George George Will has a crush:
The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.
If I were George WIll, I probably wouldn’t use the phrase “petite pistol” in a column like this.
jeffreyw
hello? is this thing on?
jeffreyw
seems to be workin, tried to link to this for the general last thread, it didn’t work
MTmofo
You’re closing sentence needs a little work.
The Dangerman
The phrase “half-cocked” in the column explains quite a lot, however.
Soylent Green
What’s more apropos than drunk blogging on Will’s drunk columnizing?
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
LOL, thanks for that. I used to do forest research and we had to wear hardhats and all day long. Hummers would be buzzing our heads thinking they’d found a big yellow flower.
Ash Can
Maybe George is having a mid-life crisis.
asiangrrlMN
I will repeat from the last thread, fuck George Will up the ass with his bow tie (h/t Steeplejack).
asiangrrlMN
And, the title should read, Minnesota (North) Star (bursts).
Phoenix Woman
There’s nothing wrong with George Will that time and partially hydrogenated soybean oil can’t cure.
General Winfield Stuck
His Bow Tie is horny.
Yutsano
@General Winfield Stuck: Or his farfalle is just too damn tight.
@asiangrrlMN: Heh. Not much for hockey huh dearheart? BTW did you see Sydney flirting with BoB AGAIN? I think we need to turn him in.
maya
So George thinks Michelle is a PILF ?
Elizabelle
I wish she’d washed her hair instead.
Will: “She is, however, a petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked. [ed note: occasionally??]
For example, appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” 18 days before last year’s election, she made the mistake of taking Chris Matthews’s bait and speculating about whether Barack Obama and some other Democrats have “anti-American” views. In the ensuing uproar — fueled by people who were not comparably scandalized when George W. Bush was sulfurously vilified — her opponent raised nearly $2 million and her lead shrank from 13 points to her winning margin of three.”
This makes no sense to me. Why add the GWBush being “sulfurously villified”? Bachmann’s speculating on anti-American views by the Democratic nominee and fellow congressmembers was ugly, purely ugly.
GWBush was villified for many reasons, many of them true. You can easily be aghast at Bachmann and at Bush.
I believe his successor won a Nobel prize within months of entering office, because the Nobel committee was so relieved at America’s change of direction.
Seriously, who is Will paying back with this column?
gbear
…and rode to the caucus meeting on the back of a groovy little motorbike (not a big motorcycle).
Reading that quote from Will, I can imagine just how nauseating that caucus meeting must have been for the less-disgruntled in attendance.
Brian J
I love how any time one of these nutcases makes a ridiculous, offensive statement impugning the character and/or patriotism of a Democrat, it’s because they are supposedly tricked into it. The party of personal responsibility just can’t admit that they sometimes fuck up on cable news.
Anyway, in what is a pretty pointless goddamn column, Will described two bits I hadn’t known before:
1.
Say what you want about how nutty she is and how vile her comments can be, but anybody who is a foster parent for that many kids deserves some respect.
2.
Now that’s interesting. Her family was high up enough to go to the inauguration in 1976 but then she became a pretty right-wing Republican? Lots of people switch affiliations after their beliefs change, and while this could no doubt be no different than countless other “I didn’t leave the Democrats, they left me”-style stories, it seems like Will dropped the ball here in a big, big way. Michelle Fucking Bachmann used to be a Democrat, or at least independent enough to support one? Um, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to hear more about this.
gbear
@Ash Can:
I hope it’s a 9/10ths life crisis.
TenguPhule
My god, have you no shame? Think about the damage to a perfectly innocent bow tie!
TenguPhule
How many of them did her and her spouse molest?
TenguPhule
All Republican pricks look the same in the dark.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: We are the North Star state. I want him to address us properly. NORTH STAR before that asshole, Norm Green…but no, I cannot speak of it. It is still too fresh, too raw.
Yes, my FH#1 and I have had many arguments over his ‘soft spot’ for BoB. I tell you, it has landed him in the proverbial doghouse, right next to Pedro, more than once. Next thing you know, TattooSydney will fake-cheat on me with BoB, and I will have to fake-punch him in the neck.
YOU don’t have a similar soft spot for BoB, do you? That would be just too too much.
calling all toasters
She’s just lucky Michael Gass wasn’t there to speak “on seriousness,” or he would have won.
asiangrrlMN
@TenguPhule:
No. None at all.
