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Commentary on Bachmann: Farewell, my lovely

This article originally appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, June 6, 2013: The two big news stories of last week involved Michele Bachmann, a politically moribund congresswoman from Minnesota, and Phineas, a condemned dog in Salem, Mo. Critics maintain that the central character in each drama is a danger to society — a contention that their respective supporters vigorously dispute.

Bachmann, you’ll recall, was briefly the front-runner in the last presidential nominating circus staged by the Republican Party. She skyrocketed to prominence with an upset victory in the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll, then melted rather badly under the klieg lights before yielding center stage to a pizza salesman.

Most of the people I know were not unduly saddened by her recent surprise announcement that she would not seek re-election to her congressional seat when her present term expires at the end of 2014. That reaction leads me to conclude that most of the people I know don’t have a weekly column to write.

Love her or hate her, Michele was manna from heaven for the ink-stained wretch who found himself bereft of ideas with a deadline approaching. Rather than yield to despair, all you had to do was enter “Bachmann gaffes” into your preferred search engine and the piece would write itself.

A darling of the then-emergent Tea Party, it was she who relocated the start of the American Revolution from its native Massachusetts to New Hampshire to accommodate a primary election in the latter state, who mistook John Wayne Gacy for John Wayne and who encouraged puzzled onlookers to sing “Happy Birthday” to Elvis on the anniversary of his death.

Which is not to say she didn’t have a serious side. She vowed, for instance, that if she were president, the United States “wouldn’t even have an embassy in Iran.” The fact that said embassy had been closed since 1979 lent credibility to her pledge. At the time of this pronouncement, she was a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Much to her chagrin, Bachmann was often likened to Sarah Palin. In truth, the similarities between the women are too compelling to ignore. They reminded me of prom queen rivals who showed up at the big dance wearing identical bright red, sequined gowns. Each looked good in her own right but the stage simply wasn’t big enough to accommodate both of them.

In one column, I conjured the spirit of Raymond Chandler’s ace sleuth, Philip Marlowe, to investigate their origins. He concluded they were recycled Stepford Wives the GOP had acquired at auction. Now, both have abandoned the drudgery of governance, apparently choosing to pursue celebrity by other means.

Meanwhile in Salem, Mo., a yellow lab named Phineas awaits his date with the hangman. He bit a 7-year old girl on the stomach last June. The wound was hardly life-threatening but did draw blood and left a visible bite mark.

According to the police report, the victim’s mother did not want to press charges. The dog was subsequently quarantined for 10 days to ensure that it was not rabid. After it had been determined that Phineas had not been properly inoculated — through no fault of his own — but nonetheless did not have rabies, the town mayor reviewed the case.

Along with Phineas’ present legal difficulties, the mayor also learned of two other incidents in which he’d bitten children but the resultant injuries were deemed too minor to justify a formal report. Ultimately, he determined that Phineas was a public menace and ordered him to be euthanized.

The dog’s owners are steadfast in their contention that the animal is a loving family pet to their four children and a hazard to no one. They resorted to the one sure tactic for turning the onrush of events to molasses and filed a lawsuit on his behalf.

A year has now passed and Phineas remains condemned but healthy. In the interim, he has acquired the services of an attorney and a “Save Phineas” Facebook page, which presently has garnered more than 130,000 “likes.” He also mysteriously escaped from the city pound and just as mysteriously returned three days later.

He’s presently housed by a local veterinarian who, along with everybody else who’s had contact with the animal since the biting incident, agrees that he seems like a normal, friendly Labrador retriever.

It says here that any dog who has his own lawyer and Facebook page is an unlikely candidate for execution. Unless he takes a dramatic turn to the dark side, Phineas shouldn’t be reporting to that “Big Kennel in the Sky” anytime soon.

Ironically, the very thing that figures to save the dog — the passage of time — is that which condemned the congresswoman. Just as Batman needs the nefarious Joker to display his virtues, Bachmann relied on Obama to play her foil. Unfortunately for her political career, we’ve gotten used to him and he’s turned out to be a rather dull villain.

Well into the fifth year of his reign, D.C. still hasn’t been transformed into a caliphate. The atheistic-Muslim-socialist-commie dictator never quite materialized. In his place, we’ve gotten used to a well-intentioned, if at times ill-advised, establishment liberal who keeps appointing Republicans to top law enforcement positions.

Michele, who once looked like she’d give demagoguery a bad name, is now a forlorn superhero in search of a worthy adversary. As Raymond Chandler once put it, “Farewell, my lovely.”

M.W. Guzy
M.W. (Michael William) Guzy began as a contributor to St. Louis media in 1997 with an article, “Everybody Loves a Dead Cop,” on the Post-Dispatch Commentary page. In addition to the St. Louis Beacon and now St. Louis Public Radio, his work has been featured in the St. Louis Journalism Review, the Arch City Chronicle, In the Line of Duty and on tompaine.com. He has appeared on the Today Show and Hannity & Combs, as well as numerous local radio and television newscasts and discussion programs.