Michele Bachmann,
Minnesota Congressional Representative and 2012 GOP Presidential
hopeful, was born on April 6, 1956, in Waterloo, Iowa.. She was born to
Democratic parents and moved to Minnesota when she was still quite
young. After graduating high school, Bachmann worked on a kibbutz in
Israel, and eventually attended law school. She worked for the IRS until
1993, when she quit to become a full-time mother. She has raised five
children with her husband, Marcus.
When she was still in
college, Bachmann underwent a small political crisis and realized that
she was not, in fact, a liberal like her parents, but rather a
conservative. Very conservative. Soon afterwards, Bachmann and her
husband became “sidewalk counselors” outside of abortion clinics, urging
young mothers to keep their children. She worked on Ronald Reagan’s
election campaign. In 1993, she helped form a charter school in
Stillwater, Minnesota, and spoke out strongly against the controversial
Minnesota state school standards. Her outspokenness helped launch her
career in politics.
She secured an office
in the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2000 and shortly thereafter
began campaigning on numerous conservative platforms. She twice proposed
amendments to the state constitution barring same-sex marriage, but was
never successful. In 2007, she began serving as the Representative for
Minnesota’s sixth district. She was for the Iraq War troop surge and
against the 2007 higher education finance bill.
One amusing example of
Bachmann’s particular brand of under-informed vitriol was the “Light
Bulb Freedom of Choice Act,” which she proposed in response to the
government’s environmentally sound ban of outdated, wasteful
incandescent bulbs. Bachmann claimed that “Fluorescent bulbs are more
polluting because of their mercury content.” She failed to take into
consideration the fact that, since fluorescent bulbs require so much
less energy to use and last much, much longer, the reduction in
greenhouse gasses and coal consumption vastly outweigh the potential
damage caused by the miniscule amounts of mercury present.
Bachmann is known for
her passionate overstatements on matters of policy, including suggesting
that Minnesotans should be “armed and dangerous on this issue of energy
tax because we need to fight back.” She later clarified that her remarks
were metaphorical. She also urged her supporters to slit their wrists
and become blood brothers to oppose Democratic health care reform –
again, of course, metaphorically.
Bachmann has also drawn
fire as a leading figure of the Tea Party, the reactionary
antiestablishment spinoff of the GOP. She is expected to make a bid for
the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, powered by her
enthusiastic supporters and riding on the national media attention
garnered by her tendency to say somewhat outrageous things.
To celebrate
Representative Bachmann’s special day, we look for inspiration to
another of her somewhat under-informed pontification. In her 2011 speech
in Iowa, Bachmann discussed the scourge of slavery on American history,
but there were a few elementary errors in her timeline. By “elementary,”
we mean errors that could have been easily fixed by thumbing through an
elementary school history textbook. Bachmann claimed that “the very
founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was
no more in the United States ... I think it is high time that we
recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly – men
like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was
extinguished in the country.” While it is true that John Quincy Adams
was strongly anti-slavery, he was not exactly a founding father – he was
nine when the Declaration of Independence was penned. She might have JQ
Adams confused with the similarly named John Adams, an actual founding
father and opponent of abolitionist legislature. To gently alert
Bachmann to her misstatement, we recommend preparing John Quincy Adam’s
wife’s famous Chicken Croquettes every year on
Michele's birthday and sending one to
her to associate the taste of chicken and ham with the right Adams since
she can't keep her presidents straight. For a conservative birthday
treat, watch her in Fire From the
Heartland (2010).