Comrade Kevin
@TenguPhule:
Why do some people think comments like that are funny, or appropriate in any way? That statement is vile, almost like you’re hoping it’s true.
Elizabelle
Here’s the WaPost Will column with link to its readers’ comments.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303193.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Someone on BJ speculated recently that Fred Hiatt (WaPost editorial page editor) might have upped the crazy on his editorial page to drive eyeballs to the site.
That’s not a “Hiatt made him do it” defense of Will.
But there aren’t adults over there, any more.
Spot
Michele Bachmann used to be ours but we decided to share.
Omnes Omnibus
@calling all toasters: So you think Gass can email better credenzas to Cole than Bachmann?
Elizabelle
And let’s not forget Bachmann’s other youthful brush with (future) greatness, per Mr. Will:
“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?”
More detail, and throwing in Carlson’s educational bona fides too.
Methinks this is partly a Will defense of Fox against the merciless White House.
Brian J: Yeah, I noticed about the foster children, and that is admirable. Tom and Christine Delay are also serious advocates of fostering children. That is admirable.
However, Mr. Delay and Mrs. Bachmann remain deplorable public figures, no matter how many they shelter in their homes.
Brian J
Well said.
I don’t think very highly of this woman at all, but that seemed like TenguPhule was crossing a line. There’s so much to criticize her for that I think it’s pretty unnecessary, to say the least, to make something up like that, even if it was clearly a joke.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: YOU don’t have a similar soft spot for BoB, do you? That would be just too too much.
Hmm…how do I put this…HELL TO THE NO!! In fact I suggested the other night he should take a loooong shower after his last obsession round. Amazingly enough even HE agreed he went too far.
gbear
@Spot:
Darn tootin’. Getting her out of the MN legislature was such a relief. She was able to do real damage to Minnesotans (mostly gay and poor Minnesotans) when she was local. We all celebrated when she went to DC. Too bad Pawlenty didn’t go the same route. We’d be so less fucked over now.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: When he was trying to turn BOB to teh ghey? Yeah. Ew. No. You guys don’t want him, but neither do we.
@gbear: Oh, hell no. I do not want Pawlenty to be prez. NO!
jl
Good Lord, is this part of the column true?
“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. ”
Now Gore Vidal is a great writer, but some of his political views and historical analysis is just a tad, shall we say, speculative and questionable (in plain English: nuts).
So a kook got her reactionary nutcase views from Gore Vidal’s rather odd take on US history? Whah?
But some simple minded ideologues are like that. They ping and pong from one political viewpoint to another for the strangest reasons.
Neocons, I have read, trace their heritage to simple minded fanatical Trotskyites who were sadly disillusioned by the course of Soviet Communisim. (Though I wonder if that story can be true. The communists who disillusioned the Trotsyites-turned-Neocons were the same communists who arranged for a hatchet to be buried in an exiled Trotsky’s head, right?)
Anyway, more bald hackery from our own native born conservative faux English squire humbug.
DougJ
“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. ”
Good catch!
I find it odd that she would be surprised that a novel about the late 18th/early 19th century wouldn’t be that much like American of the 1970s.
gbear
One of the kids must have turned out alright. He signed up for the AmeriCorps program. He did it at the same time that Bachmann was saying that the organization was a re-education camp to brainwash youth to serve Obama.
gbear
@asiangrrlMN: No! I don’t want him as prez either, but 7 years ago he was making a run for senate until Dick Cheney called him up and told him to forget about it because the Bushies wanted Coleman instead. He was pissed about that call, but still stayed a good boot-licking conservative.
jl
I don’t see any conflict between a deluded person’s deluded political views and the fact that they might do and believe some decent and very good things in their personal lives.
If Bachmann is doing good things personally with foster care, that is good and I give her credit.
Some people in my family are classical social engineering liberals (they love humanity, but they just don’t like individuals very much). Sour sour folks when you have to live day to day with them. But they are always doing good things at the local homeless shelter and rest homes. Well, so what? No one is perfect and no one is completely evil. That is basic common sense.
But when she says 1+1= 3, well, need to correct her. And if it is true she totally changed her political views because of some weird political imaginings of Gore Vidal partly whipped up for a good read, you have to question her judgment.
