Conservative calendar girls

We've got the perfect holiday gift idea for all the Condi-worshiping, feminist-hating, gun-toting females on your list!

By Rebecca Traister

Dec 22, 2004 | Still looking for last-minute gift ideas? Consider the inaugural printing of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's Great American Conservative Women 2005 wall calendar.

Perhaps inspired by last year's Babes Against Bush calendar, the Luce Institute decided to print the calendar, according to spokeswoman Audrey Mullen, "because they have a lot of really terrific women in their speakers' bureau and who support the Policy Institute. They want to get the message out there that there are some terrific conservative women who are also great role models for young women [and who] are not what you see promoted in the media generally."

The Luce Institute draws a pretty hard line on the kind of women it thinks are "promoted in the media generally." The institute's Web site features archived articles that refer to Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "Senate diva"; celebrate "Spin Sisters," Myrna Blyth's attack on the liberal women's media; and argue that Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day is a "stealth feminist holiday" that "victimizes sons and daughters." There's also a piece about the National Organization for Women called "They Should Call it THEN" and a report on Gloria Steinem's 2000 wedding to the since deceased David Bale, charitably headlined: "A Fish Gets a Bicycle."

So you cannot accuse these people of being humorless. Which could explain the calendar, which features 12 conservative chicks in full Talbots finery. The calendar, which can be purchased through the institute's Web site for a $25 donation, is being given away free at institute events, to servicemen and women and on college campuses. Don't hurt yourself while picturing a photo of Jeanne Kirkpatrick hanging on a dorm room wall next to a glossy poster of "O.C." heartthrob Benjamin McKenzie.

The 2005 calendar year kicks off with an image of Luce herself. The journalist, editor, congresswoman from Connecticut and ambassador to Italy is quoted as saying, "Do one thing well. You can have it all, but you will be very tired." Star Parker, a former welfare mother who, according to the calendar, "reformed her life, received a degree in marketing, and launched an urban Christian magazine," graces February. March belongs to a smiling Christina Hoff Sommers, author of "Who Stole Feminism?" and "The War Against Boys." The calendar quotes her embrace of the phallus: "It is unfashionable to say so but I will say it anyway: The energy, adventurousness, stoicism, and competitiveness of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world."

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