коалиция развернулась лицом к социальному консерватизму. Политическая борьба перешла из интеллектуальной сферы (спорах о роли правительственных регуляций) в эмоциональную сферу (культурную войну, в которой компромиссы невозможны). Изменение пункта о безусловной поддержке ERA в программе партии в июле 1980 поставило республиканский поезд на рельсы защиты "традиционных семейных ценностей".

"We acknowledge the legitimate efforts of those who support or oppose ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
We reaffirm our Party's historic commitment to equal rights and equality for women.
We support equal rights and equal opportunities for women, without taking away traditional rights of women such as exemption from the military draft. We support the enforcement of all equal opportunity laws and urge the elimination of discrimination against women. We oppose any move which would give the federal government more power over families.
Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment is now in the hands of state legislatures, and the issues of the time extension and rescission are in the courts. The states have a constitutional right to accept or reject a constitutional amendment without federal interference or pressure. At the direction of the White House, federal departments launched pressure against states which refused to ratify ERA. Regardless of one's position on ERA, we demand that this practice cease."
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1980



Победу над ERA в 1982 праздновали с большой помпой. В победном банкете помимо Шлафли, главной героини торжества, участвовали Джессе Хелмс, Пол Вайрих и другие фельдмаршалы культурной войны.

The band played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" as Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the nation's Stop ERA forces, slowly descended the stairs of the Shoreham Hotel's Ambassador Room, waving and beaming, radiant in white butterfly sleeves and a long strand of pearls. She grabbed a cluster of balloons, her eyes glistening with tears, then walked into a halo of television lights. "Praise the Lord," said a fan.
The reporters pounced. Did Schlafly think, one of them asked, that this party for yesterday's death of the Equal Rights Amendment would be seen as the celebration of an ungracious winner?
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," she said, still smiling. "Look. They've got all the media on their side. Why should they object when we want to have some fun?"
And they did. Ronald Reagan sent a congratulatory telegram. The band played "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead." Conservative Digest editor John Lofton, who wore dark glasses and a striped party hat, put it this way: "We're here to celebrate a death, to dance on a grave."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/07/01/schlaflys-gala-goodbye-to-era/511e3e69-fe30-475e-b133-97ad78a9a008/

That night at the Shoreham, the conquering heroine of the antifeminist right was gorgeously arrayed in diamond earrings, a string of pearls, and a gem-studded gold eagle brooch pinned to her blouse, oddly like an organdy pinafore. The brooch was a gift of her Eagle Warriors (a group of Eagle Forum big-money donors). She also received a gold watch from her husband Fred, and a plaque sporting a gigantic bright-red raw ruby from her followers-this time a deliberate visual echo of the bright red “Stop ERA” signs that Schlafly’s movement had made famous. At her right was Senator Jesse Helms-the former North Carolina TV station manager who would go on to be the drawling public face of the family-values right in that grim decade of cultural reaction.
Nearly 1,400 people sat at tables decorated by the Maryland Eagle Forum in the style of baby showers or birthday parties: crepe paper rainbows arching over black paper pots-of-gold with scattered jelly bean “treasure” to be carried off as prizes after dinner. <...>
The old right was there: the founder of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade took a bow. The famed John Birch Society orator General Andrew J. Gatsis was also on hand-then best known for his stump warning that “we must now aim to eliminate the piecemeal efforts of the women’s lib movement to implement their humanist goals.” Schlafly herself came of age among these old right scaremongers, and sharpened her considerable organizational skills as their enthusiastic understudy.
And the then-young turks of the nascent New Right also paid admiring homage to their comrade-in-arms. Paul Weyrich, one of the New Right’s direct-mail masterminds, who also invented the baleful and influential American Legislative Exchange Council, declared that “the ERA was an early issue; it preceded abortion. I first noticed the issue in 1974 when [Schlafly] called and asked for my help.”
https://thebaffler.com/latest/night-phyllis-schlafly-went-rainbow



Движение "Stop ERA", созданное Шлафли, резонировало не столько в Иллинойсе, где она тогда жила, сколько на Юге, где она родилась и выросла и куда переехала на старости лет. Белые южане уже успели прочувствовать боль от потери традиционных привилегий после введения законов о гражданских правах для черных. Их было легче убедить в том, что движение за равноправие женщин является заговором коварных элит в целях поломать их традиционный образ жизни.

