Bachmann's failed attempt at a joke: It's not funny because the harm is true

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09/19/2011

by Jeremy Hooper

As you've surely seen by now, far-right presidential candidate Michele Bachmann tried to laugh off "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno's questions about her and her husband's scientifically-discredited "ex-gay" programs with a lame joke about the state of her relationship with her colorist:

But here's the thing: We are talking about someone who, when trying to push a discriminatory marriage amendment into her state's constitution, accused colleagues who didn't vote for her biased bill of acting like soldiers whose complacency led to the Pearl Harbor tragedy. Someone who called the "sexual dysfunction" of gayness "part of Satan, I think" and suggested that same-sex marriage legalizes "sexual anarchy." Someone who claimed: “If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement." Someone who provided a blurb for "ex-gay" Janet Boyne's book -- one where she framed Boynes' supposed "change" as freedom "from the bondage of sin." All of these things (and the many more that I could mention) are deep, personal insults that go well beyond politics and cut right into the souls of certain human beings. These are dangerous words that cause real and demonstrable harm.

Yet here the Congresswoman thinks she can just laugh it off with a joke? Uhm, NO! The anti-LGBT "culture warriors" have harmed our discourse in ways that will take years, if not decades, to repair -- and we haven't even begun the reparation period yet! So she doesn't get to sit there, in the inarguably elitist positioning that comes from access to "Tonight Show" airwaves, and make jokes about her aging follicles. She can save such frivolity when she's in the hairdresser's chair talking about dye jobs. When we talk about the GOP contender's "social issue" work, the injected stain is much more serious.

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