The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:30:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 With Ron Paul, Fighting for Minnesota http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/with-ron-paul-fighting-for-minnesota http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/with-ron-paul-fighting-for-minnesota#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:30:50 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/with-ron-paul-fighting-for-minnesota They are young—so young. Impossibly young for attendees of a political rally that does not happen on a street. The slowest moving of the thousand or so streaming into the Minneapolis Convention end up standing for Ron Paul's address on the eve of the Minnesota caucuses. But they're young enough to handle it.

A Ron Paul rally is an experience every cynical, bedraggled, politics-reporting cur should take in at least once in a career. Plus, in the GOP 2012 field, Ron Paul supporters easily hold the title of most bangable.

The event was set to begin at 7:00 p.m. The first "End the Fed!" chant started at 7:03 p.m.

When Gingrich, Santorum and Romney voters are all dead of old age, and when the current Tea Party's core has moved to a senility where the only bailout that concerns them is the one in their pants, Ron Paul supporters will still be, like, 43. The Tea Party desperately needs to recruit younger, fresher members. This realization was certainly why the first pre-Paul speaker is Walter Hudson, chair of Minnesota's North Star Tea Party Patriots.

The current mainstream of self-identifying Tea Partiers loathes Ron Paul because he's the guy who shows up with Jack Daniels to a party of 12-year-olds who are pretending to be drunk on O'Doul's. Paul's very presence makes a mockery of every Sarah Palin Tea Party "liberty" t-shirt, every Eric Cantor "freedom" bumper sticker and every bedazzled bald eagle. Paul's events expose the mainstream Tea Party for the fundamentally Christian conservative organization it really is—the kind of "party of the Constitution" that nonetheless wants to legislate bedrooms and can pretzel its reasoning into supporting the likes of Gingrich and Santorum, who are exactly those career political tumors of the D.C. system that the movement claims to despise.

Not that the religious right was absent at Paul's event. One man discreetly passed out business cards advertising "Live Christian Talk Radio" from the Liberty Broadcasting Network: "Can you handle the truth?"

But Paul didn't evoke the Lord at any time during the address. He didn't once mention "faith." Paul's rally speeches are unique not in what they mention, but in what they skip.

A Ron Paul for President rally is unlike rallies for other GOP presidential hopefuls in that, surprisingly, it is about the candidate himself. Bachmann. Gingrich. Those attending their rallies are often anti-Obama, not pro-candidate. Mitt Romney's very existence is a testament to this. There is almost no such thing as a truly pro-Romney conservative. Romney's the Rumsfeld candidate: you go to the election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Paul's full address only mentioned Obama's name once. Once! And that was a passing slam of "Obamacare" as a big government program. One breath later and Paul was back to landing blows on "both parties" and how "we need to clean house."

"It all comes down to the next 24 hours!" said Ron Paul's Minnesota chair, just before Paul came on. The campaign knows Minnesota's February 7th caucus could be its biggest day ever. Paul is out-fundraising the other candidates in Minnesota, and the Texas congressman must be giddy that polling during Nevada's Saturday primary demonstrated that those looking for the "conservative alternative" to Romney had passed over Santorum and Gingrich for Paul. What's more, Minnesota's wear-your-neighbors-down caucus system is the perfect composter for the vocal vim and vigor of Paul's supporters.

This is certainly why Paul's state chair passed up idealist talk of liberty or the Constitution in favor for a simple point a first-grader could understand. She even rammed it home by talking about "my favorite Youtube," which, it turns out, is Pacino's "inch by inch" speech from Any Given Sunday. (A damn good speech.) The crowd was charged.

Her only message was to make all present promise to, immediately after leaving, call one other person and convince that person to caucus tomorrow. Just one. Call one person, make him or her go with you. Got that, stupid? One person. One person to the caucus. All cheered. I bet every one of the thousand or so were determined to make that call.

I would have expected to see more doctor puns at a Ron Paul event.

There are 19 medical doctors in Congress (three senators); that's an increase from 15 in 2009. (Trivia: Five doctors were among the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence.)

Five of the 19 are Obstetrician-Gynecologists, and two of them are from Texas. They are Tom Coburn (R-OK), Phil Gingrey (R-GA) Michael Burgess (R-TX), Phil Roe (R-TN), and, of course, Dr. Paul (R-Atlas Shrugged). For some reason, Republican obstetricians abound. (My daughter was delivered by Grand Forks, North Dakota mayor and Ob-Gyn, Mike Brown—a Republican.) In fact, all but one of the 19 doctors in Congress are Republicans. The lone Democrat is Jim McDermott (D-WA)—and of all of the Congressional medical professionals, McDermott is the only psychiatrist.

