On Thursday, the world lost legendary actress Mary Tyler Moore at the age of 80. Moore not only dazzled in her iconic role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but she proved her range in Ordinary People, a dramatic Oscar-nominated film.
The actress has been hailed as a feminist icon, mostly for her role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, playing an unmarried, childless working woman. But personally, Moore rejected the hard-line anti-male feminism we see so often see in second and third wave feminists. In fact, Moore blatantly defied feminist icon and abortion advocate Gloria Steinem when she offered Moore an invitation to join the feminist movement.
“I believed, and still do, that women have a very major role to play as mothers,” Moore said in 2013, appearing on Pioneers of Television: Funny Ladies. “It’s very necessary for them to be with their children. That’s not what Gloria Steinem was saying. She was saying you can do everything and you owe it to yourself to have a career. I really didn’t believe that.”
Moreover, the actress become less politically liberal and embraced more of a “centrist libertarian” position in later parts of her life, even applauding Fox News conservatives Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer.
“When one looks at what’s happened to television, there are so few shows that interest me. I do watch a lot of Fox News. I like Charles Krauthammer and Bill O’Reilly,” she said in 2009.
“Maybe more of a libertarian centrist,” she said, when asked if she was a “right winger.”
“I believed, and still do, that women have a very major role to play as mothers.”
Mary Tyler Moore
As noted by The Daily Signal, Moore said even she would have publicly endorsed Republican John McCain in 2008 if she were asked to at the time.
Moore was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at just 33 years old. The icon spent a good portion of her life advocating for those suffering.