Doris Landfather - The Hypocrite

If you think that the concept of imposing one's own idea of ethics on others began with the rise of the far-right religious nuts in the '80s, or even with the emergence of that local screwball Phyllis Schlafly – who came out of the kitchen in the '70s, yet thought it was her business to make sure that every woman in America stay in hers – think again. With the recent death of Doris Landfather, we're reminded that hypocrisy from the right made an interesting appearance in the early '70s.

During her one-term stint as a St. Louis alderman, Landfather's greatest claim to fame was to try to ban the rock musical "Hair" from opening in St. Louis. She failed. But that's not the story. The story is that this elected official from a party that has always championed less government, less regulation and less intrusion into peoples' lives, thought she had a right to tell society how to behave. Doris Landfather thought that government should mind their own business. Yet, she couldn't mind hers.

She dropped out of high school at age 15 to marry one of her teachers, who she eventually divorced. Hardly the behavior of a self-proclaimed moral maven.

She had a later-in-life stint of trying to get her son off of a drug dealing conviction; not exactly in line with the law-and-order preaching from the right to which we've all become accustomed.

In trying to legally regulate personal behavior and personal decisions, Doris Landfather, thought she was ahead of time, but in truth, she was behind it. But that didn't stop her from pushing her own twisted sense of morality onto others.

What a pious, reprehensible hypocrite.