Until recently, I resisted the temptation to write a profile of Michele Bachmann, this year’s Republican contender for Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District. That temptation was a seductive one, as she is an arch-conservative State Senator who stands for the most sickening strains of the Republican Party’s platform - values, in fact, more appropo to the Bible Belt of the Slovenly South than the Welcoming Waistline of the Meaty Midwest. Therefore, she was a perfect case study of reactionary slime for me to ... well, slime. Still, I and other sensible Gopher Staters who became aware of her candidacy in the early days of the Congressional primaries pretty much figured this woman, whose career in public life has been dedicated to just about every backward, greedy policy of the religious and corporate right, would quickly dry up and blow away, allowing her more moderate competitors to take the Republican torch. And, frankly, I did not want to risk increasing Michele Bachmann’s exposure by dignifying her with a write-up, even a negative one.
But, on primary day September 12, this Patron Saint of Obstructionism not only won the nomination, but, as of this writing, is holding a comfortable lead over her highly admired and far-from-flaming-liberal Democratic rival, Patty Wetterling. Since it now appears that an increasing number of suburbs and townships of this state - once a border-to-border haven of progressivism - have now been flooded by the isolationist downpours of George W. Bush, Dr. James Dobson and their tempestuous stock, it seems essential for this Weather Fanatic At Large to send out some warning signals about the impending Hurricane I call Michele. These radar waves are meant not just for voters residing in her path, but for anyone else who cares about the currently endangered terrain known as American Democracy.
Whether you live inside or outside the ring of communities currently at stake, you can probably guess what issue helped get the 48-year-old Anoka native the nomination and her current lead: The Preservation of Marriage, or, more accurately, Preventing Pillow Biters From Fisting Each Other on Legally Sanctioned Marriage Beds. She made headlines during the first of her two terms on the State Senate when, following Massachusetts’ legalization of gay marriage in 2004, she exhorted that “little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and perhaps they should try it.” She capped off this Passolini-inspired scenario with a call for concerned parents - and their potentially fist-curious children - to attend a “prayer rally” in front of the State Capital in order to scare off any of those predatory “activist judges” George W. warned us about from thwarting her efforts to add a gay marriage ban to the state Constitution.
Bachmann obsession with Nelly Nuptials stems from her longtime involvement with Olive Tree Ministries, a Maple Grove, Minnesota-based organization that focuses on the three main themes of fundamentalist ministries: The Return to Israel, The Approach of End Times and The Curbing of Those Who Walk on the Wild Side. Though Bachmann insists she not has no affiliation with - or ever even heard of - Olive Tree before reporters mentioned the name, the ministry’s web site contains a testimonial from the Good Sister, and Bachmann appeared on a radio show hosted by their founder, Jan Markell. It was on this program that she professed, “Gay marriage is a very real threat to the states. We need people to be in prayer so that we can get it voted on in the Senate floor.” The marriage bill, in the end, never did get a hearing on the floor, but O.T. founder and show host Markell was so impressed by her guest that she called for listeners and followers to “pray for Michele” as she strove to save their children from possible adoptions by drooling gay marrieds.
Bachmann doublespeak about her joining the conga lines of evangelicals has a precedent in her run for the first Senate term, when, in her official campaign biography, she claimed to have had experience as a tax litigation attorney. When curious media watchdogs could find no record of her having been that or any other kind of attorney, Bachmann backtracked by saying that she worked in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, representing the IRS against people who failed to pay all or part of their taxes. More to the point at hand, though she never practiced as a lawyer, she did have a degree in law - from Oral Roberts University, no less. This brings up one of those interesting conundrums hard-liners like Michele always must inevitably grapple with: how an avowed opponent of the primary sexual process of most gays and lesbians could be comfortable being accredited to a University founded by ... oh, you know the rest!
When you think about it, Bachmann cover-up of her ties to fundamentalists appears to have been unnecessary, in light of her having gotten the nod in the state Senate twice, and in light of this once sky-blue state’s having turned sickly-purple thanks to the blood-red sores that have festered across her slab of district beef. Indeed, during her time in the Senate, she set a record that would melt the hearts of two-bit Pat Robertsons and Rush Limbaughs everywhere. For one, she called for the elimination of the minimum wage, saying that it would quickly result in “universal employment.” She also contributed to bills that would make English the official language and make proof of citizenship a requirement for voting. Abortion, of course, was an issue she rang innumerable bells for, calling for the cessation of funding to clinics that perform the procedure. To mark her own stamp on this issue, and hewing to the tradition of pro-lifers wallowing in enough elements of the birth process to fill several entries in the Freddy Krueger series, she suggested the granting of legitimate birth rights to babies who are born dead!
