If they ever make a movie about Batshit Michele Bachmann, Fran Drescher would be a good choice for the lead, but who would ever have thought that Batshit Bachmann could have played the role that made Fran Drescher famous?
From George Will (who apparently has nothing better to do or opine on) at Mercury News:
WASHINGTON — When Marcus Bachmann came home that Saturday evening in 2000 he checked the telephone answering machine and was mystified by the many messages congratulating his wife for something. “Michele,” he said, “do you have something to tell me?” She did.
The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life [he became anti-life?] and started supporting tax increases, so that morning she had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask him a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat the incumbent. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her and she handily won the subsequent primary.
After six years in the state Legislature, she ran for Congress and now, in her second term, has become such a burr under Democrats’ saddles that recently The New York Times profiled her beneath a Page One headline: “GOP Has a Lightning Rod, And Her Name Is Not Palin.” She is, however, a petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked.
Two things, George. First, that story sounds like something a legend in her own mind would make up. Second, half-cocked? Projecting, perhaps? Is that why you don’t like blue jeans? (Click on that link, dammit. It’s to a post I did on ol’ George over at the Big Orange, complete with lots of pix)
After six years in the state Legislature, she ran for Congress and now, in her second term, has become such a burr under Democrats’ saddles that recently The New York Times profiled her beneath a Page One headline: “GOP Has a Lightning Rod, And Her Name Is Not Palin.” She is, however, a petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked.
For example, appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” 18 days before last year’s election, she made the mistake of taking Chris Matthews’ bait [his bait being he asked her a question] and speculating about whether Barack Obama and some other Democrats have “anti-American” views.
…snip…
Some of her supposed excesses are, however, not merely defensible, they are admirable. For example, her June 9 statement on the House floor in which she spoke of “gangster government” has been viewed on the Internet about 2 million times. She noted that, during the federal takeover of General Motors, a Democratic senator and one of her Democratic House colleagues each successfully intervened with GM to save a constituent’s dealership from forced closure.
…snip…
Bachmann, an authentic representative of the Republican base, had quite enough on her plate before politics. She and Marcus, a clinical psychologist, were raising their children — they had four then; they have five now — and, as foster parents, were raising some other people’s children, 23 of them, a few teenagers at a time.
Born in Iowa but a Minnesotan by age 12, Bachmann acquired what she calls “her family’s Hubert Humphrey knee-jerk liberalism.” She and her husband danced at Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Shortly thereafter, however, she was riding on a train and reading Gore Vidal’s novel “Burr,” which is suffused with that author’s jaundiced view of America. “I set the book down on my lap, looked out the window and thought: That’s not the America I know.” She volunteered for Reagan in 1980.
Looking toward 2012, she is not drawn merely to Sarah Palin or other darlings of social conservatives. She certainly is one of those, but she knows that economic hardship and government elephantiasis now trump other issues.
When she was a teenager in Anoka, Minn., she was a nanny for a young girl named Gretchen Carlson. Today, Carlson, a Stanford honors graduate who studied at Oxford, is a host of “Fox & Friends,” the morning show on — wouldn’t you know — Fox News Channel. See how far ahead the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy plans?
19 Comments
October 29, 2009 at 1:27 am
OMG thats too funny!
yea, and Gretchen is a chip off the ‘ole block!
October 29, 2009 at 2:20 am
Gretchen’s parents WRONGED her, and you can see it in her work.
Good God! Wow.
(Gretch has kinda got an oompa loompa thing going in that pic. I like it.)
October 29, 2009 at 2:26 am
and her lips kinda have that blueberry gum thing going. you know, the gum that makes you swell up until you might explode.
October 29, 2009 at 2:21 am
can you believe george will has nothing else to think about? and can you believe he swallowed that story about how batshit bachmann gave a speech in her sweat pants at the caucus and wound up the nominee?
October 29, 2009 at 6:37 am
Half-cocked?!?
Nope, I’d say she’s fully cocked.
October 29, 2009 at 8:57 am
and fercocktehm too.
October 29, 2009 at 11:27 am
She figured out who she wanted to be after reading a book by Gore Vidal? Um…ok. I guess we should be thankful it wasn’t a Stephen King book. She would have killed us all.
But let there be no doubt, I would hit that.
October 30, 2009 at 12:53 am
i have no doubt whatsoever, tannerleah!
(by the way, i think she was reading one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, and she decided to roost. )
October 29, 2009 at 11:28 am
Are you sure this wouldn’t be called “The Ninny Diaries” if Bachmann’s involved?
October 30, 2009 at 12:54 am
i actually did change the title to ninny, but then i thought better of it, since the story was about her being a nanny. i’m saving ‘ninny’ for another cover.
October 29, 2009 at 11:31 am
I forgot to comment on the text.
“Two things, George. First, that story sounds like something a legend in her own mind would make up.”
Remember, you *are* dealing with George Will. He is definitely a legend in *his* own mind.
October 30, 2009 at 12:55 am
very true. when a legend in his own mind writes about a legend in her own mind, the result is going to be less than legendary.
October 29, 2009 at 6:58 pm
The Cinderella fairy tale about Bachmann arriving at the endorsing convention in jeans and sweatshirt only to go home the nominee, was, indeed, made up by Bachmann. In fact, Gary Laidig, the state senator from whom she took the endorsement, says it’s “absolute bullshit.” Read that and lots more about Bachmann in this piece:
http://www.citypages.com/content/printVersion/17190
October 30, 2009 at 1:32 am
hello karl,
welcome to the raisin!
i knew that story sounded like a bunch of crap. thanks so much for that link. very interesting read.
November 1, 2009 at 3:19 am
This is her freedom agenda?
“At the end of the day, her politics are like this: Everyone will have a gun, nobody will have an abortion, no one will pay taxes, everyone will go to church, and there won’t be any more pinko liberal teachers in school.”
October 29, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Where’s a friggin’ bolt of electricity when you need one… I’d hit those foil hats alright… just too cute nonnie! that little grinchin’ carlson and her brother tucker should be dropped in in a giant vat of sugar water and swallowed alive by the selfish soda bitch.
October 30, 2009 at 1:35 am
let’s all do a rain dance! maybe we’ll be lucky, and they’ll both be vaporized.
November 1, 2009 at 3:18 am
It would appear that Gore Vidal has more to answer for than previously thought.
November 2, 2009 at 5:50 am
Holy fucking hell! You couldn’t make up this stuff.