August 15, 2011

 

BACHMANN x 5

  1. . . . Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) won the Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll over the weekend and was on no less than five Sunday morning talk shows. Think she was thorough enough?
  2. . . . Why, pray tell, was it necessary to do all of those appearances?
  3. . . . It was wall-to-wall Bachmann.
  4. . . . Bachmann-O-Rama.
  5. . . . She was hot bait.
  6. . . . It must've been a media fracas, with all the networks clawing for her to appear on their show.
  7. . . .What, I ask, would she tell one that she wouldn't tell the other? Was there any risk in that happening?
  8. . . . Of course, she wanted to be fair to all the nets and it wouldn't look right if she was on one or two and not the others, now would it?
  9. . . . I would've hated to be her driver Sunday morning, making all those pit stops and trying to manage that tight schedule. But she can do it; there's nothing that she can't do.
  10. . . . The founder of the House Tea Party Caucus was on Fox News Sunday the same time she was on State of the Union (CNN) in my TV market.
  11. . . . She was on Meet the Press the same time she was on Face the Nation, also in my TV market.
  12. . . . When she was on ABC's This Week (with Jake Tapper and without Christiane Amanpour) she wasn't on any other talk show, in my TV market.
  13. . . . Ron Paul (R-Tex.) came in second in the straw poll, but nobody seemed to care.
  14. . . . The headline from the whole event was first, that Bachmann won, and second, that Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) dropped out because he came in third. (He was winnowed down, as they say, which refers to what the straw poll standardly does to the many candidates vying for the same job.)
  15. . . . "I'm (T-Paw) announcing this morning on your show (This Week) that I'm going to be ending my campaign," said the Dana Carvey look-alike to Tapper.
  16. . . . (Politicians like to announce candidacies on TV shows (Did Arnold Schwarzenegger start it all back in 2003 when he announced he was running for governor of California on The Tonight Show?) and now they like to announce de-candidacies on TV shows.)
  17. . . . The third headline was that Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.) would now be running for president. (He made his announcement in South Carolina.) Then he headed up to Iowa to challenge Bachmann and kick some butt.
  18. . . . Former senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) and businessman Herman Cain (Pizza Man) were at the low-end of the poll results. There wasn't much said about them.
  19. . . . Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman were not in Iowa. Shouldn't they have been?
  20. SCENIC. Fox News Sunday did their Iowa show outside on the campus of Iowa State University, with host Chris Wallace and Bachmann sitting on big director's chairs.
  21. . . . The show's location seemed to be close to a busy road and you could see a police car, an SUV and a huge semi-truck pass through in the background during the panel segment. At times it seemed too close for comfort.
  22. . . . Candy Crowley did her State of the Nation show outside also, with the CNN Express bus visible in the background and parked next to it was Michele Bachmann's campaign bus with her web address printed on the side. Good advertisement.
  23. . . . ABC was outside too, with a This Week logo sign showing behind the guests. Looked a little chintzy.
  24. . . . CBS did Face the Nation inside with a window that looked outside on the Iowa landscape. Newcomer to the network (from NBC) Norah O'Donnell substituted for Bob Schieffer. She was very upbeat and has a different style from that of long-time host Schieffer.
  25. . . . Meet the Press was inside too, with David Gregory sitting in a chair at one end of an extra long, shiny boardroom-like table in a studio.
  26. . . . It was Knights of the Roundtable-ish but it was rectangular instead of round.
  27. . . . Michele Bachmann sat downward from Gregory and looked like she was about 20 miles away from the host.
  28. . . . They, too, had a window on the Iowa world outside but added a lot of state and U.S. flags to its remote set to give it more official flavor, I guess What a set decorator; hand him or her an Emmy.
  29. . . . Gregory seemed to be aggressively debating, refuting and doubting Bachmann a lot. He was argumentative and seemed to almost lose his patience on several points.
  30. . . . FINAL THOUGHT. I guess the reason why Meet the Press had such a long table was to have enough room later in the show for all the male bloviators -- not a female in sight -- on their analysis panel: Mike Murphy, Republican strategist; Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post; Gov. Terry Branstad (R) of Iowa; Politico reporter Jonathan Martin; and Chuck Todd, NBC political director, chief White House correspondent and host of MSNBC's Daily Rundown (enough titles?) , sitting at the other end of that long, lacquered table.
  31. . . . I suspect having them outside would've been too unwieldy for the director. (Dump him, get a new one.)
  32. "PART OF SATAN" When asked about a comment Bachmann made about gay people back in 2004 at an education conference in which she said that gay and lesbian people "live a very sad life" that is "part of Satan" with "sexual dysfunction and sexual identity issues," Gregory followed up with the question, "That is the view President Bachmann would have of gay Americans? "
  33. . . . Bachmann replied, "I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone's judge. "
  34. . . . So she avoided the question.
  35. Michele Bachmann and hubby Marcus were seen jitterbugging with joy at her win in the straw poll. They need some rhythm.
  36. . . . They certainly wouldn't get far on Dancing with the Stars.
  37. "SUBMISSIVE MEANS RESPECT . . . ," said Bachmann to Norah O'Donnell on Face the Nation, in response to a question that was in reference to a statement Bachmann made at Thursday's Republican debate in which she said that wives should be "submissive" to their husbands. (Sounds like something Warren Jeffs (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) would preach to his many wives.)
  38. . . . "Do you think submissive means subservient? " asked O'Donnell, pressing the candidate.
  39. . . . "Not to us," replied Bachmann. "To us it means respect. We respect each other, we listen to each other, we love each other and that is what it means," she insisted.
  40. . . . So she avoided the question.
  41. WARDROBE CHANGE? (Sexist question?) None for Michele Bachmann. She wore the same thing throughout all five Sunday morning talk show appearances and seemingly managed to retain her crisp look.
  42. . . . UH . . . The Pied Piper – Crispian St. Peters, from 1966, on Jamie Records.


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