One Ob-Gyn offered me a theory on this breakdown, in two parts. First, doctors are really just small businesspeople in a heavily regulated industry. As such, they are especially vulnerable to government meddling and the kind of mandates born of drop-ceilinged conference rooms, campaign donations and ideology, not blood-on-the-Danskos experience. This small-business ideology also ties into a hate for taxes. While most doctors make a good living and some make a wildly good living, often doctors make that income sweet-spot that's high enough to attract the worst rates, but not so high as to allow for fuck-you money. Guess who often makes just over that $250,000-a-year mark Democrats like to use in talk of raising taxes on the wealthy? Your doctor.

Second, the Ob-Gyn suspects that the specialty—unlike, say, orthopedic surgery—is most exposed to the vile parts of the nation's entrenched social welfare system, where many Randians see the proverbial bootstraps sold for cash to buy drugs. It's hard, the doctor argues, to not get just a little bit Ayn-Randy when facing a spirit-crushing daily grind of the tragedy that happens when pregnancy meets deep poverty. The doctor added that these are the Ob-Gyns that see abortion used repeatedly as a birth control measure—and then become activists about it.

Paul is very anti-abortion. But as an Ob-Gyn he's also characteristically "in limbo" about it. Grilled about performing abortions even in the case of rape, Paul's answer to Piers Morgan was one many Ob-Gyns who work without the luxury of it being a theoretical argument would agree with: "It is absolutely in limbo. Because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards… there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, I was raped and I'm seven months pregnant and I don't want to have anything to do with it.... It's a little bit different story."

But Paul's pro-life bona fides were not on display at the rally. Unlike the t-shirts and bumpers at many other conservative candidate events, there were no "If You're Pregnant, It's a Baby," "Abortion: Be Glad Your Parents Chose Differently," "Choose life. Your Mother Did," or "Kill the Rapist, Not the Baby."

Then there is tort reform. Outside abortion, nothing makes a physician want to go into politics more than having been needlessly sued two, three or ten times.

Here are the things, in order from least to most, that got the loudest boos during a Ron Paul rally:

4) Rick Perry
3) The National Defense Authorization Act
2) The "War on Drugs"
1) The Patriot Act

In a way, the worst enemy of a Ron Paul rally is Ron Paul. Paul had been speaking for somewhere around a half hour and the crowd was whipped into a Liberty lather, all ready to rush out into the unbelievably warm Minneapolis winter night and do exactly what Paul needs more than anything: GOTV (Get Out The Vote).

Instead, Grampa Ron continued talking for another 25 minutes or so. It's like a TED talk about the Constitution, after which a person just kind of wants to go watch some goddamn "Jersey Shore," because, Jesus, can you stop lecturing for, like, ten minutes? That Paul isn't the GOP field's multiple-divorcée is maybe the most surprising story of the 2012 primary. Maybe Mrs. Paul is deaf. [Editor's Note: Carol Wells Paul, Ron Paul's wife since 1957, is not deaf.]

So all of the momentum the event had going for the first half hour was then sponged up by Paul droning on about 9/11, the conspiracy of the Iraq War, SOPA and every other recent affront to Constitutional freedom and personal liberty.

Maybe Ron Paul just isn't used to being in a position to actually win a state. Maybe the Congressman's message has sat under the heat-lamp for so long even he doesn't really believe it's going anywhere in his lifetime.

Still, at the end, the crowd went bonkers again. Paul waved a bit but scurried offstage immediately. For an indie rock act determined to maintain an aura of anti-fame cool, this might be a good approach. But this is politics, where painfully begging adoration and support is pretty much the name of the game.

On his way off stage, Paul was glitter-bombed by a man desperate to prove that even the politically progressive can be miserably uninformed assholes.

Leaving the convention center was a little like leaving a mall movie theatre after the stores were all closed.

Young men and women signed clipboards, took photos together and grabbed complimentary copies of the Ron Paul Family Cookbook. It's a merry group that, despite Paul's final desperate attempts to rob them of their crazed energy, just might caucus the Congressman into the national conversation today. From down the hall, one of a foursome yelled, "Come on, let's go spread some liberty."



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

94 comments

]]> They are young—so young. Impossibly young for attendees of a political rally that does not happen on a street. The slowest moving of the thousand or so streaming into the Minneapolis Convention end up standing for Ron Paul's address on the eve of the Minnesota caucuses. But they're young enough to handle it.

A Ron Paul rally is an experience every cynical, bedraggled, politics-reporting cur should take in at least once in a career. Plus, in the GOP 2012 field, Ron Paul supporters easily hold the title of most bangable.

The event was set to begin at 7:00 p.m. The first "End the Fed!" chant started at 7:03 p.m.

When Gingrich, Santorum and Romney voters are all dead of old age, and when the current Tea Party's core has moved to a senility where the only bailout that concerns them is the one in their pants, Ron Paul supporters will still be, like, 43. The Tea Party desperately needs to recruit younger, fresher members. This realization was certainly why the first pre-Paul speaker is Walter Hudson, chair of Minnesota's North Star Tea Party Patriots.

