“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,”
-Michelle Bachmann on Fox News-
John Wayne, I never really liked him; not as an actor and particularly not as something he attempted to portray off the stage: a patriot. No, the only uniform he ever wore came from the costume department at Republic Studios, the folks who got him his 2A draft status during WW II because it would have meant lost profits had he followed so many actors into the military.
But of course by the time the Vietnam war became a tragi-comic opera, he was a Hollywood soldier of long standing, fond of telling many of us we weren't real Americans because we didn't quite see the glory of the whole thing.
So leave it to Michelle Bachmann to claim she's channeling his "spirit" -- whatever that might be. Whether that consists of telling us we're not real Americans because we dare to measure the age of things or don't accept the Biblical nonsense about the "waters" above and below the Earth I don't know, but there are few things that amuse me more than the trolls, public and private, who present their limitations and disabilities and delusions as their strength. Haven't we all had people tell us ungrammatically how stupid we are and spell stupid wrong? Petty irony it is indeed, but then such little moments of irony may provide the most satisfaction one can expect in our kind of times. It costs too much to care any more.
So should we laugh at Michelle for confusing Winterset, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne (nee Marion Morrison) with Waterloo, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne Gacy who strangled little boys and buried them in his crawl space? The entire pandemonium of journalists, bloggers and blowhards has been going at it since yesterday morning. Go ahead and join in, but I'm beyond laughter or tears for that matter. When it comes to giving a shit, I don't. I'm all out of givadamn and I'm not shopping for more. As I said, it just costs too much these days.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteOne annoying development in the Michele Bachmann saga is the growing number of pundits (even some liberal ones) who keep falling all over themselves informing us just how "serious" this person is and how professional her campaign is, etc.
I'll accept the notion that perhaps unlike Sister Sarah, MB really wants to become president and thinks she has a chance of winning. She may have at least a loyal base of followers who don't think she's just telling them what they want to hear. But that's setting the bar pretty low, isn't it?
The GOP candidates are for the most part a pathetic bunch this time around -- Romney seems to me the only one who would have any chance of winning the general election because he goes out of his way to be unobjectionable to people who can't be troubled to pay attention. If the Tea-Folk don't run him out of town on a rail for making sense on occasion, I think he'll be the nominee. As for generating enthusiasm on the right, that's altogether another matter.
Things were looking kind of "up hill" for Obama in 2012, then Bachmann entered the race. She can see Washington from her back porch.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite self-servingly egotistical to think people should vote for you based on the fact aka "lie", that a movie star was born in your home town.
ReplyDeleteI hope she gets the nomination. - Charlene
I'm all out of givadamn and I'm not shopping for more.
ReplyDeleteAyyyyyymen to that. Good lord, there's so much else to get outraged about. I'm in overload.
Which may be feature, not bug ...
Over at Crooks & Liars, there's an interesting bit of history, culled from a book by Glenn Greenwald.
ReplyDelete...one of the earliest pioneers of this manipulative right-wing marketing was John Wayne. Wayne was a draft dodger during World War II, staying home in Hollywood, getting rich by playacting as a war hero in one film after the next while his acting peers were off fighting in combat. Wayne then spent the rest of his life preening around as a swaggering, uber-patriotic tough guy—cheering for one war after another and viciously castigating war opponents as cowards and subversives.
With the enormous gap between his self-righteous moralizing rhetoric and the way he actually lived his life, John Wayne proved himself to be one of the first right-wing Great American Hypocrites. He tirelessly crusaded for wholesome American morals and publicly condemned any perceived deviations. Yet Wayne's personal life was a never-ending carousel of adultery, divorces, new wives, shattered families, pills, booze, and unrestrained hedonism.
He was a vocal supporter of McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, and a member of the John Birch Society.
In 1971, in a Playboy interview, he said "With a lot of blacks, there's quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent, and possibly rightfully so. But we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.... I don't know why people insist that blacks have been forbidden to go to school. They were allowed in public schools wherever I've been."
He had affairs through all three of his marriages, including one with Marlene Dietrich.
According to director Sam O'Steen's memoir "Cut to the Chase," directors knew to film all of Wayne's scenes before noon, because by afternoon Wayne "was a mean drunk."
So, you know, he was the perfect Republican
Robert,
ReplyDeleteYep, ultimately (in spite of pundits' breathless paeans to Michele Bachmann at the moment) I think it would be good for Obama if she were to get the GOP nomination. Probably ANY right-wing candidate would get most of the GOP vote in the general election, but I just don't see her getting near 50%, which in a two-person race is necessary to have a chance at winning enough states to take the electoral college victory.
Nameless,
But we have it on Robin Williams' authority that John Wayne sure did a mean Macbeth: "Wellllllll is this a DAGGER I see before me, pilgrim?"
Good post, Capt.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more! I am way beyond sick and tired of the stupid and mindless.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I'm not sure it makes any difference who the Republicans nominate. Some may have more entertaining schtick than others, but they all take their orders from the same people, and the deluded suckers who vote Republican will be behind any one of them, rather than vote for the black man.
ReplyDelete"Gay marriage is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that." --Rep. Michele Bachmann
ReplyDelete[Sept. 11, 2001, was just a hiccup, I guess.]
BACHMANN WARNED ‘THE LION KING’ WAS GAY PROPAGANDA: At the November 2004 EdWatch National Education Conference, Bachmann said the “normalization” of homosexuality would lead to “desensitization”: “Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of ‘The Lion King’ for instance, and a teacher might say, ‘Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?’ The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.”
I wasn't outraged about Bachmann mixing up her John Waynes, but I am digusted by the homophobic rot she and her anti-gay bigot of a husband wallow in.
Marcus Bachmann had this to say about homosexuals last summer:
"Dr. Bachmann explained his position on homosexuality while offering theoretical advice to parents concerned that one of their children was gay.
BACHMANN: We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps…
And let’s face it: what is our culture, what is our public education system doing today? They are giving full, wide-open doors to children, not only giving encouragement to think it but to encourage action steps. That’s why when we understand what truly is the percentage of homosexuals in this country, it is small. But by these open doors, I can see and we are experiencing, that it is starting to increase."
From ThinkProgress
If those statements by the two Bachmanns don't qualify as stupid and evil, then I don't know what those words mean anymore.
Shaw,
ReplyDeleteAll I can say to those quotations is that both are way high on the nutbar bar. When non-loons say that stuff, it tends to be in the context of a parody on Onion.com. I read a hilarious article years ago in which the writer openly avowed her role as a lesbian proponent of the nefarious "gay agenda" to turn ALL schoolchildren into good little LGBTs. To paraphrase, "We tell them that if you're gay, you get to do anything you want." Sounds like M & M may actually believe this, or something uncomfortably close to it. As so often, right-wingers excel at unintended self-parody.
So Bachmann joins the ever-growing list of republican kooks trying to buy some cred with patriotic rock and roll that was unfortunately written by some very talented and progressive rockers. Petty's team fired off a cease and desist letter after MB desecrated that most sacred of rock and roll ballads/anthems American Girl. This after the former governor of Alaska brought down the ire of Heart with her unlicensed use of Barracuda, Shrub with I Won't Back Down and McCain and Reagan's infamous forays into the world of rock and roll.
ReplyDeleteAnd Charlie Crist, who is being sued by former Talking Heads front-man David Byrne for one million dollars.
ReplyDeleteWeirdly, I don't know of any Democrats who've gotten in trouble for this. Anyone?