July 21, 2008, - 3:33 pm
Immoral Support: My Underwire Bra Funded the America-Hating Far Left?
By Debbie Schlussel
One of my favorite things to read is the “Remembrances” column in the Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal. It’s not really an obituary section. It’s usually a couple of articles about great or interesting American entrepreneurs and inventors, who recently died. Most of them are not well known names.
This past Saturday, one of the profiles–of the late Shirley Magidson–indicated that many women across America have been funding the Black Panthers, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and other far-left causes by virtue of what holds up their breasts.
Magidson and her late husband, Herbert Magidson–she an industrial designer and he a mechanical engineer–apparently invented or improved the construction of underwire bras and the molded cups that go with them. Through that and their company, Metric Products, Inc., they became fabulously wealthy.
And they spent a lot of their money on the left. While they welcomed Martin Luther King Jr. as an overnight guest at their home and gave to charity, they spent underwire bra profits on some unsavory things:
In his memoir “Spock on Spock,” Dr. Benjamin Spock, a close family friend, wrote: “If anybody was in charge of the opposition to the war in Vietnam, it was Herb Magidson.”
The family held fund-raisers for the Black Panthers, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel Ellsberg and numerous activist causes. Herbert Magidson died in 1977.
Metric is still a leader in the bra-cup and underwire businesses, with clients including Vanity Fair Mills and Victoria’s Secret, says Rita Haft, Mrs. Magidson’s daughter. After the 2004 tsunami, her mother traveled to Sri Lanka, where the company’s manufacturing is centered, and donated funds to build 40 new houses for refugees, Ms. Haft says.
In 1980, Mrs. Magidson helped to found the Southern California branch of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the antinuclear group that shared a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1985. As a leader of the group, Mrs. Magidson journeyed to Stockholm for the awards ceremony. She also was part of a delegation to Peru to visit Lori Berenson, an American prisoner who became an international cause celebre.
Lori Berenson is a communist activist who hates America and tried to help communists take over Peru. She deserves to rot in Peruvian jail.
Given this list of awful causes, it’s sad to think that America’s women, including me, funded all of this by vurtue of their lingerie.
Know where your money is ultimately going and whom it is supporting. Sometimes the products you buy fund the movements you detest.
Show your patriotism and burn your bra, Deb. Let your puppies be free, be free of funding unAmerican activities.
Norman Blitzer on July 21, 2008 at 4:16 pm