Heh. Couldn’t help myself with that headline. For that is exactly the type of headline that would have ricocheted around the rightosphere had this have happened to a journalist at the hands of a Democrat. As it is, there ain’t much outrage on the right when a reporter is accosted by bodyguards of a Republican presidential candidate. Especially when that candidate is cutey-pie Minnesota governor Michele Bachmann.
That’s when things got interesting. Ross dashed after Bachmann, repeatedly asking whether she had ever missed a House vote due to a migraine. She ignored him. Ross pursued her into a parking area behind the stage. Her aides grew alarmed. When Ross made a beeline for the white SUV waiting to carry Bachmann away, two Bachmann men pounced on him, grabbing and pushing him multiple times with what looked to me like unusual force. In fact, I have never seen a reporter treated so roughly at a campaign event, especially not a presidential one. Ross was finally able to break away and lob his question at Bachmann one more time, but she continued to ignore him.
Afterward, I asked Ross — a hard-nosed pro who nevertheless seemed slightly shaken — whether he had ever been treated so roughly. “A few times,” he told me. “Mostly by Mafia people.”
While our sympathies go out to Ms. Bachmann for her migraines – a horrible affliction that should strike no person – the reportage of such should not result in the physical abuse of a reporter, even if that reporter is a craven snoop encroaching on a public figure’s personal space. On the other hand, Bachmann feels it appropriate, a la Palin, to be above answering questions about her policies and medical conditions that could definitely impact her qualifications to be president.
What Bachmann does not understand is that her physical affliction should be a bonus to her, making her seem even more the victim she tries so hard to paint herself as. I think she blew this one, like she has done with so many other opportunities in the past. She is not thinking clearly, migraines or not. Expect new portraits of heroic feats, painting Michele Bachmann as a fragile but patriotic warrior who fights the evils of liberalism, paganism and human logic with the determination of a wounded warrior. To the right, that makes her not just a martyr but a heroine of biblical proportions.