The current mainstream of self-identifying Tea Partiers loathes Ron Paul because he's the guy who shows up with Jack Daniels to a party of 12-year-olds who are pretending to be drunk on O'Doul's. Paul's very presence makes a mockery of every Sarah Palin Tea Party "liberty" t-shirt, every Eric Cantor "freedom" bumper sticker and every bedazzled bald eagle. Paul's events expose the mainstream Tea Party for the fundamentally Christian conservative organization it really is—the kind of "party of the Constitution" that nonetheless wants to legislate bedrooms and can pretzel its reasoning into supporting the likes of Gingrich and Santorum, who are exactly those career political tumors of the D.C. system that the movement claims to despise.

Not that the religious right was absent at Paul's event. One man discreetly passed out business cards advertising "Live Christian Talk Radio" from the Liberty Broadcasting Network: "Can you handle the truth?"

But Paul didn't evoke the Lord at any time during the address. He didn't once mention "faith." Paul's rally speeches are unique not in what they mention, but in what they skip.

A Ron Paul for President rally is unlike rallies for other GOP presidential hopefuls in that, surprisingly, it is about the candidate himself. Bachmann. Gingrich. Those attending their rallies are often anti-Obama, not pro-candidate. Mitt Romney's very existence is a testament to this. There is almost no such thing as a truly pro-Romney conservative. Romney's the Rumsfeld candidate: you go to the election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Paul's full address only mentioned Obama's name once. Once! And that was a passing slam of "Obamacare" as a big government program. One breath later and Paul was back to landing blows on "both parties" and how "we need to clean house."

"It all comes down to the next 24 hours!" said Ron Paul's Minnesota chair, just before Paul came on. The campaign knows Minnesota's February 7th caucus could be its biggest day ever. Paul is out-fundraising the other candidates in Minnesota, and the Texas congressman must be giddy that polling during Nevada's Saturday primary demonstrated that those looking for the "conservative alternative" to Romney had passed over Santorum and Gingrich for Paul. What's more, Minnesota's wear-your-neighbors-down caucus system is the perfect composter for the vocal vim and vigor of Paul's supporters.

This is certainly why Paul's state chair passed up idealist talk of liberty or the Constitution in favor for a simple point a first-grader could understand. She even rammed it home by talking about "my favorite Youtube," which, it turns out, is Pacino's "inch by inch" speech from Any Given Sunday. (A damn good speech.) The crowd was charged.

Her only message was to make all present promise to, immediately after leaving, call one other person and convince that person to caucus tomorrow. Just one. Call one person, make him or her go with you. Got that, stupid? One person. One person to the caucus. All cheered. I bet every one of the thousand or so were determined to make that call.

I would have expected to see more doctor puns at a Ron Paul event.

There are 19 medical doctors in Congress (three senators); that's an increase from 15 in 2009. (Trivia: Five doctors were among the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence.)

Five of the 19 are Obstetrician-Gynecologists, and two of them are from Texas. They are Tom Coburn (R-OK), Phil Gingrey (R-GA) Michael Burgess (R-TX), Phil Roe (R-TN), and, of course, Dr. Paul (R-Atlas Shrugged). For some reason, Republican obstetricians abound. (My daughter was delivered by Grand Forks, North Dakota mayor and Ob-Gyn, Mike Brown—a Republican.) In fact, all but one of the 19 doctors in Congress are Republicans. The lone Democrat is Jim McDermott (D-WA)—and of all of the Congressional medical professionals, McDermott is the only psychiatrist.

One Ob-Gyn offered me a theory on this breakdown, in two parts. First, doctors are really just small businesspeople in a heavily regulated industry. As such, they are especially vulnerable to government meddling and the kind of mandates born of drop-ceilinged conference rooms, campaign donations and ideology, not blood-on-the-Danskos experience. This small-business ideology also ties into a hate for taxes. While most doctors make a good living and some make a wildly good living, often doctors make that income sweet-spot that's high enough to attract the worst rates, but not so high as to allow for fuck-you money. Guess who often makes just over that $250,000-a-year mark Democrats like to use in talk of raising taxes on the wealthy? Your doctor.

Second, the Ob-Gyn suspects that the specialty—unlike, say, orthopedic surgery—is most exposed to the vile parts of the nation's entrenched social welfare system, where many Randians see the proverbial bootstraps sold for cash to buy drugs. It's hard, the doctor argues, to not get just a little bit Ayn-Randy when facing a spirit-crushing daily grind of the tragedy that happens when pregnancy meets deep poverty. The doctor added that these are the Ob-Gyns that see abortion used repeatedly as a birth control measure—and then become activists about it.

Paul is very anti-abortion. But as an Ob-Gyn he's also characteristically "in limbo" about it. Grilled about performing abortions even in the case of rape, Paul's answer to Piers Morgan was one many Ob-Gyns who work without the luxury of it being a theoretical argument would agree with: "It is absolutely in limbo. Because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards… there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, I was raped and I'm seven months pregnant and I don't want to have anything to do with it.... It's a little bit different story."

