Matt Taibbi Explains What's Not So Funny About Michele Bachmann

Imus did not have a chance to read Matt Taibbi’s latest Rolling Stone article, Michele Bachmann’s Holy War, prior to his guest’s appearance today; not because he is lazy, as Taibbi suggested, but because he’s been busy helping sick children and trying to breathe. Imus added, for good measure, “You bastard.”
 
But if anybody can take a verbal beating, it’s Taibbi, who is also prone to dispensing them. Regarding Bachmann, the ultra-Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota gunning to be president, he contends that for all the hilarious, idiotic things she says, she’s got a real shot of winning the nomination.
 
“It’s just kind of laid out for her perfectly,” he said. “She could easily take Iowa: Romney’s not really competing there; she’s got Mike Huckabee’s organization; she’s got a lot of support in that state. After that, she’s got the Tea Party contingent backing her, and Romney and Pawlenty could split the vote. It could really happen.”
 
Despite her tendency to say stupid things, Taibbi does not think Bachmann is a stupid woman. “She’s crazy and she believes a lot of things that are completely nuts, and she doesn’t really know a whole lot of things,” he clarified. As an example, he recalled Bachmann’s confusion when the Chinese talked about changing their reserve currency, and she somehow thought this meant the U.S. would stop using the dollar as its currency.
 
Beyond being sometimes befuddled, Bachmann is “a relentless campaigner,” Taibbi said. Unlike Sarah Palin, Bachmann loves “pounding the pavement,” making her a formidable opponent in 2012.
 
Bachmann is also fiercely religious, and Taibbi noted her belief that Christianity is under assault by a gay, leftist, communist conspiracy. “Her whole campaign is kind of geared toward winning and restoring order for Christ,” he said, but stopped short of calling her outright evil.
 
“I don’t think she’s a good person,” Taibbi offered instead. “She has a long history of not telling the truth, and she really has made her career bashing gays.”
 
Numerous people mentioned to him Bachmann’s strange obsession with Sharia Law, the harsh code of conduct implemented in some Muslim theocracies. Her fixation is so intense that Taibbi surmised it’s because of professional jealousy, saying, “She wants to establish a Christian caliphate herself.”
 
Even though she often makes hilarious statements, Bachmann has no sense of humor about herself, in Taibbi’s view. “There’s a lot of abject humorlessness in her campaign,” he said. “I cant imagine her really laughing at anything, except maybe a left-leaning voter who wasn’t able to make it to the voting booth because he got in a car accident.”
 
That doesn’t prevent Taibbi from wanting to make others laugh at Bachmann, whose political career he compared to the 1970s show Far Out Space Nuts, in which two dim-witted NASA employees become trapped in space after one of them presses “launch” instead of “lunch” while cleaning out the space capsule.
 
“She’s kind of a walking screwball comedy, but she doesn’t see it herself,” he said. “So I think that makes her even funnier.”
 
Taibbi observed that Bachmann’s decision not to talk to him for this article was probably a wise one. “I wouldn’t talk to me if I were a politician,” he mused.
 
Imus, for one, will always talk to Taibbi, if for no other reason than it drives Neil Cavuto insane.
 
-Julie Kanfer