From the Minneapolis City Pages:
Mike Parry: Is he Bachmann 2.0?
Senator becomes Minnesota's most controversial in just two months
By Matt Snyders Wednesday, Mar 31 2010
...During a discussion about a proposed bill that would allow undocumented workers to obtain drivers' licenses, the freshman state senator went off on a tangent, and made the case that non-citizens have no legal rights.
"I'm talking about the state of Minnesota saying it's okay—in the real world—that we just forget about the fact that you have to be a citizen to have rights," he said while arguing against the bill.
Murmurs rippled through the chamber. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing) took the floor next and pointed out that, yes, even non-American citizens are protected by the U.S. Constitution. At that point, the previously stoic room—in which sat about a dozen immigrants and immigrants' rights advocates—burst into applause. A gavel sounded. Order was quickly restored.
(CONTINUED)
Of course the people in question have rights. The Constitution recognizes and protects their rights--not because they are citizens--but because they are human beings. Parry's a hater; he is trying to follow in the tradition of Bachmann and advance himself via the hateful lies that the new conservative base wants to hear.
Back in 2006, as poll numbers showed first time congressional candidate Bachmann moving ahead of opponent Patty Wetterling, I was yelling at Minnesota Public Radio's Online Senior Editor Bob Collins. Collins' MPR had failed to report already documented instances of Bachmann's extremist views to the public, even though these had been made available to Collins and to MPR.
In our online November 1, 2006 discussion of Bachmann, Collins ignored the evidence of her various conspiracy theories and hateful bigotry. Instead of explaining why he refused to run stories on this, he kept asking me why Bachmann's numbers continued to improve in the Sixth District if she was nut and people knew it--his implication being that people in the Sixth District of Minnesota wouldn't vote an extremist nut into office. When other people wrote in to support me and point out that Bachmann was indeed a nut whose political extremism was being ignored by MPR and other professional media--Collins' response was:
"lunacy" "crazy" "extremist"
As defined by?
Posted by Bob Collins | November 1, 2006 2:37 PM
So I concluded that (on this particular subject) Bob Collins, Senior Online Editor for Minnesota Public Radio, was an idiot. He refused to even recognize--much less report--evidence of patent bigotry and extremism. It didn't even matter that I laid it in his lap prior to the election. It was clear that Collins did not consider Bachmann's extremist views of record, a legitimate news story.
Let's be fair. Bob wasn't the only willful idiot in the Minnesota media during that election cycle. But he stood out, because his comments indicated that he seemed to think that the Bachmann critics were the problem--not the Bachmann extremism, which was already of record even if it remained unreported by Minnesota's political media.
What's all this got to do with Parry story, above?
Here's something I wrote to Bob, in that same discussion four years ago, back in 2006...
It's too bad. (The "Bachmann is actually a political extremist" story is) a fascinating political story and MPR and the big dailies chose to ignore it; they blew their chance to blow her "mainstream Ronald Reagan conservative" cover, and they failed in their duty to inform the public about her extremism--for six years. What I am asking Bob is: why? Why did you spike the facts? The ones that show that this candidate is an extremist who views the world through a prism of fear and hatred and supernaturalism? Many people will pay for your mistake, because her political success will inspire political imitation.
And today, nearly four years after I wrote that-- we are paying. We are all paying for the mistake made by Bob Collins and all the other professional political journalists--respected reporters and editors who had platforms, who had the audience, who had the opportunity to keep haters, extremists and nuts out of office.
Bachmann did succeed, and her success as an extremist demagogue (smearing Democrats as anti-Americans, circulating lies and conspiracy theories, etc.) has indeed inspired imitation. And the imitators are now admitted to government, here in Minnesota. She's succeeded beyond the borders of Minnesota, too--Governor Tim Pawlenty just described Bachmann as one of this country's finest leaders.
I'd predicted imitators in other forums, too. The success of one extremist demagogue creates a market for more from the same mold. When extremist views are admitted to the table and are shown to pay off politically--even supposedly mainstream and senior politicians follow the demagogue, in order to co-opt the votes of her supporters.