But Paul's pro-life bona fides were not on display at the rally. Unlike the t-shirts and bumpers at many other conservative candidate events, there were no "If You're Pregnant, It's a Baby," "Abortion: Be Glad Your Parents Chose Differently," "Choose life. Your Mother Did," or "Kill the Rapist, Not the Baby."

Then there is tort reform. Outside abortion, nothing makes a physician want to go into politics more than having been needlessly sued two, three or ten times.

Here are the things, in order from least to most, that got the loudest boos during a Ron Paul rally:

4) Rick Perry
3) The National Defense Authorization Act
2) The "War on Drugs"
1) The Patriot Act

In a way, the worst enemy of a Ron Paul rally is Ron Paul. Paul had been speaking for somewhere around a half hour and the crowd was whipped into a Liberty lather, all ready to rush out into the unbelievably warm Minneapolis winter night and do exactly what Paul needs more than anything: GOTV (Get Out The Vote).

Instead, Grampa Ron continued talking for another 25 minutes or so. It's like a TED talk about the Constitution, after which a person just kind of wants to go watch some goddamn "Jersey Shore," because, Jesus, can you stop lecturing for, like, ten minutes? That Paul isn't the GOP field's multiple-divorcée is maybe the most surprising story of the 2012 primary. Maybe Mrs. Paul is deaf. [Editor's Note: Carol Wells Paul, Ron Paul's wife since 1957, is not deaf.]

So all of the momentum the event had going for the first half hour was then sponged up by Paul droning on about 9/11, the conspiracy of the Iraq War, SOPA and every other recent affront to Constitutional freedom and personal liberty.

Maybe Ron Paul just isn't used to being in a position to actually win a state. Maybe the Congressman's message has sat under the heat-lamp for so long even he doesn't really believe it's going anywhere in his lifetime.

Still, at the end, the crowd went bonkers again. Paul waved a bit but scurried offstage immediately. For an indie rock act determined to maintain an aura of anti-fame cool, this might be a good approach. But this is politics, where painfully begging adoration and support is pretty much the name of the game.

On his way off stage, Paul was glitter-bombed by a man desperate to prove that even the politically progressive can be miserably uninformed assholes.

Leaving the convention center was a little like leaving a mall movie theatre after the stores were all closed.

Young men and women signed clipboards, took photos together and grabbed complimentary copies of the Ron Paul Family Cookbook. It's a merry group that, despite Paul's final desperate attempts to rob them of their crazed energy, just might caucus the Congressman into the national conversation today. From down the hall, one of a foursome yelled, "Come on, let's go spread some liberty."



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

94 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/with-ron-paul-fighting-for-minnesota/feed 94 The Federal Campaign Giving History for Susan G. Komen Founder & CEO Nancy G. Brinker http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/federal-campaign-giving-history-for-susan-g-komen-founder-ceo-nancy-g-brinker http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/federal-campaign-giving-history-for-susan-g-komen-founder-ceo-nancy-g-brinker#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:30:25 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/federal-campaign-giving-history-for-susan-g-komen-founder-ceo-nancy-g-brinker

Sen. Richard Santorum (R-PA)

Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN)

Rep. Robert "Bob" Inglis (R-SC)

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

Grand Wizard Eric Cantor (R-Hell)

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Republican Leadership Council

Missouri Republican State Committee

National Republican Senatorial Committee

RNC Republican National State Elections Committee

Republican National Committee

Straight Talk America

Elizabeth Dole for President Exploratory Committee

Bush-Cheney 2000 Compliance Committee

Bush-Cheney '04 (Primary)

Afghanistan & Iraq Veterans for Congress PAC

Sen. Arlen Specter (?-PA)

Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX)

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Rep. E. Clay Shaw (R-FL)

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Boys Locker Room)

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL)



The Komen Foundation announced this morning it would restore funding to Planned Parenthood: "We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not."

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

8 comments

]]>

Sen. Richard Santorum (R-PA)

Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN)

Rep. Robert "Bob" Inglis (R-SC)

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

Grand Wizard Eric Cantor (R-Hell)

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Republican Leadership Council

Missouri Republican State Committee

National Republican Senatorial Committee

RNC Republican National State Elections Committee

Republican National Committee

Straight Talk America

Elizabeth Dole for President Exploratory Committee

Bush-Cheney 2000 Compliance Committee

Bush-Cheney '04 (Primary)

Afghanistan & Iraq Veterans for Congress PAC

Sen. Arlen Specter (?-PA)

Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX)

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Rep. E. Clay Shaw (R-FL)

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Boys Locker Room)

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL)



The Komen Foundation announced this morning it would restore funding to Planned Parenthood: "We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not."

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

8 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/federal-campaign-giving-history-for-susan-g-komen-founder-ceo-nancy-g-brinker/feed 8 Saul Alinsky's Lesser Known Rules for Radicals http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/saul-alinskys-lesser-known-rules-for-radicals http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/saul-alinskys-lesser-known-rules-for-radicals#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:50:48 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/saul-alinskys-lesser-known-rules-for-radicals Rule 23: Always separate your cause buttons for easier reading.