Южные рыцари и джентльмены, готовые надеть белые колпаки для защиты своих женщин от покушений, галантно превозносили этих женщин, но не могли и в страшном сне считать их равными себе.



"Южную стратегию" Никсона, которая заставила потомственных демократов Юга массово переходить в республиканцы, принято относить к остаточному расизму и реакции на реформу гражданских прав при президенте Джонсоне, но историки правого движения в США указывают также на фундаментальное значение дебатов про ERA в 1970ые и называют "долгой южной стратегией" апелляцию к инстинктам сохранения традиционных иерархий. Южные белые женщины, активизированные Шлафли, сыграли в этом ключевую роль.

Southern white culture had long been a stronghold of traditional gender norms. In theory, the ideal Southern white woman was placed on a pedestal: financially supported, removed from the hardships of public life and protected from dangerous black men she was taught to fear. For poor and working-class white women, the pedestal and its protections were more aspirational than real, but the ideal was nonetheless powerful and pervasive in the South.
Schlafly’s STOP ERA, which stood for Stop Taking Our Privileges, had capitalized upon this cultural norm, persuading Southern white women to reverse their positions on the ERA. In 1976, 64 percent of Southern white women supported the ERA, while 16 percent were opposed. By 1980, however, support had dropped to 42 percent, while opposition swelled to 44 percent - a much more drastic shift than in other regions of the country.
This aspect of the Southern political realignment is often overlooked. One crucial cause of this amnesia emerged in the days after Reagan’s victory. Feminists, terrified that Democrats would abandon the ERA and women’s rights, started championing a single statistic from the exit polling. More women than men had voted for Carter, creating a “gender gap” that had not existed in 1976. To feminists, this number gave Democrats reason to continue to support the ERA and even to consider putting a female vice presidential candidate on the 1984 ticket.
Another data point from the exit polling fueled this argument: More women than men had voted overall. The conflation of these two statistics created a general impression that women leaned Democratic and that Reagan had a “woman problem.”
In truth, however, though Carter did receive more votes from women than from men, Reagan had received more votes overall from both men and women.
Even more distorting, coverage of this new gender gap often ignored significant racial and regional distinctions. Reagan actually won white women by a 52-39 margin, which jumped to 59-34 percent among Southern white women. Women’s perceived preference for Carter really only reflected the way that the president had trounced Reagan among African American women.
This post-election narrative took root in part because the idea that white women, particularly in the South, would not only hand the presidency to the party that opposed the ERA, but that they would do so because it opposed the ERA, was just too hard to accept.
But that was precisely what happened. A table of exit poll data published in the New York Times on Nov. 9, 1980, painted the picture: Women who favored the ERA supported Carter over Reagan 54 percent to 32 percent. But women who opposed the ERA supported Reagan over Carter by the even larger margin of 66 percent to 29 percent. Among those Southern white women to whom Schlafly’s message appealed, anti-ERA voters broke 71 percent to 24 percent for Reagan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/10/why-southern-white-women-vote-against-feminism/



Долгоиграющая стратегия опоры на Юг и перевода политики в термины бескомпромиссной культурной войны растянулась на 30 лет.

The long Southern strategy had finally come to fruition, and it is still working today. The GOP’s partisan conversion of Southern white evangelicals is so complete that no longer must a Republican candidate hold authentic religious beliefs to secure their support. Nowhere is this clearer than in Southern white evangelical support for Donald Trump. Indeed, only 38 percent of white evangelicals living in the South identified Trump as a Christian, but 84 percent of them still voted for him.
Similarly, despite the long-standing national gender gap, where more women vote for the Democratic Party than men, Southern white women remain firmly in the Republican camp. In 2016, while Hillary Clinton captured the support of white women outside of the South 52 to 48, Trump bested her among white women who live in the South, 64 percent to 36 percent. And this result was not unusual: In 2018, only 25 percent of white women voted for Democrat Stacey Abrams in Georgia’s gubernatorial race.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/26/what-we-get-wrong-about-southern-strategy/



Следует отметить примечательный символизм того, что 92-летняя Шлафли успела поддержать Трампа на выборах. Ее книжка "The Conservative Case for Trump" вышла в сентябре 2016, через день после ее смерти. Шлафли поддержала Трампа в начале республиканских праймериз, в то время, когда его шансы на номинацию были неопределенными. Это вызвало беспокойство среди сотрудников ее организации, которые не могли понять, что она в нем находит, и подозревали манипуляцию.

