The right is apparently up in arms over this photo of Michele Bachmann that appears on the cover of this week’s Newsweek:
If someone wants to say this is an unflattering picture, fine.
But Bachmann’s supporters are unlikely to find much in Lois Romano’s article to complain about. On the campaign trail, Bachmann’s “simple, black-and-white distillations of complex problems are cheered as refreshing and tough.” A campaign speech is a “folksy assault on a bloated federal government.”
Explaining Bachmann’s apparent surge, Romano writes:
Just months ago, Bachmann was the butt of jokes on late-night TV for her flawed grasp of U.S. history. But all that changed one night this spring when she took the stage at the first major GOP presidential debate with the middle-aged, drab men running for the nomination, and set herself apart with poise and precision. When others meandered or waffled, she shot back with answers that reduced Washington’s dysfunctional gridlock to understandable soundbites.
I’m not sure comedians have stopped writing jokes about her– or that her “grasp” of U.S. history has changed much since the spring. So much of the corporate media’s enthusiasm for Bachmann comes down to cheering her performance at that one debate. People who watched it, or read the transcript afterwards, might have a hard time reconciling the upbeat characterizations of Bachmann’s performance with the actual words she spoke from the stage.
As we pointed out, her answer on jobs, the biggest political question of the moment, was a call to close down the Environmental Protection Agency, which she said should be called the “Job-Killing Organization of America.” Was that “poise and precision?”
But it’s not just Newsweek. In the Washington Post, former Bush adviser Nicolle Wallace wrote that at the debate, “Bachmann’s answers were crisp, strategic and smoothly delivered.”
The press have set the bar for Bachmann somewhere near the floor–which means she’ll almost always be exceeding expectations. This is one of the defining features of the coverage of her presidential campaign.
i think newsweak puts bachmann and sarah on the the front on the magazine for the same reason they recently did a “princess diana at 50” cover. freakshows sell.
as a counterpoint, the new yorker has a long bachmann profile….
In 2004 Bachmann said that being gay is â┚¬Ã…“personal enslavement,â┚¬Ã‚ and that, if same-sex marriage were legalized, â┚¬Ã…“little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it.â┚¬Ã‚ Speaking about gay-rights activists, that same year, she said, â┚¬Ã…“It is our children that is the prize for this community.â┚¬Ã‚ She believes that evolution is a theory that has â┚¬Ã…“never been proven,â┚¬Ã‚ and that intelligent design should be taught in schools.
Bachmann’s assertions on these issues are, unsurprisingly, disputed. She is also often criticized for making factual errors on less controversial matters. She got into more trouble this spring when, during a trip to Iowa before she announced her candidacy, she told a long story about her family’s roots in the state.
One small detail: Bachmann’s dramatic tale happened near Iowa, but not actually in it.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza?printable=true¤tPage=all
She looks as though she’s experiencing a vision from God.
Or the Koch Brothers.
Same difference to her, I’d imagine.
OK, I’ll say it: It’s an unflattering picture — and it’s a very accurate image. I recommend that anyone who is thinking of supporting her study it very very carefully.
Am I the only one who thinks her eyes are unnaturally dilated in what is obviously very bright light? This is not the first time I’ve noticed this. I think there’s something pharmaceutical going on there.
newsweak has posted some outtakes from the photo shoot….note that, for the most part, the eyes don’t change from photo to photo
http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/newsweek/galleries/2011/08/08/michelle-bachmann-newsweek-cover-photos.html
The eyes of a zealot.
The photo was a cheap shot. Both sides do it. When was the last time you saw protestors that didn’t have painted faces in photos in newspapers. When you have a public figure you use a reasonable photo. When you have a news event you pick an average face not one that’s painted. The media is a mess.
Here’s the problem: This is how she looks on all her photos. Because it’s her face. You can clean up her image in the article, but it’s hard to hide the facts in a photo. You can touch up a skin blemish, but you can’t hide those eyes. But she’s still highly electable, right? I mean, W. looked like an idiot too.
Michelle is NOT electable for the same reason Sarah Pallin isn’t, The right wing (especially the Tea Party) isn’t going to let a WOMAN sit in the White House. Look how upset they got when a black man was elected!
It’s a candid photo of a self-described submissive wife who wants to be president of the United States of America.
Too bad there isn’t a candid photo of Marcus whipping his wife into submission. Hmmm…what office or rank is he aspiring to?
I want anyone worthy to have an equal platform. But, this woman is NOT what I want for my country.
