Remembering a "giant": Gloria Steinem dies, aged 92

0:00Well, today on Radio National Breakfast, we were paying tribute to the trailblazing activist, journalist, author, feminist, glorious diner. She died at her home in New York City overnight at the age of 92. We talked about her work supporting women's rights movements, reproductive rights campaigns, elevating them in the courts and on the streets, also her work in the media sector, founding Ms. Magazine in 1971, which began as a bit of a pullout from New York magazine. Around the time she actually explained her thinking on the BBC. So this morning I interviewed Christopher Bananas, New York magazine's City Editor, about the woman who helped shape the magazine in our works at. Here's the full interview from

1:05this morning. Christopher Bananas, thank you so much for joining Radio National Breakfast. Happy to be here. What are your reflections on today with the passing of glorious diner? She is a giant and not only American culture, not only in New York City culture, not only in American culture, but in the world. Change the lives of millions of people as part of a movement that she would be very quick to say she was only a piece of but inevitably ended up being one of the most prominent faces of. She told the BBC, it would have been 50 years ago, that the foundation of the magazine that she founded Ms. Magazine was that it was different from others because it simply considered that women were human beings. It doesn't sound very revolutionary, but it was, she said. Talk to me about that thinking. Sure, of course. Well, as as you and your readers may know, Ms. Magazine started as a special year-end supplement in the pages of New York magazine,

2:06which is where I work now. She had been a journalist for a decade plus before that, working for all sorts of magazines in New York City and beyond. She gained some prominence as a writer in the early 60s with a story about the Playboy Club, specifically she went undercover as a Playboy bunny and wrote about the experience, entertainingly and at the same time with the degree of outrage. In 1968, when New York Magazine was founded, she was there from issue number one, and in fact, not only was she involved with our editorial operation from the beginning, but she helped make it happen. Our founding editor, Clay Felter, used to take a couple of writers to lunch with potential investors, and the two writers he did, as consistently with, were Glorin Steinem and Tom Wolf, because they were both prominent, but also, I don't know if you ever experienced glory in person, but she is the most was the most charming human being,

3:08as was Tom Wolf. Glorin once said in an interview that their role was tap dancing for rich people. Anyway, this magazine got off the ground in 1968, and she spent three years here as a colonist. If you read those old columns, it's fascinating, because she starts off as mostly reporter and journalist covering New York City politics, and increasingly, the various radical strains of politics that were growing in the late 60s. Over those three years, you see her sort of evolved from columnist into burgeoning activists. At the end of 1971, she came to Clay Felter with a proposal. She said, I want to start a magazine for women. You need a year and this year. How about this? You get, I think it was 32 pages, 36, something like that, that you can run as a

4:10sort of pull out center of section of the double issue at the end of the year, and that'll launch us. And he said, okay, I'll do it. Without any pushback. Without any pushback. You're going. No, no, he needed something, and she had a good idea. And he also, like, I think, you know, understood that she had something there. He said, okay, I'll stake it into it. We'll pay for the stories. I think his came out of his budget, those 32 pages did anyway. And it was a sensation. The story she used to tell was that that week she flew from New York to Los Angeles to be on TV, maybe it was the tonight show, I forget. And got to the airport in LA and looked at all the new stamps and she couldn't find it. And she went into a panic. Oh my gosh, the delivery didn't get here. What do we do now? Well, you know, and of course, you found out a few hours later that it had got there and had already sold out. It's a remarkable story. What do you think her legacy is around how the media

5:15portrays the world that we live in? It's almost too big for me to grapple with, but I will say her writing over and over tries and often succeeds at making it not about her, even though she was a, as I said, a central face of the movement. Over and over, she made the case for inclusiveness. For other marginalized peoples concerns to be part of the feminist movement. You know, she told the story in 1972. And by the way, you can read all about this in my colleague Rebecca Traster's epic obituary, which went up on our website today. She told the story that when in 1972, when George and governor was running for president, Gloria had approached him to talk not about abortion,

6:16not about women's rights, specifically, but about welfare, you know, social support. And McGovern was baffled. Why do you want to talk to me about welfare? And she said he couldn't understand that that's a women's issue too. Single women with children need support, you know, that support for the most vulnerable is almost inevitably a women's issue. And that speaks well of her. And by the way, she was not without her blind spots. I don't mean to completely, blandly lionize her, but by and large, she really did try to, you know, make the tent big. Christopher Benanos, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on ready and national breakfast. Happy to go read Rebecca's story. Christopher Benanos there, New York magazines, city editor talking about the life and legacy of Gloria Steinem. You can find more coverage from Radio National Breakfast on ABC Listen, including an interview that we did this morning with

7:18D-Dream Alone, the president of the National Women's Political Caucus, which was also co-founded by Gloria Steinem.