Dead tots have been a staple of Michele’s political diet ever since the beginning of her career in activism. She was an unusually noisy and publicity-savvy participant in abortion protests outside of clinics in the early 1990’s, throwing herself in front of every TV news camera and newspaper reporter she could find to make her lust for life known to the world. During such a demonstration outside the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center, Bachmann was quoted by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press as declaring, “I feel, in effect, I have been a landlord of an abortion clinic, and I don’t like that distinction.” Though she didn’t cotton to this imagined charge of hotelier to baby killers, she warmed to the distinction that came with political office, kicking off her political career by running for the Stillwater School Board in 1999. What was interesting about her decision to run as an authority of what was good for public educational institutions was that her children - the five that she gave birth to, and the 23 (!) she claimed to have taken into her home as foster tots - were, for the most part, home-schooled (and, considering the number of occupants in it, that home must be the size of the average grade school). Nonetheless, Michele ran on a campaign seeking greater religious curriculum in the New Heights Charter School and the teaching of creationism in the Stillwater system in general.
Though she did not, in the end, gain the Board seat, her bold-faced religiosity did win her favor among enough creationist cretins to help her nab her State Senate spot the following year. Those same cretins, of course, also helped her win her nomination to the House of Representatives, not to mention that lead over poor Patty Wetterling. The fact that a moderate like Wetterling, a math teacher and activist who is the mother of Jacob Wetterling, whose still-unsolved disappearance in 1989 inspired the nationally renowned missing children’s fund that takes his name, is struggling against a woman like Michele Bachmann is a slap in the face not only to Minnesotans but the country as a whole. After all, Bachmann, should she be elected, hopes to reinvigorate Bush’s moribund plan to privatize social security, as well as continue his nation-gouging tax cuts for the wealthy and pursuit of the elimination of the estate tax. National security will also be a horn she will blow (there’s that conundrum, again), with calls for “staying the course” in Iraq, going after those “cut-and-runners” who dare criticize the Administration’s handling of the war and a consideration of a “nuclear response” to Iran. This, on top of her continuing crusade to flood the country, and the world, with Christianity, control what women can do with their bodies, and stop those marriage-minded fisters from conducting honeymoon workshops for our children.
Hurricane Michele, once thought of by myself and others as just a mere sprinkle of extremism, to be taken no more seriously than Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps, is now clearly a force to fear. She stands as yet another embarrassing - and frighteningly powerful - representative of the stranglehold of this country by the religious right. Through their voting and support for George W. Bush and his League of Extraordinary Incompetents, the Jesus-and-sex-obsessed populace that this woman represents have helped lead the U.S. into the quagmire of the Iraq conflict, the economic collapse of the United States, and this country’s current bottom-barrel standing in the international community. It really is no laughing matter, despite being a tasty source of late-night comedy disquisition, that the United States is the only Western nation - besides Turkey (!) - where the majority of its citizens reject evolution as the source of the earth’s development (if we evolutionists are as small in number as the recent survey by Jon Miller suggests, perhaps we are just a “cult”, as Mother Michele labeled us).
It is bad enough we have televangelist clowns like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Dr. James dribbling over our airwaves, and worms like Ralph Reed and Lou Sheldon snaking through Washington and plotting casino scams and other schemes with lizard-like lobbyists. But we certainly don’t need to go out of our way to vote into office supposed public servants cut from the same cloth. So, Sensible Gophers, if you live in the heavenly pastures of Stillwater, Saint Cloud, Anoka or any of the other 6th District cities, and if you care about educational, economic, marital and, yes, religious freedom, vote for Patty Wetterling, or one of one of the other balloted candidates running against Michele Bachmann. And to those of you who live outside of this state, or even this country (especially if you reside in Turkey), tell everyone to do what they can to stop the approaching calamity of Hurricane Michele and other Congressional and Senate storm fronts like her throughout the nation. Believe me, they’re going to make broken levies, flooded cities and inept FEMA heads look like so many piles of slime.
