…And not the fun kind.
When you think of adjectives to describe the President of the United States of America, I bet you five dollars “OBEDIENT” isn’t one of them, right? Right.
Well, it’s not like we needed ANOTHER reason to prove that electing Michelle Bachmann as President of the United States of America is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE idea, but The Daily Beast’s Jill Lawrence has found one all the same. And it all starts with our word of the day: OBEDIENT.
Lawrence has brought to light a video of the presidential candidate declaring that she takes biblical strictures for wives to obey their husbands very, very literally. So that means, if America really is dumb enough to elect Little Miss Crazy Face to the oval office, we may really be putting Mr. Even Crazier Face in charge of the office that is still considered to constitute the leadership of the ENTIRE FLIPPING FREE WORLD.
We will now pause for the sputtering in outrage and punching of walls. Resist the temptation to throw your laptop out the window, it will be expensive, and prevent you from reading anything else on Comediva. Not that this article is going to get any less mind boggling anytime soon, but there are some nice dinosaurs and unicorns around to look at when you’re done to calm yourself down, we promise.
The incredibly weird, and incredibly troubling, video that has raised the entirely relevant question of whether it’s a TOTAL conflict of interest for a woman who swears obedience to her husband to be elected to lead the United States of America, is a speech Bachmann made during her 2006 House race.
The upsetting part comes around when Bachmann starts talking about her law degree.
“My husband said, ‘Now you need to go and get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.’ Tax law! I hate taxes — why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.”
Bachmann just can’t stop talking about how much she really, seriously, definitely didn’t want to go into tax law. But her epic hatred for the subject didn’t compare to her desire to obey her hubby’s demands that she go into a field she had never had a desire for.
Even worse, she claims to have felt the same way about running for Congress!
“My husband said, ‘You need to do this,’ and I wasn’t so sure,” she confessed. But Hubby Dearest saw to it she got sure. After two days of praying and fasting with her husband, she gave in.
So does that mean that Miss Crazy Face’s whole presidential campaign started out with a case of borderline spousal abuse? Seems that way to me, if we assume that Bachmann’s professions of faith, fealty and obedience aren’t pandering bushwha, invented out of whole cloth to satisfy her uber-Christian fans.
Even if she wasn’t serious, at least one conservative pundit has suggested, in a rather hopeful tone of voice, that she might have been joking about that whole submitting thing. Bachmann’s got some ‘splaining to do. Women candidates for executive jobs already have trouble convincing the American public that they’re commanding enough to lead. Does a female candidate who openly admits that she pretty much just does whatever her husband tells her to do have a shot in hell of coming off as convincingly Presidential?
John Green, a religion and politics expert who heads the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, told The Daily Beast that political consultants often tell super duper religious candidates like Bachmann that they have to learn to be “bilingual.”
What the heck does that mean, exactly? According to Green, “They have to speak the general language of politics which potentially touches all voters, but at the same time be able to talk the special language of their religious community.”
In other words, they have to pass with the average American, who is, believe it or not, definitely not an uber-conservative Christian. (Fun Fact: Seven out of 10 Christian Americans don’t take the Bible literally, not to mention all those lovely people who are busy taking that whole “freedom of religion” thing seriously and practicing non-Jesus-based religions.) They also have to pass with their, urm, “special” communities.
Sounds a whole lot like the textbook definition of hypocrisy, don’t it? And just flat out LYING. Let’s just hope Bachmann never learns to be bilingual enough to convince those of us who aren’t such big fans of the idea of an “obedient” president into voting for her.