Rule 24: Layer for warmth.

Rule 25: "Birth of a Nation" is a great pre-action psych-up film no matter the political faction.

Rule 26: Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Liquor before beer, you're in the clear. Also, vomit is an acceptable protest projectile.

Rule 27: Ridicule is the most potent weapon you can use as a commenter on Brooklyn Vegan.

Rule 28: By substituting a Panera Bread's® Half Smoked Turkey Breast Sandwich on Country Miche with Steak Chili for full Frontega Chicken® Panini on Focaccia, you'll save 370 calories.

Rule 29: Picking a widely held nugget of conventional wisdom and then constructing an essay all about why it is completely wrong is good for pageviews.

Rule 30: If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, it goes down.

Rule 31: Never tip less than 15%.

Rule 32: In Chicago, Tavern on Rush is where you go to be seen eating a steak. The Chop House on West Ontario is where to go to eat a godamn steak.

Rule 33: If you have a big penis, always find a way to work it into the conversation. You will increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty amongst your enemies. Plus, if anyone challenges you on the claim, you have a golden opportunity to prove it. Nobody has ever disliked a guy with a huge penis.

Rule 34: Never wear black with brown.

Rule 35: You can never go wrong blaming the media. Don't worry about alienating them. They are deranged cannibals and will always come back for more.

Rule 36: Combining a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut is a perfect tactic to reach two consumer groups without doubling your fixed expenses.

Rule 37: If it's your first demonstration, you must toss back the tear gas.


Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

2 comments

]]> Rule 23: Always separate your cause buttons for easier reading.

Rule 24: Layer for warmth.

Rule 25: "Birth of a Nation" is a great pre-action psych-up film no matter the political faction.

Rule 26: Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Liquor before beer, you're in the clear. Also, vomit is an acceptable protest projectile.

Rule 27: Ridicule is the most potent weapon you can use as a commenter on Brooklyn Vegan.

Rule 28: By substituting a Panera Bread's® Half Smoked Turkey Breast Sandwich on Country Miche with Steak Chili for full Frontega Chicken® Panini on Focaccia, you'll save 370 calories.

Rule 29: Picking a widely held nugget of conventional wisdom and then constructing an essay all about why it is completely wrong is good for pageviews.

Rule 30: If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, it goes down.

Rule 31: Never tip less than 15%.

Rule 32: In Chicago, Tavern on Rush is where you go to be seen eating a steak. The Chop House on West Ontario is where to go to eat a godamn steak.

Rule 33: If you have a big penis, always find a way to work it into the conversation. You will increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty amongst your enemies. Plus, if anyone challenges you on the claim, you have a golden opportunity to prove it. Nobody has ever disliked a guy with a huge penis.

Rule 34: Never wear black with brown.

Rule 35: You can never go wrong blaming the media. Don't worry about alienating them. They are deranged cannibals and will always come back for more.

Rule 36: Combining a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut is a perfect tactic to reach two consumer groups without doubling your fixed expenses.

Rule 37: If it's your first demonstration, you must toss back the tear gas.


Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

2 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/saul-alinskys-lesser-known-rules-for-radicals/feed 2 This Man Will Embarrass Mitt Romney on National TV for You http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/this-man-will-embarrass-mitt-romney-on-national-tv-for-you http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/this-man-will-embarrass-mitt-romney-on-national-tv-for-you#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:10:02 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/this-man-will-embarrass-mitt-romney-on-national-tv-for-you "Look at my picture and ask yourself 'Would he really do that for money?' YOU CAN TELL I WOULD!"

That's how Ron D. of Loudon, Tennessee, described the seriousness of his eBay listing, which was called "I will embarrass Mitt Romney on national TV for money."

What would your high bid buy? "The possibilities," the seller said, "are endless… As long as it isn't against the law, I'll do or say whatever you want until someone comes and drags me away. And it will take a few of them. I'm a biggun." Bidding started at one penny.

The entirety of Ron's eBay listing read:

"Because of people like Mitt Romney, I'm havin' a hard go of it right now. I got laid-off like the rest of the world. It's not Obama's fault. It's because of landmines buried in the past by G. W. Bush and others likened unto his kind. If elected, Romney is going to be Bush Jr. all over again. When he visits Tennessee on the campaign trail, I'll fill a balloon with whipped cream, and while he's signing it for me, I'll stick it with a pin and bust it and get it all gommed up in that Clark Kent doo he's sportin', and it will all be televised on the national news. I'll sign a contract saying if it isn't televised on national TV, you don't have to pay me. Look at my picture and ask yourself 'Would he really do that for money?' YOU CAN TELL I WOULD! The possibilities are endless for the highest bidder. As long as it isn't against the law, I'll do or say whatever you want until someone comes and drags me away. And it will take a few of them. I'm a biggun. 6'2" and about 255 pounds. I'm going to start this auction at 1 cent, and see where it goes. Messages on this subject are not only welcomed, but encouraged, so drop me a line and tell me what you think."

