Michele Bachmann: a case study in delusion

Definitely the highlight of the 2007 State of the Union drinking game.

I'm not actually going to write a case study. This is why I dropped the social sciences and have gravitated toward the humanities: not so much with the case studies, much more with the wordy analysis. But anyway, on my way out the door this morning (as always, about ten minutes after I should've already left the house, but seeing has how I'd still been in bed ten minutes ago, that's just kind of how it goes) I glanced at yesterday's newspaper on the dining room table and saw this headline screaming up at me, just begging to be mocked: Bachmann says $2 gas achievable.

Dear Michele Bachmann,

I myself once said I could read Moby Dick in a weekend. Four months later, I finally finished that shit.* I was in a high school English class. You are in the United States Congress. Someone elected you. Dear lord.

But for laughs, you may as well just keep bringing the crazy.

Love and Jesus juice,
Lauren

"The question is one of supply and demand, and we want to increase the supply,'' M-Bach says. I've never taken an econ class because there are limits to my self-hatred, but I'm pretty sure that not only is that analysis painfully simplistic and inaccurate, but there's not actually much we can do as far as "increasing the supply" of oil. Congresswoman Crazytrain just wants us to drill some more. Dude, I bet she reads Parade in the Sunday paper and actually enjoys it. So I will direct her to this week's Ask Marilyn column by resident genius-for-pay Marilyn vos Savant:

It’s hard to believe that there were ever enough plants and animals on Earth to create the huge volume of fossil fuels that we’re now consuming hourly. Even though the material accumulated over millions of years, the residue one might expect from a sizable dinosaur might be a pint of crude oil. How is it possible that this much fuel was ever produced?
—Rich Neel, Brownwood, Tex.

The geologic processes began more than 3 billion years ago. When one considers that all this matter may be used in only a few hundred years—just a thin sliver of that time—one might instead find it hard to believe that we could use so much so fast.

Now, Michele Bachmann doesn't so much "believe" in newfangled haberdashery like "science" or "evolution," so let me try to explain this in a way she can understand:

THE EARTH'S CORE IS NOT ONE BIG SELF-REPLENISHING OIL REPOSITORY. IF YOU USE A BIGGER STRAW TO SUCK IT OUT OF THE GROUND, IT JUST DISAPPEARS FASTER. JESUS ISN'T GOING TO MAKE YOU MORE JUST BECAUSE YOU HATE GAY PEOPLE ENOUGH OR BECAUSE YOU NEED TO DRIVE YOUR 1036898759 KIDS AROUND IN BIG VANS.

(If you are still somehow blissfully unaware of the magic of Michele Bachmann, see this old but still awesome and relevant profile of her from the City Pages--you may have to refresh a few times to get it to display, but it's worth it.)


*It is a terrible book that is actually mostly about the particulars of 19th-century sailing and whale anatomy.