The Newsweek shot’s right — Michelle Bachmann’s crazy

15th August 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Tonyaa Weathersbee
Guest Columnist

So, it seems Newsweek is catching a bit of flak for splashing a photo of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann frozen in a wild-eyed gaze on its recent cover.

Conservatives have complained that it’s unflattering and intended to make her seem scary. Feminists said that it was sexist; that a man would never be made to look unstable. I say that Newsweek is only keeping it real. Because Bachmann is as scary as they come.

Yet, what’s really frightening isn’t that photo, but the fact that she’s a serious enough GOP contender to even rate being on Newsweek’s cover in the first place.

That’s what ought to make all sane people shiver.

Like most of the Tea Party people, the Minnesota Republican’s crazed moments probably kicked in on Jan. 20, 2009, after they were forced to come to grips with the reality that America had sworn in its first Black president.

Almost immediately, Bachmann and other hardcore ideologues began to fear that President Obama, whose ascent was made possible by the civil rights movement and other changes designed to make life fairer for minorities and other marginalized people, might threaten their privilege by trying to do more of the same.

So, suddenly, government became the great oppressor, not poverty or nine percent unemployment or the fact that millions of people go bankrupt each year because of medical bills. Suddenly, things like secessionism and segregated lunch counters began to be romanticized.

Such romanticizing, however, requires a bit of revisionist history. And insanity — which is what Bachmann en­gaged in recently when she signed a pledge by social conservatives in Iowa that stated “a Black 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.”

Not only is it nuts to imply that the high out-of-wedlock birth rate among Black women started after Obama became president; it’s even nuttier to sign something that claims that Black families were more stable under slavery.

If anything, life was more unstable.

Black mothers, fathers and children were property — and could be sold away from each other at any time. Masters often used the threat of selling a slave’s spouse or children to maintain power over them.

Yet, Bachmann’s ignorance of Black history and her signing off on a pledge that paints Black people as being better off during slavery isn’t the only thing about her that’s frightening. What’s really scary is that such a pledge fits in with the fanaticism and revisionism that she, if elected president, might use to usher in the reign of a Christian Taliban.

According to a recent article in The New Yorker, Bachmann attended the O.W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University – where its law review published essays that called for a pure Christian theocracy in which adulterers and homosexuals would be executed.

Bachmann herself worked for John Eidsmoe, a professor who has made speeches in front of racist groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and has asserted that states have the constitutional right to secede.

On top of that, Bachmann worked on a book with Eidsmoe in which he argues that many Christians opposed slavery, but didn’t free their slaves because “it might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances, setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible.”

How mighty white of them.

And while one may say that Bachmann only worked for Eidsmoe, she hasn’t distanced herself from him. In fact, according to the article, she says he’s had a great influence on her and that he “taught me about so many aspects of my godly heritage.”

So, the Newsweek picture of Bachmann captures her for who she is: A fanatic who would be more consumed with turning the United States into a theocracy than with turning its economy around.

The only thing scarier than her photo is the fact that she’s rising in the polls. Or that she could one day wind up posing for a cover shot in the Oval Office.

This article was originally published in the August 15, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper