Blog Michele Bachmann parodies: You’re doing it wrong

Oh, Michele Bachmann, Minnesota’s fallen Republican star. In less than a year, Bachmann experienced a meteoric rise to fame as a leader of the Tea Party, became a leading contender for the 2012 presidential nomination, but followed with a precipitous fall. Bachmann is now on the bottom of the GOP pile looking up at the rest of the field, her campaign likely all but over two months shy of the first official primary (New Hampshire, January 10, 2012). Utah governor Jon Huntsman made a funny, self-deprecating cameo on SNL over the weekend as this election cycle’s newest “aw, shucks, we disagree with him but he can still laugh at himself about his long odds” candidate (see: Mike Huckabee in 2008). Bachmann can’t even garner attention for outlandishness anymore thanks to Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain taking over the role of “candidates who say/do crazy stuff.” The brief moment in the political spotlight is over for Bachmann as she becomes relegated to a footnote in a race that will likely reach its most inevitable conclusion with Mitt Romney earning the GOP nomination next summer.

Along the way, though, Bachmann has provided plenty of fodder for satirists, some mainstream, others just yokels with webcams. But a funny thing (funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha) becomes clear when going over some of these parodies: A lot of them are unfair toward Bachmann. That’s not necessarily to defend Bachmann or her views; as will be seen, Bachmann’s worst enemy wound up being herself and her willingness to continually spout statements that are generally, well, crazy. But a look at some of the parodies does show a window into the way pop culture manipulated these perceived gaffes. Make no mistake: Bachmann was never really a serious contender even at the height of her popularity, as this nifty poll tracker shows, but she did enter the cultural zeitgeist because of these perceived gaffes that at least played a role in impeding her campaign’s momentum. Not that it's unusual; just ask Howard Dean how that yelp worked out in 2004 or Gov. Rick Perry how possible inebriation and forgetfulness are helping him this year. The point is that no, Bachmann doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, but pop culture parodies have helped us reach this conclusion for all the wrong reasons.

The State Of The Union Response
The first and, to this day, still most infamous of Bachmann’s “gaffes” wasn’t even really a gaffe. According to CNN, there were two cameras for Bachmann's "Tea Party response" to President Obama's 2012 State of the Union speech: one for an online Tea Party stream and the camera used by the national media. Bachmann, it was said, was simply addressing the Tea Party camera. But the damage was done as everyone took aim at her, culminating in, of course, the SNL treatment, with Kristen Wiig playing the Congresswoman from Minnesota. Others took their shots, too, but it was an innocent mistake on Bachmann's part, not one worthy of extended ridicule.

Marcus Bachmann
Spouses are always causing trouble for political candidates. When Bachmann’s husband Marcus had his turn in the spotlight this summer, the Bachmanns were under fire for their counseling centers that allegedly preached the method of “praying the gay away.” Not helping matters is Marcus’ general effeminate demeanor that opened him up to a lot jokes that, sadly, mined some unfortunate stereotypes for laughs, undermining their own accusations of hypocrisy. Satire loses its effectiveness when you have to stoop so low for cheap laughs and here those cheap laughs come by indulging in stereotypes those who try to "pray the gay away" fail prey to just as easily. (The issue of homophobia in comedy, of course, is a whole different can of worms.)

Bad Lip Reading
Okay, these are kinda funny. They completely don’t represent the candidate in any way, so if you believed they did, well, your voter registration should be revoked a thousand times over.

Turn around, bright eyes
Perhaps the moment Bachmann’s campaign officially hit the iceberg (and, not coincidentally, according to the poll tracker, when it was at its zenith), the infamous Newsweek cover was the photo that launched 10,000 memes, one for every lake in Minnesota. It became the most infamous pair of eyes on the Internet since the Steve Buscemi Eyes meme wormed its way into our nightmares. But, again, Bachmann was at the mercy of the editors of Newsweek. Surely that couldn’t have been the only photo of Bachmann. It was, however, the one that would best generate controversy and conversation (as well as sales of Newsweek). Leave it to Jon Stewart to put proper context on the incident.

To thine own self be true
Of course, once a defense is mounted for someone, that someone opens his or her mouth to say something absurd, thereby rendering all defenses moot. Such is the case with Michele Bachmann. For every example in this post where it’s been shown that she’s not necessarily at fault for the way her image was twisted into something more monstrous than she—ultimately a harmless, fringe candidate—deserved, she has opened her mouth and created a facepalm moment or three. To paraphrase Stewart from the above video, if you really want a photo that makes Bachmann look crazy, make it out of her words. This, ultimately, is the reason for her downfall: off-base, polarizing political views and a skewed perception of reality that make her unpopular with most sane people in the world. Satire is strongest when it intersects the point at which humor meets skewering of the truth, using sharp humor to reflect reality. None of the above examples reach that point, though, instead falling well short and delivering tepid humor from soggy half-truths. Does Bachmann deserve skewering? Absolutely. But this isn’t the way.

So let’s allow the candidate to speak for herself, just one reminder (out of many) of why we knew we’d never have to worry about Michele Bachmann in the White House.