Schlafly officially endorsed Trump after a private meeting in St. Louis on Sunday but had hinted at her support for the billionaire businessman since December, causing a split within her organization.
“I asked Donald Trump to support the Republican platform because this is the best and most conservative platform we’ve ever had," she said in a statement. "He endorses it, and I believe he will stand by it. I am confident that Donald Trump will stand up against bad trade deals, reform bad immigration policies, and appoint constitutionalist judges like Antonin Scalia."
"We have been stuck with the losers chosen by the Republican establishment for so long, and it's time for a change," she added "Now we have a guy who is going to lead us to victory."
Despite the endorsement from Schlafly, support from Eagle Forum leaders in at least a dozen states has held strong in favor of Cruz. They have dismissed Schlafly's support for Trump, breaking formation with the organization's long revered founder.
Cruz is only about 90 delegates shy of Trump's 460. A GOP candidates needs 1,237 delegates to secure the nomination.
Cathie Adams, who served as Texas Eagle Forum president for the last 23 years, called Schlafly's endorsement a disappointment. She backed recent claims by Cruz that Trump is taking advantage of supporters, including 91-year-old Schlafly, by making promises he can't keep.
"We have no respect for that man," she said of Trump. "[Schlafly's endorsement] is going to be widely dismissed. At 91, it is just totally unfair to impose upon someone who has such a beautiful legacy ... I think this was very much a manipulation. When you’re 91 and you’re not out with the grass roots all the time, it is very much taking advantage of someone."
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2016/03/14/despite-phyllis-schlafly-s-endorsement-of-trump-many-eagle-forum-members-sticking-with-cruz/

Но инстинкты старуху не подвели. Своей победой над ненавистным феминизмом в лице Хиллари Клинтон Трамп завершил арку истории и стал апофеозом того дела, которому Шлафли посвятила свою долгую жизнь.



Последняя вышедшая серия сериала "Mrs. America" воспроизводит дебаты между Филис Шлафли и Бетти Фридан, которая стала матерью американского феминизма после успеха книжки The Feminine Mystique.

На дебатах Шлафли демонстрирует искусство правого тролля, выводя Фридан из эмоционального равновесия и провоцируя ее гнев, чтобы тем самым придать веса своим аргументам.

“She wanted to rile up her opponents so they would look angry,” her biographer, Donald Critchlow, says. “That was the key: If she could show that her opponents were the real radicals and the people full of anger.” The more they fumed, the more equanimity she showed, and the more her power grew.
“Mrs. America,” in its fourth episode, re-creates a vivid example: a 1973 debate between Schlafly and feminist leader Betty Friedan at Illinois State University, when Friedan called Schlafly a witch and spat, “I’d like to burn you at the stake.” (In real life, at that same debate, Friedan also called Schlafly an “Aunt Tom.”) In the arc of an hour of TV drama, it was presented as a turning-point moment: Schlafly had been losing, but her serenity, in the face of Friedan’s rage, suddenly gave her the upper hand.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/26/phyllis-schlafly-series-conservative-firebrands-207297

Записи дебатов в университете не сохранилось, но можно оценить искусство Шлафли на телевизионных дебатах с Фридан. Шлафли умело держит спокойствие и осанку, излагая подготовленные пункты, в частности рассуждая про ужас однополых браков, когда "perverts will be given the same legal rights as husbands and wives".

Click to view

Интересно также попадание Бетти Фридан в классический архетип еврейской левой либералки.

В идеологии Шлафли антисемитизм не был явным, но иногда проступал за скобками борьбы с "глобалистскими" элитами.