I totally opposed Bush II and he radicalized me from near glibertarian Democratic Leadership Conference (anyone remember that dismal crew?) new-liberalism, and I sprung into what the networks would call extreme-left political activity. But I never personally hated the dude. In fact, I thought he was relatively well-intentioned, but also very much over his head, gullible, ignorant and foolish. But in many ways, had much better attitdue than most of the new GOPers (and I think what we have seen recently gives credence to my opinion).
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: Yes. I remember that. I would have supported that. Damn it.
@jl: I disagree about W. He was not well-intentioned at all.
Steeplejack
Just read Will’s column all the way through. Ugh. That is some serious suck. And almost completely content-free. Or little niblets hanging in space, unconnected to anything else.
WTF?!
1. Read and dislike Burr.
2. ?
3. Vote for Reagan!
Or this:
What does that even mean?
Yutsano
@gbear: @asiangrrlMN: Wasn’t he still basically running against Wellstone? Coleman was put up to be a sacrificial lamb more than anything until Wellstone’s tragic crash. In other words Coleman was much more the political tool than Pawlenty who they actually saw a future for.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: You could be right. I wasn’t in MN at the time, and I didn’t follow politics closely at all. I just know that I fucking hate Norm Coleman and Ratface Pawlenty.
The Moar You Know
Nope. Not buying it. I had a teacher back in the day who was not just a foster parent, but had straight-up adopted 25 or so kids. Wonderful, right?
Not so much.
She was what we refer to today as a raving wingnut fundie, but back then there wasn’t really a term for people like her. She was intensely Catholic with a self-aggrandizing martyr complex and one of the nastiest and meanest people I’ve ever met in my life. She regarded her state-awarded charges as being cannon fodder for Jesus (looking back on it, I’m sure she adopted rather than fostered simply to insure that there would be as little state interference as possible) and regardless of their religion of origin, she made damn sure that they were good soldiers for the Pope by the time they managed to flee her clutches. She never tired of telling us how hard she worked, how much she had sacrificed, and how much good she had done – and how, by way of comparison, we students were all shiftless, Godless, and lazy.
I’ll never trust anyone who adopts or fosters that many kids. They may be laboring under a sincere belief that they are doing something good in the world, but anyone who is trying to raise that many kids is either doing it because they have serious emotional issues or have figured out a way to game the system for financial gain. It’s not being done for the benefit of the child. A kid with ten or twenty siblings has no effective relationship with a parent at all – the parent simply doesn’t have time.
kommrade reproductive vigor
You realize of course that if Bachmann decides to run for prez. as a result of this column we’ll all have to take a shot of Binaca and kiss Will right on the lips.
jl
@asiangrrlMN: Well, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with the good intentions of people like Dub. I do not hate the guy personally, but in terms of public policy and public debate, I have no doubt that I will be grouped with the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd.
jl
@The Moar You Know: Well, sure, if Bachmann is a lousy foster parent, that would be different. Anyone got evidence along that line, I will listen.
Just like my sour liberal family members. If they went to the honeless shelter rest home and made everyone miserable with sour lectures instead of playing cards with them and taking requests for tunes on the piano, I would give them no credit there either.
But, one of them does play autoharp, which I think is sketchy way to entertain a captive audience.
Brian J
In an odd way, that might describe be, at least some day.
I don’t think it was so much the political leanings of the DLC that turned people against them as it was its members inability to stand up to the Republicans. Or maybe that’s just me.
As for Bush, I don’t think he was trying to hurt America. I don’t even think Cheney or anyone else on his level was trying to do that. The problem with Bush is that he was incurious and provincial in his thinking, which led him to fuck up in a number of ways. The problem with people like Cheney is that their mentality about what was right was, according to a lot of people (and not just those on the left), completely at odds with what most would consider normal.
jl
@Brian J: With Cheney, some of Cheney’s crew, Yoo, and others. I am willing to go there. Bad people. Psychologically damaged, sick soules, or evil, or something or other pertty bad.
But I do not think any of our personal evaluations of their personal motivations or the conduct of their personal lives or their personalalities or intentions is relevent for debates on the issues. In terms of the damage they did, they are not excused, in my book. Their personal lives are just not that relevant.
Neither am I excused, which is why I changed some of my views, and got politically active again. If there is a greater power, it will sort it all out someday.
