… With no Apologies to Aristophanes

Aristophanes’ ashes must have erupted like Mt. St. Helens when President Reagan named a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some 411 years before Christ, Aristophanes was writing in “Lysistrata” that, “There is no animal more invincible than a woman, nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless.” Images arise of Sandra Day O’Connor clawing at the eyes of Chief Justice Burger as he tries to impose some argum ent upon the rest of the Court. And Shakespeare’s bones must have beaten each other like castanets , muffling out even the strident protests of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. It was Shakespeare, after all, who wrote: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” Can’t you just see tears cascading down Mrs. O’Connor’s black robe as frailty prevents her from dealing with some absurd opinion by her old Stanford classmate, Justice William Rehnquist? Reagan Praised Whether he chose Mrs. O’Connor to keep a campaign promise, or because he has been catching unmitigated hell from Republican women who say he hasn’t given enough decent jobs to females, President Reagan deserves high praise for naming Mrs. O’Connor to the nation’s highest tribunal. After 191 years of wallowing in the inanities of Aristophanes and Shakespeare, and assorted chauvinisms in between, it is good to see Mr. Reagan respond to the principle that America’s commitment to justice is deepened when women sit on the Court. We go back and forth from the trifling to the vulgar in our assertions that women are “different” from men. It is time that