Parry, with his remark attempting to link Democrats to pedophiles, is now in a position to influence public policy because he's a hater, and because our political media allowed the haters to get in, to build and strengthen a base, to be admitted to government. Parry is free to represent a policy position that misstates the law, that has never been law ("that you have to be a citizen to have rights.")
This can't be dismissed as mere ignorance, in light of previous Parry remarks. Styling himself "Mr. Conservative," Parry's made it clear in the past that he hates his political opponents, that smearing them and generating hatred toward them is a part of his political creed.
(Parry) offered a tweet that sounded less like the musings of an aspiring politician and more like the ravings of a backwoods militiaman, calling President Barack Obama "a Power Hungry Arrogant Black Man."
Rather than offer a mea culpa, he doubled down, telling the Waseca County News, "My opinion is that our president is arrogant and angry. The fact is that he is a black man. Now if the Democratic Party and the liberals want to take my opinion and the fact and mix it together and use it to bring a bad light about me and keep them away from discussing the real issues they can do that all they want. They're grasping for straws."
Parry subsequently scrubbed the more damning tweets from his account and issued an apology in which he blamed government waste for putting him on edge.
Parry understood that what he did was wrong. He scrubbed the remarks--but the remarks about Democrats condoning pedophilia and "a power hungry black man" are, in part, what made him electable. He is truly in the tradition of Bachmann: where you can't argue the merits of your own position, you fan the flames of hate while claiming to be a conservative, a defender of American tradition.
Bachmann, now a national figure, showed the way--she made it possible for this kind of rhetoric to become the rhetoric of Republican politicians. Our political media did not identify her to the public as a nut, liar, and bigot--and she was able to create a place at the political table for people who shared those kind of views.
When I arrived in Minnesota eleven years ago, people attempting to exploit this kind of hatred were not a regular feature in the state's government. But as Bachmann imitators spring up around the country: we're going to see more this, we're going to see conservative pundits and activists defending it, spinning it--even applauding it.
The first duty of the political media is to keep the haters and bigots out of government--by identifying them as such to the public, by documenting their remarks as these are recorded. When the Minnesota political media refused to fulfill their responsibility to out Bachmann as an extremist--a gate was opened, and the haters came in. To smear fellow Americans, to make political differences on the basis of hatred, to count race as an issue in policy differences, even to spread lies about the Constitution.
http://www.citypages.com/...
Next, another lie told publicly:
"We found out that the day after the bill was signed that all members of Congress and our staffs, we lost our health insurance in this bill," Bachmann told a Duluth crowd this weekend. "So we have to go into the government exchange to get our insurance. The only problem is the exchange won’t be created for another three years. So this is how messed up this is. We don’t even know if our own staff and our own offices today even have health insurance. We can’t even get an answer."
The Strib blew the whistle on this BS. No member of Congress or staffer lost health insurance. The Strib's ridiculously name "Hot Dish" department made a phone call and got the answer that Bachmann claimed Congress and staffers could not get:
Just to double-check that Congress members and their staffs do currently have health insurance, Hot Dish put in a call to the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM). OPM spokesman Edmund Byrnes confirmed that all federal employees are currently eligible for coverage under the Federal Health Employee Benefits Plan.
But that crowd Bachmann was speaking to in Duluth: they don't get the Strib, so they are probably relying on Bachmann's reputation for veracity for their understanding of the facts.
Next, more lies:
Bachmann: "The media tend to portray the people who are in the Tea Party Movement as toothless hillbillies, as rubes from the backwater who don't know what they're talking about."
That's absolute BS. The word that the corporate media has tended to use to describe the Tea Party rank-and-file is "populist." The reporter should have asked Bachmann to supply examples of media references to the Tea Party crowd as "toothless hillbillies" or "rubes." That would have triggered another quick change of subject.
And we have this one, from the same interview:
Bachmann: I didn't see any indication of being personal, against personal members of Congress.
Really? She was speaking to that crowd, and she didn't see this?
Or this?
Or this?
She is a liar to the core. And remember--because of her claim to represent Christian values in politics: all these lies go out in the name of Jesus Christ...
And I guess she didn't see that tea party guy spitting on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. But that's on You Tube, if she wants to see it.
Photos by Fibonacci Blue.