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Michele Bachmann Painted by Insiders as An Incapacitated Valley of the Doll

By: Sarah JonesJul. 19th, 2011more from Sarah Jones

Valley of the Dolls GOP style

Trying to knock her out, Michele Bachmann insiders say she is “incapacitated” often.

The image of a pill-popping, incapacitated Michele Bachmann is being painted today by “former aides”, “three people who have worked closely with Bachmann”, unnamed witnesses, an unnamed adviser, and “some around her”. I doubt it’s any coincidence that the Daily Caller is reporting this on the heels of the news that Michele Bachmann is the “Grand Old Party’s” new front runner, as they are all quite aware of her limitations against President Obama.

According to these sources, due to “stress”, Bachmann is shuttled in and out of emergency and urgent care, put to bed in CEO’s homes, and propped up by at least three different kinds of pills. Repeated use of the word “incapacitated” to describe Bachman’s “migraine headaches” is taken so far as to say the word is being used deliberately, as the adviser is “terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president.”

The DC (Tucker Carlson’s joint) justifies offering the sources anonymity because their breaches of confidence could impact further job prospects. No doubt that’s a valid concern, but one does have to wonder why the Daily Caller is taking out the Republican front runner with rumor and innuendo:

The Daily Caller reports:

Sources who spoke to The Daily Caller said they did so because they are terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president. They also worry that the issue could blow up in the general election campaign, giving President Obama an easy path to re-election.

“It’s a careful choice of words I used: ‘incapacitated,’” the adviser says.

“As president, when she’s in crisis management mode, is she going to have the physical ability to withstand the most difficult challenges facing America?” the former aide asks.

TheDC agreed to provide the sources anonymity because they were providing information only a select group of people could know, at great professional risk.

Two sources independently provided detailed accounts of Bachmann’s condition. A third source confirmed that Bachmann frequently suffers from debilitating headache episodes.

The use of whisper campaigns to take out the UnChosen or inappropriate (read: not viable) candidates is a particular favorite of the Republican Party, taken to ugly extremes in South Carolina when the Bush campaign passed ugly rumors about John McCain’s adopted “black” daughter; note the use of the Southern Strategy in South Carolina, home of the festering pile of racism as favored WMD. Racism is but one tool of the patriarchy in order to maintain their power and status quo. Others are sexism, bigotry of all kinds, and any kind of “otherism” that will serve to divide and destroy an opponent or group that threatens the power elites.

While Bachmann’s migraine headaches may well be a legitimate issue, as well as her alleged pill-popping, it strikes me that the picture painted of Bachmann is old school sexism at its most hysterical (pun intended). Bachmann can’t handle “stress”, it’s implied that she’s frail and unstable, and claimed that she’s “incapacitated” by pills. Images of The Valley of the Dolls and mother’s little helper come immediately to mind. This is the classic “hysterical woman” model, last seen this blatantly in the 1950′s. Oh, GOP. I’m embarrassed for you all. These are, after all, the same people who claimed that any valid criticism of Sarah Palin’s ability was sexism and here they are, engaging in the incapacitated woman syndrome. Perhaps we should give them points for not mentioning hormones.

Psychologically speaking, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to learn that Bachmann is indeed on pills to handle stress, as she is balancing a life built upon contradictions and untruths, justified in her own mind and that of her Dominionist followers by her status as a born again fundamentalist Christian. As Bachmann works to take rights away from others and is the poster girl of the happily subservient woman, in reality she has substantial power and a full time job. She claims to stand for fiscal conservatism and small government, but we now know that much of this is a house of cards that has been crumbling with revelation after revelation of her family helping themselves to taxpayer money in various ways, including “entitlement money”. It could stress the system of any human to balance a life of precarious lies and maintain the level of denial of self necessary to hawk the role for women that Michele Bachmann does.

There are plenty of treatments for migraines that someone of her status and wealth could afford that would not involve the use of incapacitating pain killers and would only involve a few hours of down time during an attack, from chronic migraines to even the more debilitating cluster headaches. So it pains me to see this used against Bachmann, though I’m hardly surprised that the GOP would go here, given her clear inability to beat President Obama in 2012. If indeed they are “terrified” by about her alleged inability to handle stress, one wonders how they justified running Sarah Palin or any other number of obviously unstable candidates in the 2010 election. Sadly, I doubt we can chalk this up to “Country First” as it screams Party Power First.

Bachmann, who believes that women should “obey the commands of their husbands,” is now being sacrificed at the altar of the patriarchal values she fully endorses. Down goes the allegedly hysterical, pilled up, stressed out Valley of the Doll.

Michele Bachmann Painted by Insiders as An Incapacitated Valley of the Doll was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Jul. 19th, 2011. All Rights Reserved

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