Schmuck Alert: Bachmann's Mob

I have an aching distaste for politicians. They remind me of small market news anchors with coke problems: paranoid, grandiose, willing to gab all night with total strangers - as long as another blast of adulation was coming back their way. Perhaps I'm projecting. On second thought, no. I've stood through enough city council meetings, governor's huddles and Presidential pit stops to know the only thing more maniacal than your average incumbent is the person currently working so furiously to unseat them.Which brings me to Michelle Bachmann, aka the poor man's Sarah Palin. Lately she's been making all the right noises as she crisscrosses the country in an effort to make Barack Obama a community organizer again. That's cool! Depending on your views, she's either the GOP's latest great white hope or a headstrong wretch whose husband wants to pray Barney Frank back to lumberjack status. None of which concerns me.

What does concern me, however, is the way Michele Bachmann handles her business. In the eight weeks that she's been a Presidential candidate, her sycophants have manhandled members of the press; shoving, pushing and threatening reporters as they attempted to make her a viable choice for leader of the free world by hanging on her every heavily scripted soundbite. It's happened five times. Five times! It's flippin' systemic! Much of the roughhousing has happened in the scrum, when membes of the Fourth Estate close in on a candidate and pepper them with questions. It's an American tradition that dates back to the American Revolution  -  though I can't ever remember George Washington getting his knickers in a twist whenever some scribe wanted to fixate on his wooden teeth. Even Sarah Palin herself manages to plow though a far angrier press mob without drawing blood (and looking like a million bucks, might I add).

Don't get me wrong. Certain reporter types CAN be assholes (Don't make me draw up a list). But if you're aching to lead the planet's last superpower into the Twenty-teens, you're simply going to have to deal with it. And telling your goons to let loose with the elbows and retorts is only going to make you look bad - especially in an age where a candidate's every wet fart is tweeted, Facebooked and blogged before those late night comedians even come into the office.  That's why we've taken unprecedented steps here at the Lenslinger Institute. We're issuing our first ever STANDING Schmuck Alert on Michelle Bachmann, not because we think she has a prayer of gaining office, but because of the fatwa she has apparently declared on the working media. That Mickey Mouse shit won't get you to the White House, lady, but it WILL get you top billing every night on TMZ. Here's hoping you enjoy the view.

Schmuck!