Michelle Bachmann and the uphill road
Michelle Bachmann’s latest PR headaches: headaches. Migraines, to be exact. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone unearths the source of the story – disgruntled former aides, another GOP candidates launching a subterranean strike to cripple her in Iowa? Irrelevant, we’ll be told: it’s the truth that matters, not the source. Okay, but what about President Obama’s medical records? You’re a racist.
Michelle Bachmann was never going to get a fair shake from the media, but that doesn’t mean she has to make their job easier. As listeners to Hugh’s show know, I like her a lot, as an advocate and a person. She’s absolutely delightful in person. Do I agree with everything she says, to use the annoying form of posing assertions as questions to vary the tone of the paragraph? No. But you could see her in, say, the Perry administration as Secretary of Education. First step: abolish the department. She’d do it, too. Why, she would work tirelessly to put herself out of a job.
But to get the job first you need a certain amount of credibility, and part of that comes from playing the MSM games. It’s one thing to tell off Tingle on MSNBC; it’s another to know when not to hand them a magazine clip with your name inscribed on every bullet. She took some flak for signing a pledge about marriage which had this statement:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.
It’s true, in a certain sense, but given the prohibitions against marriage among slaves and the disruption of families, it would seem ill-advised to suggest the Old South was family-friendly for slaves. A better comparison would be segregated cities in the north, but even then you’re rooting through the dung to find a shiny coin. The plight of fatherlessness and out-of-wedlock births can stand all on its own. The architects of the pledge realized this, and removed the offending paragraph.
This just gave the story more oxygen – particularly when the Bachmann camp sent out a memo announcing the revision, and insisting that the candidate signed the 14 points, not the pledge. Was the preamble with the slavery reference tacked on after the candidates signed it? No one says so, which suggests it wasn’t, since that’s the sort of thing you’d want to note.
Lesson: don’t sign other people’s pledges. Even if the statement wasn’t in the preamble, there’s 14 other points with which the Daily Show could have great sport. Not that they need any encouraging to make fun of her: the crazy cake is baked and decorated when it comes to Bachmann, and nothing will dislodge the narrative. This isn’t fair, but it’s politics – and whoever wins the nomination will have to have a narrative that plays well with the people who don’t pay attention, but pick up the trembling emanations from the liberal chattering classes. Just as the establishment media decided that Obama was brilliant, possessed of an preternaturally serene temperament, non-ideological, post-ideological, and just damned cool to boot, that was it: any contrary evidence was shunted aside, ignored, explained away, or foisted off as a redneck plot to prevent the waters from receding.
When the left goes after a woman, they have several approaches: either turn them into icy queens with evil brains whose inability to manifest empathy in every word and gesture means they’re not really women at all. Thatcher; Jean Fitzpatrick. If they’re old – as Nancy Reagan was to the boomer class – then they’re useless relics of the Leave-It-To-Beaver era, unfit for the modern era, out of touch, and a tad pathetic. But if they’re good looking, leave it to the left to want them raped. Or at least giggle when someone suggests that it should be done, with gusto. From the Daily Caller:
The era of civility was on full display during Friday night’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
In the midst of a conversation about Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus Bachmann’s Christian counseling clinic (recently underfire for attempting to turn gays straight through prayer), comedian Marc Maron spoke about how he thinks about “angrily f*cking” the Republican presidential candidate. (h/t Ian Schwartz of RCP video)
“I don’t want to be crass, but I just hope that Marcus Bachmann takes all that, ya know, that rage that comes from repression and denial and brings it into the bedroom with her,” Maron said. “I hope he f*cks her angrily, because that’s how I would. And I’ve thought about it.”
Maron will suffer no consequences for this. Let’s go to Twitter to see how he’s being excoriated by his fellow leftiest . . .
Wow Republicans are mad about Marc Maron’s “hate sex with Bachmann” bit on Real Time? These are the “free speech” people, right?
Possibly the stupidest thing read today, if not this month. O the hypocrisy! You say you’re in favor of free speech, and you criticize someone for saying something? Ergo, you’re not for free speech. This is like saying you’re in favor of dinner, then criticizing the waiter when he brings a pile of flaming dog feces.
No finger-wagging, as far as I can tell. C’mon! It was a joke! Besides, it’s nothing compared to the hate-speech you hear on talk-radio! Don’t you remember when Rush Limbaugh called Chelsea Clinton a dog every day for six years? So let’s go to his website, and see if there’s anything amusing there. Ah, his philosophy:
“If it weren’t for the shame of the rich there would be no charity.”
Assuming, then, that charity comes only from the rich. Or “rich” is defined by someone who has enough to give to charity. Assuming that the rich give to charity not for any silly stupid reason like religious beliefs. He has another quote on the front page:
“Why not assume it is all a big lie and the soul is just a whore that we pimp out to fill our emptiness?”
Deep, man. No doubt that’s why the NYT did a profile on him earlier this year, noting with giddy approval his RAGE. He’s angry and funny! But he’s angry and funny about the right things. Glenn Beck was dangerous because he was angry and funny about the wrong things, and only encourage the wrong people to do the wrong things, but a Moran can only appeal to our better angels, and push us towards a more enlightened world where everyone’s angry about injustice and The System, Man, and if a few conservative chicks get taken behind the bleachers and Hate-bleeped for good measure, well, they were asking for it the minute they opened their stupid whore mouths.
Out of the mainstream, you say?
Marc’s next guest on his podcast will be Paul Reiser.