Critchlow does note that Schlafly, like many other hard-right conservatives, has long been preoccupied with certain "well-financed" minorities -- "Eastern Establishment" elites with "internationalist" viewpoints who "shared strategies to expand their political and financial influence." For her, these elites are epitomized by Henry Kissinger, whom Schlafly and her co-author, Rear Adm. Chester Ward, described in the final pages of their 1975 polemic, "Kissinger on the Couch," in this fashion: "Henry, say some who know him well, has no God. Does he have a country?"
Critchlow points out that Schlafly "never identified Jews as part of any conspiracy," but then she didn't have to: phrases that invoke godless, countryless "well-financed" minorities are a well-recognized code among those who fear world domination by Wall Street and the Trilateral Commission.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/books/review/she-changed-america.html

Click to view

Частично это связано с ранним происхождением этой идеологии из John Birch Society, секретного общества по борьбе с коммунистическим заговором, которого конспирология заводила в ультраправые дебри.

Будущий лауреат Нобелевской премии Боб Дилан высмеивал его в сатирической песне "Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues".

Now we all agree with Hitler’s views
Although he killed six million Jews
It don’t matter too much that he was a Fascist
At least you can’t say he was a Communist!
That’s to say like if you got a cold you take a shot of malaria

Well, I wus lookin’ everywhere for them gol-darned Reds
I got up in the mornin’ ’n’ looked under my bed
Looked in the sink, behind the door
Looked in the glove compartment of my car
Couldn’t find ’em . . .

I wus lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere
I wus lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair
I looked way up my chimney hole
I even looked deep down inside my toilet bowl
They got away . . .
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/talkin-john-birch-paranoid-blues/

Шлафли отрицала членство в JBS, но это было открытым секретом, подтвержденным после ее смерти документально.

Mrs. Schlafly's opponents have hinted in the past that her campaign was financed by money from the John Birch Society. She denies it, as well as, denying having ever belonged to the ultraconservative organization. However, Robert Welch, founder of the group, characterized her in 1960 as “a very loyal member of the John Birch Society.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/15/archives/opponent-of-era-confident-of-its-defeat.html

Phyllis Schlafly was a secret member of the John Birch Society, the far-right group infamous for its support of segregation and its belief that a communist conspiracy had taken over the United States, according to documents newly obtained by researcher Ernie Lazar through FOIA requests.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/phyllis-schlafly-mrs-america-was-a-secret-member-of-the-john-birch-society



В декабре 2015 Шлафли сравнивала Трампа, с его предложением запретить въезд мусульманам, с сенатором Патриком Маккарреном, в честь которого назван аэропорт в Лас Вегасе.

That plenary power is best expressed in this federal law: “Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens, or of any class of aliens, into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants.”
That law was the work of one of our greatest U.S. Senators, Pat McCarran (D-NV), after whom the airport at Las Vegas is named. Along with Representative Francis Walter (D-PA), the two Democrats wrote the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act which Congress passed over Harry Truman’s veto in 1952.
All during the Cold War, McCarran-Walter was successfully used to keep out aliens who were members or “fellow travelers” of the Communist party or members of “Communist front” organizations. In 1980, the same law was used by President Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis to suspend visas to anyone who wanted to come here from Iran.
In addition to barring the entry of “any class of aliens” who may be “detrimental to the interests of the United States” (a category that could include Muslims or persons of any faith who are citizens of, or have traveled to, a Muslim country), the law says the president may “impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” They could be required to wear ankle bracelets to monitor their movements, or to provide passwords to their electronic devices and social media accounts, as a condition of the privilege of entering our country.
Sixty years ago, the Democratic party could boast a patriotic, pro-American anti-Communist like Pat McCarran, but that is no longer the case.
https://eagleforum.org/publications/column/donald-trump-channels-pat-mccarran.html

Маккарран был демократом старой закалки - противником New Deal, поклонником Франко и рьяным антикоммунистом, с переходом в конспирологию и антисемитизм. Против его дискриминационного закона об иммиграции 1952 года, который Трумэн безуспешно пытался остановить своим вето, протестовали еврейские организации.

The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, driven by Sen. Patrick McCarran, (D-Nev.), who was obsessed with the threat of Jewish communists, set new precedents for removing citizenship from immigrants who had already achieved it. Observers lamented that the act made it harder for Holocaust survivors to enter the United States than for Nazis. (Indeed, McCarran soon proved willing to help Nazi supporters.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/27/anti-semites-see-socialism-jewish-plot-what-will-they-say-about-bernie-sanders/



За кадром в сериале "Mrs. America" появляется другой пример еврейского архетип: Эл Голдштейн - издатель порнографического журнала "Screw". Он троллит феминисток, выпускающих журнал "Ms", помещая их телефон под объявлением о секс-услугах и размещая на развороте журнала стилизованное изображение Глории Стайнем в окружении половых членов с надписью "Pin the Cock on the Feminist."