Those eyes . . . the eyes of an ignorant hick, an old-time faith-healer or medicine-show geek. Good luck with that, GOP. I hear-tell Rick “sick-Rick” Perry is gonna climb into the clown-car real soon–wait’ll you hear some of the rumors about his private life. It’ll make Marcus Bachmann’s closeted gay-life seem downright Pentacostal. Good times ahead, for sure. And then there’s Caribou Barbie, just a-waitin’ to slide right in there . . . put all those cheap-jack weirdos on the same stage, and you’ll have a perfect storm of stupid, a snapshot that perfectly distills imbecile America in all it’s very-late-period glory, a gang of dopes, libertarian nincompoops and lunatics, self-aggrandizing sociopaths, right-wing-Christer liar mountebanks, and last but not least Newt Gingrich. Gingrich’s ever-expanding girth is exactly in tandem with his ever-expanding greed and utter moral decay and beady-eyed depravity. His skin as thin as rice-paper, the corpulent hack, the dumbest and greediest guy in the room, continues his marvelous political death-spiral. Fun and inspiring to watch, it gives faint hope that all these haters of democracy (and these grasping jackasses, all of them, truly despise democracy–it’s the one thing that unites them all under the elephant-head skull-and-crossbones that is the GOP’s banner) will cause good and decent people in the good old USA to come to their sense before it’s too late.
And I don’t mean that we should flock to our current Republican President happily, either–it’s shocking that our democratic and political discourse is so degraded, so fatally off-course, so wrongfully right-ward bound, that we must choose a Corporatist, Wall-Street milque-toast betraying Republican spy to stave off utter destruction at the hands of the above-mentioned freaks and monsters. A pity. The horror, the horror . . . .
Just what are you trying to say, Susan? That poor flouncing, preening, prancing Marcus might be pulling the strings? Don’t count on it. Absolutely Michelle runs the Bachmann freak show with an iron fist. That Bible-talk stuff is for the lumpen-proletariat and any other Christers dumb enough to believe that Michelle is “submissive” in any way. I guarantee you she ties up Marcus every night and whips his sorry ass into “submission” . . . and he loves it, don’t you know.
Well lots of bellicose verbiage above.And I suppose it could all be used almost word for word to describe Nancy Pelosi.At least in general feeling.They share the same weirdness factor.Im a tea party member and( surprise) i do not particularly like her.Most tea party people I know are less than in her corner contrary to polls.Nothing nefarious here.She agrees with a lot of things we feel are important.I just don’t think she is the right person to carry the message.Anymore than a president Pelosi would be right to carry the Dem message.She says things I agree with, and much i do not.But i think there is a perception that under it all is a weirdness.The picture capture that.Pelosi had it in spades too.
I think there is a feeling in America that you want the president to have a certain “folksie” approach to the job.A charm.Obama has that.I would rather sit and have a beer with him than Michelle any day.I also call her the pointer.She annoyingly stays on point regardless of the questions asked.I thought Obamas record going in was garbage. Michells aint all that great either.I think her appeal is that she rightly trashes this president where he lives.She is a hammer.(So does Ann Caulter but i don’t want her as president.)But that only goes so far.And that is the point we are at.She will soon fade and Romni will be the man.
By the way Sahra Palin is miles ahead of Michelle.She is an American people could get behind.For president?Maybe not.Im not sure America is really ready for a female in that job.But i think she has positioned herself as a voice.Good fit.I would love to see her in a cabinet position.
Bottom line is Obama is toast.It will be Romni’s to loose.And if you libs took an honest look at the job results Obama has handed us……you must understand the coming vote against him.
Oh on the medical side…..Someone pointed out the size of her pupils, and the possibility of a pharmacological reason.i can’t concur .There simply are too many factors that we can not see, to make that kind of presumptive leap.But how about the helmut hair/head?I think any woman with helmut hair should be automatically excluded from every job –except news woman.Strange hair kind of freaks me out.Trump…Hannity….Michelle Obama.That grey haired woman on dem now.Now Romni has a head of hair.Vote for the hair you liberal nudnicks
“Shame on you, Newsweek,” Jon Stewart said. “You used that photo in a petty attempt to make Michele Bachman look crazy….That’s what her _words_ are for.”
Oddly, USA Today headlined this as “Jon Stewart Defends Bachmann.” Somehow, that’s not how I’d describe Stewart’s accurate conclusion that Bachmann’s words are the real proof of her complete insanity.