Bachmann on the move in her toughest race yetThe baby knocked over a glass of water. Without missing a beat, Rep. Michele Bachmann crouched down to mop up the mess.
"I'm used to it," said Bachmann, who is facing an unexpectedly tough re-election campaign for her fourth term in Congress. "Just like I'm cleaning up the mess in Washington. How many times have I cleaned up spilled milk at home? I was fully prepared to do what I do in D.C."
Bachmann dealt with the puddle, then ran a wet wipe across the baby's cake-covered face for good measure, all while answering a constituent's question about the medical device tax in the president's health care bill.
(CONTINUED)
The Strib story doesn't go on to report "the question about the medical device tax or Bachmann's answer." Because the aim of this kind of "reporting" is to present Michele Bachmann as some kind supermom/policy whiz. It's not objective or even-handed reporting.
It's not reporting that acquaints the readers with Bachmann's record on telling the truth--or her positions on issues--or her actual record in the legislature. Bachmann's charge that the US government has been infiltrated by Islamic extremists--is presented as if it's a legitimate difference of opinion.
So this a piece to puff Michele Bachmann, and that's all it is.
It acknowledges that Bachmann's facing a tougher re-election battle. But it doesn't explain (or even refer to) the reasons why conservative Bachmann is facing a tougher re-election battle in a conservative congressional district. Instead of that: we get paragraphs about wiping up after baby while fielding policy questions...the picture of superwoman; free political advertising for Bachmann courtesy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune
There's no excuse for this unless the reporter is age eight and her editor is age seven. You gotta remember that at the same time the Strib ran this story--there was legitimate real-live Bachmann news going on. (That was the story about how the Associated Press had imposed a quota on fact-checking of Michele Bachmann statements.)
The Strib chose not to incorporate or even acknowledge that in their piece on Bachmann. Instead they went with a "textual photo-op" of Bachmann wiping up after a cute little baby--and oh, yeah, a quote from one of her fundraising letters.
You must realize: the continuing news coverage of Michele Bachmann is not just about Bachmann. It's much bigger than that. It's a story about the entry of extremism into the GOP and thus into the mainstream of American politics. And it's a story about media, and the new tendency of media to puff extremists rather than expose their extremism.
If this is how the Strib covers Bachmann after twelve years of lies and bigotry--how do you think the Strib is going to do in the future, when it comes to covering all extremist Bachmann clones in MN state government and the political races?