Brian J
Isn’t it possible that her home was just a temporary stop (and not in a bad way) for some of those kids? It would seem as if that had to be the case, since it’s not realistic to have that many kids at once. And while that doesn’t really rule out the scenario of indoctrination, there’s not that much supporting it, either.
I guess I try to err on the side of caution with this stuff, even for a crazy bitch like Michele Bachmann.
Brian J
@jl:
I’m not saying that we should look past what harm they did. I’m simply saying that, despite how badly they fucked up, I don’t think their intentions were to cause the country trouble. I don’t think they were just short of being domestic terrorists. It’s something to keep in mind, even for those who, like me, would like to push Cheney, et al down a flight of stairs.
ruemara
@The Moar You Know:
this.
She may not have been as mean as the people I knew, but even with my farked up family, I felt terribly sad for the pain my friends in foster went through. It was like living on eggshells and pins. and razorblades. sometimes grenades.
You don’t have to be completely screwed up by your parents to be rather screwed, you know?
Polish the Guillotines
This captures the essence of George Will better than anything.
What a knob.
Mike G
After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.
Repigs are as gullible and simple-minded as Christians (yes, I know there’s a lot of overlap).
Mouth a few vapid pieties about “freedom”, “tax cuts” and “pro-life” along with some flirting for the pervert ugly middle aged Repig men, and they’ll follow you anywhere.
Uloborus
On the foster thing… Eef. I’ve known foster parents who were compulsive givers, more generous than I can understand in a human. I haven’t actually known many foster parents personally, so the nightmare tales of the bad ones come from friends and family who’ve worked in social service situations and cleaned up the damage.
The point I’d like to assert is that fostering tells us NOTHING about Bachmann. She could have any motivation under the sun. She could be a controller who needs more helpless victims. She could be a giving person who just has crazy ideals. She could be powerfully well intentioned and destroy every life she gets her hands on. She could be a thousand other things.
I don’t like saying fostering is a good or bad trait in her. It’s a generally noble idea often twisted in practice. It just can’t be understood as a generality, only if we saw her actual relationships.
Yutsano
@Uloborus: It also makes a difference if she is only short-term care vs. long-term. With that high number of kids I’m guessing she does more of the short-term assignments. So she may not bond with them long enough to do much beyond start a possible indoctrination process. Also it’s my guess she probably isn’t doing this now since most social service agencies require the parents to be nearby as much as possible.
Wile E. Quixote
Have you ever noticed how much conservatives project? If you have then think about what George Will is really referring to with the phrases “petite pistol” and “going off half-cocked”. I don’t know if there’s anything that can help George’s “petite pistol” but there is medication to treat that “going off half-cocked” problem.
Quiddity
For George Will, “some” = “one”
George Will pens a positive column about Michele Bachmann. But upon closer inspection, there’s not much substance. Will gives a quick background of her political start, then writes:
What are “some” of those admirable actions? Will cites only one, Bachmann’s floor speech in the House complaining about Democratic legislators working to save one GM dealership from forced closure, which she characterized as “gangster government”.
That’s it. The remainder of the column is a mixed bag of Minnesota electoral results, Bachmann’s family, and other trivia.
What an empty column. Will probably could have found a couple more instances where Bachmann comes off as a sensible conservative, even though she’s basically loony. But he clearly thinks that he, The Grand Exalted George Will, has enough cred to give a boost to Bachmann’s political future.
arguingwithsignposts
lead a horse to water and all that. Doesn’t Yoo teach at Berkeley? Carlson is idiotic at best, and should be ashamed to be on the same stage as Kilmeade and the other bozo if she had half a brain left.
Robin G.
I’m pretty sure the Gore Vidal thing is PR bullshit. What I’d heard from the political types around here is that Bachmann hopped fully aboard the Crazy Train when her sister came out. The woman hates her some gays, she does.
Napoleon
Will’s column reminds me of this piece on David Brooks which could easily apply to Will when he turns out columns like this.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0406.confessore.html
@jl:
That can more or less describe me. I was a big believer of the DLC way during the Clinton years (I think at heart in many ways I am pretty conservative) but no more.
@Elizabelle:
BFD, an ex-girl friend of mine babysat Howard Stern’s wife when she was growing up in Pittsburgh.
@Brian J:
That is definately a problem but more of a party wide problem.
Svensker
@Mike G:
Kind of a broad brush there, doncha think?
RSA
Warning to future aspiring Republican candidates: Disguising yourself as a dirty fucking hippie is generally not a good strategy for gaining a nomination.
