Michele Bachmann: Waterlooney

It's official. The race is on!

Just weeks after noted historian Sarah Palin straightened us all out on how the whole Paul Revere thing really went down with those ringin' bells and warnin' shots, batshit crazy Republican chick part deux, Michele Bachmann, has stepped to the forefront with her own version of little known historical facts that must have Sarah considering hoppin' back on that bus.

Bachmann, a native of Waterloo, Iowa, was in her hometown to make the final official announcement that the previous announcements of her candidacy--plus her involvement in a debate between Republican presidential hopefuls--were not really official enough to be called official announcements, but this one was. Naturally, this official announcement delighted her fellow Waterloonians because, well, what else is there to be delighted about in Waterloo, Iowa?

What else? How about the fact that John "Freakin" Wayne was born in Waterloo? That's pretty damn delightful, don't you think?

Yep, that's right. During her announcement, Michele told her adoring fans that she was proud to be from the same hometown that spawned that great American actor and patriot John Wayne. Unfortunately, Michele was only two-thirds right, because the John Wayne who was born in Waterloo also bore the last name of Gacy. Yes, that John Wayne--not the great American actor, but the notorious American serial killer.

Bachmann, no doubt, was implying that coming from the same hometown as an American hero somehow shows that she was raised with the same kind of great Midwestern family values that helped form John Wayne into that no nonsense, Indian-killing, macho movie icon. Since, in truth, Bachmann hails from the same place as a man whose great Midwestern family values included killing young men and then--apparently unable to bear parting with them--burying them in his crawlspace, what are we really supposed to think of her? She has a major hoarding problem too?

But hell, actors and serial killers aren't Michele Bachmann's specialty anyway. Her true expertise lies in the history of our founding fathers, and she went on to tell us about some things we didn't know in that area too.

Belonging to that seemingly ever-expanding group of proud Americans who believe the men who shaped this country were perfect, Bachmann told her Waterloo fans that our founding fathers "worked tirelessly to end slavery." Considering a large number of these men owned slaves, this probably would have come as surprising news to many of the people who knew them--especially the slaves.

If indeed our founding fathers wanted to put an end to servitude, perhaps including a ban on slavery in the original Bill of Rights would have done the trick. But these great men were probably too busy banging those hot slave chicks to even take the time to think of such a notion. So instead they overlooked that little piece of legislation and it would take more than 80 years and a civil war before the Thirteenth Amendment would finally say owning people just ain't right in a place that claims "all men are created equal."

Ah, but Michele was merely a little confused. The "founding father" she was referring to was John Quincy Adams--our 6^th president and a man who indeed spent his later years in Congress strongly opposed to slavery. Bachmann simply missed being right by one generation because John Quincy Adams was really a "founding son"--the offspring of true founding father John Adams. But when John Sr. was busy with his buddies forming our great nation and somehow forgetting to include "God-given rights" for certain individuals in the most cherished of our documents, John Jr. was just a few years removed from his daddy's scrotum.

But hey let's give Michele a break here. Mixing up John Quincy Adams with his father isn't such a bad thing.

Hell, it's not like he was a serial killer or something.

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michele-bachmann-kicks-off-campaign-but-john-wayne-gacy-gaffe-mars-speech/2011/06/27/AGDYNjpH_story.html

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2011/06/john-quincy-adams-a-founding-father-michele-bachmann-says-yes.html