'W. stands for women,' cried Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Lynne Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Elaine Chao and Gale Ann Norton at the 2004 Republican National Convention, and in case the Good Ol' Boy's good old ladies didn't get it, a banner explained: 'The country and my administration have benefited from the strong women who serve as senior members of my White House team.'

'Sometimes, we complicate policy and processes so much that busy women don't have time to sift through it all and figure out how it really matters to their lives,' the Republican communications director said in 2003. 'We are always striving to find women to talk about our policies . . . Women have a way of being able to boil things down for other women in a way that they can understand.' Busy boiling things in the kitchen, that would be. Of course, W stands for quite a lot: wanker, wastrel, wanton, woodentop, warmonger, witless and, if it's the W in the middle of George Bush's name, terrifying.

LRB 22 September 2005 | PDF Download