Michele Bachmann is at it again. You are all, I’m sure, shocked.
I can hear you now: Michele Bachmann, out there doing stupid and offensive things? How could this be? I mean, she’s only the woman who suggested that Democratic presidents are giving the country swine flu (which would be a paranoid suggestion even if the last two outbreaks hadn’t occurred during Republican administrations); she’s just the standup gal who once told Fox News viewers not to fill out their census forms (which is, just so you know, illegal) because the government was planning on using that information to put people into concentration camps. Michele Bachmann do something crazy? Impossible!
And I suppose, to be fair, that what she’s gone and done this time isn’t exactly crazy; it’s just small minded, racist, culturally elitist, blatantly hypocritical and opportunistic, generally intolerant, emotionally predatory, inconsistent, and a whole slew of other, more sinister, more complex, and harder to spell negative adjectives. Fascist. Malevolent. Orwellian. Mephistophelian, even.
What she’s done is signed THE MARRIAGE VOW: A Declaration of Dependence on MARRIAGE and FAMiLY. (And yes, I know that the i isn’t capitalized there, and it isn’t a typo, I copy/pasted that shit. I think the capitalization is a clever conservative conceit meant to stress the fragility of hetero-monogamous Christian families, which, as we all know, will self destruct if they come within a hundred yards of a gay person, a Muslim, a porn star, or Tommy Chong.)
The VOW is, essentially, the Tea Party statement of purpose, the Middle American Nitwit’s raison d’etre, if you will. It is the brainchild of Iowan right-winger Bob Vander Plaats, a man Business Insider calls the “Christian Right kingmaker” and about whom I will only say that his name is, appropriately enough, evocative of apartheid. Politicians and candidates for political office who sign the VOW swear themselves to a whole range of extreme conservative positions: to oppose gay-marriage, to oppose Islam, to oppose constitutionally interpretive jurisprudence, to oppose big government, to oppose women serving in military combat positions, to oppose abortion, to support DOMA. (You’ll notice that there are many more Thou Shalt Nots than Thou Shalts here. I wonder if it has ever occurred to anyone that Thou Shalt Be Respectful and Polite to Thy Neighbor’s Wife, and Let Her Borrow a Cup of Sugar if She Wants One might work better as a commandment than Thou Shalt Not Covet Her. You know, honey and vinegar and all of that psychology stuff.)
More to the point, the VOW binds its signatories to devote themselves to (and I quote): “Humane protection of women . . . from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence” and “to resist the lure of pornography destructive to marital intimacy.”
This, obviously enough, is what has upset me. Or, rather, this is what made me feel it was appropriate to air my upset here, in the libelous pages of wonderful, and pornographic, WHACK! magazine. But where, oh where, to begin? The task of explaining what’s wrong with this fucking horror-show of a document seems positively Herculean; I’ve focused on just these passages that mention porn, but still the job looms insurmountable before me. I feel like I’m trying to explain to Hitler what he did wrong; how do you tell someone that everything is wrong? That everything they’ve done, everything they’ve thought, and all the assumptions and beliefs which underpin those thoughts and actions are fundamentally and irrevocably flawed?
In typically clever right-wing fashion Vander Plaats has made things even worse by mixing in all those super wholesome talking points. I mean, yes, of course I oppose sexual slavery and infanticide, everyone does. But to equate Behind the Green Door and Herod’s massacre of the boy children of Bethlehem? Seriously? I mean, forget about apples and oranges, this is like comparing 15th century Ming vases and, and, I don’t even know, whatever one thing in the universe is the least like old Chinese porcelain. Like comparing Ming vases and Proxima Centauri, or Ming vases and Bilbo Baggins. I mean, just look at the facts: one of them is beautiful naked women, and the other is killing babies.
Or how about promoting a view of women as weak and vulnerable and needing to be protected from the harsh, evil world? According to the VOW women are so weak and delicate that they should be kept off the front lines, away from images of themselves with their clothes off, and preferably as far from any sort of responsibility as possible. It makes their pretty little heads hurt so. How is it possible that Michele Bachmann, a fucking woman herself, let us not forget, and not just any woman but one who is trying to become the first female Leader of the Free fucking World, is ok with endorsing this sort of pre-Victorian sexist rhetoric? I mean, I disagree with the woman, I am scared of the woman, I mock and dismiss the woman; but I respect and celebrate the gains in gender equality her very campaign represents, and I am having a huge problem processing the fact that she herself does not share that respect. How is it possible for her to reconcile the patriarchal ideas she’s signed onto here with her own person, her very existence itself?
Then again, this is the woman who thinks the Battles of Lexington and Concord were in New Hampshire, so it’s entirely possible these considerations are above her. Jesus, that’s sad.
I haven’t completed the task of systematically dismantling the VOW, and I don’t intend to do so here. Accuse me of coping out if you like, but I’ve got my reasons. Do you remember when Obama was running the first time, and people kept shouting “Elitist!” at him? Well, I’m not asking for an elite candidate. I’ve given up on Plato and the Enlightened Despotism of Mensa. I don’t even want a candidate who agrees with me about pornography being a valid contribution to society. I just want a candidate who can open his or her mouth and produce vaguely reasonable speech, something other than simplistic Bible thumping, fear mongering, and drivel a high school dropout would cringe at. You want to campaign for a more moral, Christenized America? Fine; I’ll have that debate with you. But let us please have it like adults. You, Michele Bachmann, and you, Mr. Vander Plaats, and all the rest of you who agree with them, I have this to say to you: you look foolish. Worse, you make Christianity look foolish, and you make America look foolish, and, now that I’ve spent this time talking to and about you, you make me look foolish. We have to be able to do better than this, or else America really is done for.
—Maxxx Peters
great job ,i cried i cheered i thought this sob is good ,keep up the good work
Thanks for the support, antdaone! I’m glad you liked the article.
Generally it’s part of my job to be funny and slip some dirty jokes in there (or at least focus on pornography, haha) but with stories like this I get so pissed off that I end up just banging my head against the keyboard and publishing whatever that produces.
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