We went to chat to learn more.

Me: What were you doing before you got laid off and how long have you been out of work?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I'm Joe The Plumber's cousin, Joe The Greenskeeper. I guess when people had to choose between golfing and surviving, they sold their clubs.

Me: Obama loves golfing. Have you looked for other work?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I took a job the day I was laid off, delivering pizza 4 nights a week. I'm also selling everything I can on eBay, and doing odd jobs. I never said I was starving or losing my home. Fortunately everything is paid for, but I'm still struggling on a lot less than i was making.

Me: Why Romney? Why not Gingrich or another candidate? Do you think Romney's plan to create jobs will help?

Joe The Greenskeeper: The auction offer is sincere. I chose Romney because he's made millions at the expense of others. The way Bain operated was to take over a company already struggling, pay each other HUGE management fees, consulting fees, and bonuses, knowing all along the plan was to run up the bills, bankrupt it all, and move on. Not only was he costing people their jobs, he was screwing the government on the bankruptcy deal. He's made millions doing this, up to 20 million in one day. So, no I don't believe in his jobs bill. Based on his past record he's much better and dissolving jobs than creating them, and I wouldn't vote for him if he was running for whorehouse pooper mopper. I think it's time for someone to make a few bucks at his expense. As far as people not taking me seriously, I don't really care. People used to call up Alexander Graham Bell and laugh at him over the phone. 

Me: Any serious suggestions?

Joe The Greenskeeper: Sure, leave the personal income tax where it is, the country was doing ok with that rate until the economy tanked. Lower the corporate tax to where manufacturing is profitable again, do that and you create jobs, create more jobs and more revenue will be generated, and eventually the cycle should catch up to itself and things will improve.

Me: Did you vote for Obama?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I did not vote for The ObamaLamaDing-Dong. He's a nice guy, and I find him sincere, but not right for America at the time, nor is he now. I'm tired of voting AGAINST someone. I want a candidate that i can vote FOR.

Me: Are there any candidates you think you might support?

Joe The Greenskeeper: Not even one of the Republicans are worth a vote. Nor is The O-Bomb. I'd vote for Pat Paulsen if he was still alive. Remember his campaign slogan? 'We've upped our numbers, now up yours.'

Me: The original Colbert. Sounds like Stephen can count on you for a write-in? You seem to have given up on the political process.

Joe The Greenskeeper: I've not given up on the political process forever, just until 2016.

Me: Do you think it will be better by 2016?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I don't think it will be better by 2016, but that's the next opportunity for America to do something about it.

After a day, eBay pulled the listing. Ron said it was "because eBay felt I wasn't really selling a product or a service, but a political opinion." Sounds like there's a good chance he might get back on and re-list his services for hire on eBay, if he abides by certain rules. But meanwhile, he still needs the money, so the offer stands. You can email him at rollingstoned@bellsouth.net.


Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

11 comments

]]> "Look at my picture and ask yourself 'Would he really do that for money?' YOU CAN TELL I WOULD!"

That's how Ron D. of Loudon, Tennessee, described the seriousness of his eBay listing, which was called "I will embarrass Mitt Romney on national TV for money."

What would your high bid buy? "The possibilities," the seller said, "are endless… As long as it isn't against the law, I'll do or say whatever you want until someone comes and drags me away. And it will take a few of them. I'm a biggun." Bidding started at one penny.

The entirety of Ron's eBay listing read:

"Because of people like Mitt Romney, I'm havin' a hard go of it right now. I got laid-off like the rest of the world. It's not Obama's fault. It's because of landmines buried in the past by G. W. Bush and others likened unto his kind. If elected, Romney is going to be Bush Jr. all over again. When he visits Tennessee on the campaign trail, I'll fill a balloon with whipped cream, and while he's signing it for me, I'll stick it with a pin and bust it and get it all gommed up in that Clark Kent doo he's sportin', and it will all be televised on the national news. I'll sign a contract saying if it isn't televised on national TV, you don't have to pay me. Look at my picture and ask yourself 'Would he really do that for money?' YOU CAN TELL I WOULD! The possibilities are endless for the highest bidder. As long as it isn't against the law, I'll do or say whatever you want until someone comes and drags me away. And it will take a few of them. I'm a biggun. 6'2" and about 255 pounds. I'm going to start this auction at 1 cent, and see where it goes. Messages on this subject are not only welcomed, but encouraged, so drop me a line and tell me what you think."

We went to chat to learn more.

Me: What were you doing before you got laid off and how long have you been out of work?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I'm Joe The Plumber's cousin, Joe The Greenskeeper. I guess when people had to choose between golfing and surviving, they sold their clubs.

Me: Obama loves golfing. Have you looked for other work?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I took a job the day I was laid off, delivering pizza 4 nights a week. I'm also selling everything I can on eBay, and doing odd jobs. I never said I was starving or losing my home. Fortunately everything is paid for, but I'm still struggling on a lot less than i was making.