Голдштейн был тоже своего рода первопроходцем. В отличие от показной утонченности журнала "Playboy", его журнал подходил к сексу с максимальной вульгарностью, тем самым разрушая рамки пуританской морали. Защищая свободу подобной публикации с позиций Первой поправки, Гольдштейн закладывал фундамент для современной порнографической индустрии.



Sick of the violent pulp men’s magazines that glorified violence yet considered sex a taboo subject, Al was determined to start a paper that was all about sex. “I’m truly the Thomas Alva Edison of pussy,” Al told adult film historian Ashley West a few years ago. “I felt I was the headlight into the fog of Puritanism. I came up with a newspaper that validated masturbators. No other paper mirrored my interests - getting hookers and getting laid.”
Al laid out his mission statement in the first issue - “We promise never to ink out a pubic hair or chalk out an organ. We will apologize for nothing. We will uncover the entire world of sex. We will be the Consumer Reports of sex.” And he did. There were public service articles like “How to Fuck a Fatty” and “A Screw Guide to Gonorrhea.” Al himself reviewed porn movies using the Peter Meter - no thumbs but erect members up. He even ran a column called “Homosexual Citizen” the first gay-themed column in a straight magazine.
Al caught flak from both prudes and the nascent women’s movement but there really wasn’t anything chauvinistic about his philosophy, unlike say Hef’s. Al was a hedonist who loved women. One of the first times he ever masturbated was to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in Ulysses. “I love eating pussy because if I can put a smile on a woman’s face that’s an approval I can’t buy,” he told Ashley. “If I can give a girl pleasure that means I’m potent and virile, a real man. I started Screw to validate myself but when the paper sold I realized there were others just like me. They weren’t perverts or degenerates; no one was fucking eight-year-olds. They were just people who had a sexual appetite.” Al knew Screw would be successful when he got a letter from a man in his 80s who wrote that he was a Catholic who had always believed that sex was a sin but from reading Screw he had learned how to perform cunnilingus and it gave him great pleasure.
https://pleasekillme.com/al-goldstein/

During the magazine’s first three years, Mr. Goldstein was arrested 19 times on obscenity charges. Spending millions to defend himself, he ultimately scored a major victory in 1974 when a federal judge threw out an obscenity case brought against him.
After that, the willingness of the government to prosecute such cases waned, ending a period that saw such books as D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” banned and kept erotic publications under the counter.
But victory left Mr. Goldstein with the most dreaded of emotions - boredom.
“I really need the attention of being arrested, because that means I’m still bugging the establishment, that I’m still gadfly to the state,” he told Playboy. “Acceptance of me and Screw would be the kiss of death.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/al-goldstein-dies-screw-magazine-publisher/2013/12/20/0af4e61c-68dd-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html



Голдштейн не смог или не захотел оседлать массовую коммерциализацию порноиндустрии и ее переход в Интернет. Под конец жизни (в 2013) он превратился из успешного предпринимателя и миллионера в обанкротившегося бомжа.

In quick succession starting in 2003, Mr. Goldstein lost his company, his Florida mansion and a series of subsistence jobs in New York, including one as a greeter at the Second Avenue Deli. In 2004, while living in a homeless shelter, he was arrested and charged with stealing books from a Barnes & Noble store.
His long decline found him bouncing from his in-laws’ floor in Queens to Veterans Affairs hospitals to a cramped apartment on Staten Island paid for by his friend, the magician Penn Jillette, to the Brooklyn nursing home where he spent most of his final years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/nyregion/al-goldstein-pioneering-pornographer-dies-at-77.html

Король честной нью-йоркской вульгарности Голдштейн не выносил вульгарности Трампа, о чем успел сообщить в 1980ых прямым текстом.

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Как и многие другие сферы общественной жизни, запутанная история полового равноправия, секса и политики в Америке включает ключевые еврейские имена с разным знаком:

Бетти Фридан и Эл Голдштейн.

Моника Левински и Энтони Винер.

Роберта Каплан и Памела Карлан.

Харви Вайнштейн и Джефри Эпштейн.