President Bill Clinton recently began his second term, which is both bad and good news for C.W. Kendall. Openly anti-Clinton in his political leanings, Kendall says he didn’t want to see the former Arkansas governor win the White House the first time around, never mind the second.
But as a businessman, Kendall plans to make the best of the situation by issuing a new version of his successful “The Clinton Countdown Calendar.”
The real estate developer and Lake Highlands High School alumnus (Class of ’78) stumbled onto his second calling shortly after Clinton was elected to his first term.
“Out of my frustration, on the day he was elected I started a mental countdown of how long it would be until he was out of office,” Kendall says.
Soon, it occurred to Kendall that he might not be the only person unimpressed with Clinton.
He considered turning his mental countdown into a calendar to reach others who were less than thrilled with the president. He then shared his thoughts with family and friends, one of whom was a printer.
The enthusiasm spread as the concept became more focused, and Kendall began gathering Clinton quotes and other bits of information for use in the calendar.
The result was a four-year desk calendar beginning in January 1993 with a page that could be torn off at the completion of each week. A first printing of 1,000 received only lukewarm interest until the creators displayed the calendar to retailers in a gift show booth.
Orders started rolling in, and by the time Kendall had published three successive Clinton calendars in 1994, more than 250,000 ’95 and ’96 calendars had been sold.
The company Kendall formed to publish the calendars, Lame Duck Inc., received an award for originality in 1996 from the National Calendar Marketing Association. Broadcast personality Rush Limbaugh also mentioned the calendar during one of his programs.
Kendall says he was so sure Clinton would not be re-elected that he didn’t even plan a 1997 presidential calendar. So now he’s scrambling to issue the “Clinton Countdown to 2001” in January 1998 as a three-year desk calendar. He says it will be similar to the earlier version and will contain reminders such as these found in the 1996 edition:
- January 5, 1996: Full Moon…only 12 more full moons until Clinton leaves office.
- January 17-30, 1992: Infidelity allegations surface between Gov. Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, including taped telephone conversations.
Even though he miscalculated Clinton’s political staying power, Kendall realized there might be a market for other types of calendars. He developed “The Lawyer Joke-a-Day Calendar” for 1996 and 1997 and will publish his first “The Preacher Joke-a-Day Calendar” for 1998.
The lawyer calendar is designed to poke fun at lawyers and probably appeals most to people who don’t like lawyers, Kendall says. It contains quotes, quips and jokes such as:
- “What would you call it if all the kids in the world sued Santa Claus? A Claus action suit.”
- “If a lawyer dreams about a case, can he bill one hundred percent of that?”
The preacher calendar, on the other hand, will contain favorite jokes submitted by preachers.
“We’re getting some great jokes,” Kendall says. “And you know how hard it is to get clean jokes. It’s good to see our religious community with such a good sense of humor.”
As for presidential calendars, Kendall says the public can look forward to many more in the future.
“We plan to count down the next president, too,” Kendall says. “What started on principle has grown into capitalism. There’s always going to be a market to count down a president.”