Me: Why Romney? Why not Gingrich or another candidate? Do you think Romney's plan to create jobs will help?

Joe The Greenskeeper: The auction offer is sincere. I chose Romney because he's made millions at the expense of others. The way Bain operated was to take over a company already struggling, pay each other HUGE management fees, consulting fees, and bonuses, knowing all along the plan was to run up the bills, bankrupt it all, and move on. Not only was he costing people their jobs, he was screwing the government on the bankruptcy deal. He's made millions doing this, up to 20 million in one day. So, no I don't believe in his jobs bill. Based on his past record he's much better and dissolving jobs than creating them, and I wouldn't vote for him if he was running for whorehouse pooper mopper. I think it's time for someone to make a few bucks at his expense. As far as people not taking me seriously, I don't really care. People used to call up Alexander Graham Bell and laugh at him over the phone. 

Me: Any serious suggestions?

Joe The Greenskeeper: Sure, leave the personal income tax where it is, the country was doing ok with that rate until the economy tanked. Lower the corporate tax to where manufacturing is profitable again, do that and you create jobs, create more jobs and more revenue will be generated, and eventually the cycle should catch up to itself and things will improve.

Me: Did you vote for Obama?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I did not vote for The ObamaLamaDing-Dong. He's a nice guy, and I find him sincere, but not right for America at the time, nor is he now. I'm tired of voting AGAINST someone. I want a candidate that i can vote FOR.

Me: Are there any candidates you think you might support?

Joe The Greenskeeper: Not even one of the Republicans are worth a vote. Nor is The O-Bomb. I'd vote for Pat Paulsen if he was still alive. Remember his campaign slogan? 'We've upped our numbers, now up yours.'

Me: The original Colbert. Sounds like Stephen can count on you for a write-in? You seem to have given up on the political process.

Joe The Greenskeeper: I've not given up on the political process forever, just until 2016.

Me: Do you think it will be better by 2016?

Joe The Greenskeeper: I don't think it will be better by 2016, but that's the next opportunity for America to do something about it.

After a day, eBay pulled the listing. Ron said it was "because eBay felt I wasn't really selling a product or a service, but a political opinion." Sounds like there's a good chance he might get back on and re-list his services for hire on eBay, if he abides by certain rules. But meanwhile, he still needs the money, so the offer stands. You can email him at rollingstoned@bellsouth.net.


Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

11 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/this-man-will-embarrass-mitt-romney-on-national-tv-for-you/feed 11 The Cathovangelical: Rick Santorum's Quest for a National Abortion Showdown http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/the-cathovangelical-rick-santorums-abortion-election http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/the-cathovangelical-rick-santorums-abortion-election#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:10:20 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/the-cathovangelical-rick-santorums-abortion-election It's a fine how-do-you-do. Fifty years after Democrats struggled to prove that their candidate for President "just happened to be a Catholic," now they face the prospect of painting a Republican challenger as a dangerous follower of Rome's socially extreme dogma.

The ascension of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum to maybe-viable contender for his party's nomination and even a Pennsylvania Avenue address promises a number of rather unique possibilities. (Get ready for the "surprise" when he takes North Carolina.)

Most immediately, and a source of far more spiritual indigestion, a Santorum nomination would mean the most bloody dust-up over abortion and faith modern America has ever experienced. That's exactly what a lot of people want—Santorum included.

In what almost seems like an impossible fact, the office of President has been held by twice as many Quakers as Catholics. [Thanks to the commenter for pointing that out!] Santorum would be only the second ever.

According to The Pew Forum on Religion, 31% of living Americans were raised Catholic but only 24% currently self-identify as Team Pope—and that's with a boost from largely Catholic Hispanic immigration. Sensing a dwindling reserve of souls, Rome has launched a new $4-million "Catholics Come Home" campaign, with the goal of reactivating one million of the former faithful. And while 24% is not a voting base to sneeze at, Santorum is a new hybrid: a Cathovangelical.

Maybe because, to them, all far-right Christians look alike, much of the media often lumps Rick Santorum in with evangelical politicians. In some cases, Santorum is identified as "evangelical." Even The New York Times is not immune.

Another reason for the confusion might be the way evangelicals have lined up behind Santorum. His Iowa surprise has justifiably been credited to the "retail politics" of gumption and Alfani shoe rubber. But also in Iowa, where evangelical leaders commonly appear in the press identified by the term "kingmaker," Rick secured the pubic endorsement of Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats, the kingmaker of Iowa kingmakers.

This misidentification also happens because of his outspoken positions on "family values." Santorum's extreme positions on abortion, gay marriage and even contraception—a key "Catholic" giveaway—knit him in well with the ultimate social goals of many top evangelical activists. Some evangelicals even claim to see through Santorum's "ruse." After the Iowa caucus, David Brody, the chief political correspondent for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, wrote that Santorum "may technically not call himself an evangelical but he is definitely one when it comes to social issues. So don’t get too caught up in the title of 'Roman Catholic.' Santorum is an evangelical at heart." Santorum, outed.

