While most people were enjoying the holidays, extremely online conservatives were fighting about a pinup calendar.
Last month, Ultra Right Beer — a company founded as a conservative alternative to allegedly woke Bud Light — released a 2024 calendar titled “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America 2024 Calendar.” The calendar contains photos of “the most beautiful conservative women in America” in various sexy poses. Some, like anti-trans swimmer Riley Gaines and writer Ashley St. Clair, are wearing revealing outfits; others, like former House candidate Kim Klacik, are fully clothed. No one is naked.
But this mild sexiness was just a bit too much for some prominent social conservatives, who started decrying the calendar in late December as (among other things) “demonic.” The basic complaint is that the calendar is pandering to married men’s sinful lust, debasing conservative women, and making conservatives seem like hypocrites when they complain about leftist immorality.
“This is the problem with conservatives who think they can act just like the secular world,” writes Jenna Ellis, one of Donald Trump’s attorneys during the 2020 election fight. “If conservatives aren’t morally grounded Christians, what are we even ‘conserving’?”
Other conservatives, led by several of the women who posed in the calendar, defended the calendar — decrying their critics as nosy puritans who exemplify the right’s inability to connect with ordinary people.
The fight between these factions, dubbed “Calendargate,” started on X but has exploded outward — becoming an inescapable topic on the right in the new year. Prominent right-wing media figures like Tim Pool and Megyn Kelly have weighed in; articles dissecting the controversy have appeared in National Review and the American Conservative.
On one level, this is all very stupid. No one is going to be hurt by the calendar, nor will the controversy surrounding it change anything of…
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