Paul
I’ve only been in MN a few years, so I thank people like @asiangrrlMN and @gbear for helping educate me on the history of my crazy Congresswoman!
Even my rock-ribbed conservative friend who also lives in the district could not bring himself to vote for Bachmann in the last election.
RAM
Oh my…
Georgie and Michelle sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
What is it with these conservative guys and idiotic women who wear heels? I think I’ll go take a shower now…
dr. bloor
Mrs. Smith and Wesson goes to Washington.
Bill H
Elephantiasis is “a vivid and accurate term for the syndrome it describes: the gross (visible) enlargement of the arms, legs, or genitals to elephantoid size,” so that does not paint a pretty picture.
kth
The part the profile seems to leave out is when and how she became born-again (safe to assume, since acc. to the article she didn’t grow up in a religious conservative household).
Whatever cult got to her in her college days seems a more likely explanation of her conservatism than “due to Gore Vidal’s corrosive satire, I support repealing the New Deal”. Or better yet, “due to Gore Vidal’s corrosive satire, I metamorphed into a character in one of Gore Vidal’s satires”.
Jason
Meh. More linkbait from the post. It’s essentially a blog now; BJ should start poaching advertisers.
bago
@asiangrrlMN: Brilliant. You’re ready to hit up burning man. I highly reccomend the experience.
Todd Dugdale
It’s always amazing to me how so much continues to be read into Bachmann’s narrow victory in an utterly gerrymandered district. She could never get elected to state-wide office here in MN. What irritates me is that, if she loses next year, nothing will be read into that.
This is another example of how “riling up the libs” is mistaken as legitimate discourse. Certainly Sen. Franken “riles up the cons”, but I doubt that we will see a Will column fawning over him – and Franken has a much larger constituency than Bachmann.
Chuck Butcher
I try to view policy and ideology separate from personal life. I know some very conservative people whose personal behavior would seem to preclude their ideology and does not. Without going into too much detail about somebody who isn’t present for this, I have known for over 20yrs a man whose conservative ideology viewed through my lense could only be described as selfish and yet in business and friendships he is straight forward and generous.
I don’t really see how Bachman’s statements could be taken as anything other than ignorant and very nearly (or all the way) crazy and how she personally would not be that person. But then, I don’t know her personally and if given the opportunity would avoid it.
LD50
Clearly George ain’t getting any of that good stuff at home. It must be the bow tie.
licensed to kill time
In a sane world Michelle Bachmann would be laughed out of politics. George Will needs to loosen his bow tie, it’s cutting off the circulation to his brain.
Mike in NC
This is a standard ploy on Will’s part. He’s profiled numerous right-wingers and made them all sound like the second coming of Christ. Last year I recall he did a piece on the inevitablity of Mike Huckabee winning the GOP nomination, uh, because he loved Jesus and had lost a lot of weight. Such a dickhead.
inkadu
@The Moar You Know: @Uloborus:
Uloborus — You’re really putting the “bore” in “Uloborus.”
I’ve worked with foster parents for a living. Most of them were doing it for the money (or that is to say that money was a necessary condition for their fostering). A lot of them were decent enough people to do a good job. Some of them were just horrible people; but foster care agencies get paid to provide parents ( a rare commodity) so standards are not particularly high.
And some foster homes are just glorified half-way houses, taking in kids for short periods… that might be what Bachman was doing. That’s not so bad, but really depressing when you realize the difference between a hotel that looks like a house and a real home.
All good foster parents are chased out of the system early — either by bad experiences with the kids themselves or with the system. The very best ones end up adopting their charges rather early and are then off the market.
It sucks. But finally it can be told.
inkadu
@Uloborus: I was joking about you being boring for your even-handed and perfectly reasonable comments.
inkadu
@Chuck Butcher: I take little comfort in the distinction between personal values and politics. The world is full of loving parents who would gladly commit genocide, and even more loving parents who would gladly vote for other people to commit genocide. The monsters in the world don’t just look human, they are human.
Hitler would have voted for Bitsy since he loved dogs. But he would also have fed Bitsy jew meat. There is no one without some love in their hearts.
brantl
I think we can now add “petite pistol” into the lexicon, now, as a synonym for “giant douchebag who’s batshit-crazy-on-steroids”. George’s use of it pretty much did it for me.