All this confusion is not on account of Santorum, who regularly states his denomination. In a 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed from his column cleverly titled "The Elephant in the Room," Santorum began "How did my own Roman Catholicism shape my work as a senator?" On the way to an answer, he calls J.F.K. a "cop out." (This is a guy who once told the National Catholic Reporter that Kennedy's dismissal of his Catholicism did "great harm in America.")

The real elephant in any room that Santorum happens to inhabit is abortion.

Most politicians, even pro-life ones, like to speak about abortion as little as possible. Put a pro-choice/pro-life position statement on the website and move on. There is simply no truck in it. There is no wiggle room. It's dead on the stump. Few voters are on the fence about it. It cannot be spun. Say even the slightest wrong thing, your ass is grass. Why bother?

But Santorum? Santorum loves abortion.

* * *

According to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, in his 11-year span in Congress from January 1996 to January 3, 2007, Santorum "spoke the following words more than anybody else in the Senate: abortion, partial-birth, fetus, fetal, womb. He also uttered the following phrases more than anyone else: 'base of the skull,' and 'life of the mother.'"

During his tenure, Santorum alone accounted for over 12% of all mentions of the term "abortion" and over 18 percent of all utterances of "fetus."

In a general election against Obama, Santorum will no doubt go after the abortion subject, from the ramifications of "activist judges" to the limitations of science. Santorum has already started. In a January, 2011, interview with CNS News, Santorum criticized Obama for his opinion that a fetus is not a person under the Constitution. Santorum, blankly, said he found it "almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'No, we are going to decide who are people, and who are not.'"

Santorum's remarks were immediately criticized as racist by liberals, an outrage that was immediately criticized as despicable political correctness by conservatives, who see fetal life as the civil rights issue of the age. While it may seem anathema to political and media observers, a race-abortion showdown would be welcome by hard-right conservatives.

Once the litigious fringe, the Personhood Movement is now gaining nationwide recognition, if not victories. (Up next, Wisconsin.) While many pro-life candidates find the idea of personhood both a political bridge too far as well as a knotted mess of unintended consequences, they are forced to play host to the hardcore anti-abortion activists whose endorsements they depend on. For all its bravado and snarl, the Tea Party's power still runs a far second to the pro-life movement, in part because it often overlaps. (It's a misconception that the tactic of "primary-ing" an incumbent in one's own party was invented by the Tea Party.)

Even America's most popular entertainment is signaling to Santorum that the time is ripe for his cause. In just the last two months, two of the biggest box office hits with teen and younger audiences were Twilight: Breaking Dawn and The Devil Inside. Both had plots heavy on abortion. Americans seem like they're chomping at the bit to answer the deep philosophical question opened by the court ruling of the former generation: When is life?

Slowly, on Facebook and on the backroads of conservative web pages and radio shows nobody talks much about, a detail is creeping into the running "socialist" criticism of Obama: The president has been to church only nine times since taking office. Add that to the fact that a Pew poll found 43% of American adults don't know Obama's religion and this is a battle Obama should take seriously. It's certainly one where he is vulnerable—though only to Santorum.

* * *

Nothing will fuel a pro-life confrontation, and Santorum's popularity, more than liberals continuing to ridicule Santorum for how the family dealt with a son that died two hours after premature birth in the 1990s. Santorum has publicly described how the family took the dead Gabriel home, slept with him, and had their other children "meet" him. Throbbingly useless person Alan Colmes mocked Santorum for "playing" with the dead child. He later apologized. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson went on Maddow and called the behavior "weird." The blowback was immediate, intense and, more importantly, it even came from New England moderates.

Anyone who speaks with a number of obstetricians or neonatal nurses (such as Karen Santorum) will find the family's was far from uncommon behavior. Presented with the anecdote, birth center professionals soberly asked what the big deal was. (And with just such a tragic event within my own close family, I can say from personal experience that further "criticism" of Santorum on this subject will only create sympathy, as well as giving him the window he and so many of his supporters want to talk about their favorite issue.) On Fox's Hannity the night before the New Hampshire primary, Santorum brought up the criticism, and, like a machine, used it to plow into questions about the pro-life credentials of other candidates.

The follow-up effort that everyone can expect to see soon? That before meeting Rick, Karen Santorum cohabited with the OB-GYN founder of Pittsburgh’s first abortion clinic. It's a bear trap the Santorum campaign is begging the media to step in.

* * *

The most under-cited piece of journalism informing the 2012 election is Warren Cole Smith's April 5, 2008 "Divided We Stand" in the Christian publication World. In it, Smith chronicles "how several dozen leaders of the 'Christian right'" came together in New Orleans to discuss "missteps in the [2008] GOP presidential campaign."

There, Paul Weyrich (a founder of Moral Majority, Heritage Foundation and Council for National Policy), stood and admitted his gross fault in backing Romney simply on the issue of electability. The Christian right eventually fractured over supporting McCain over Huckabee. Meanwhile, the synod found Romney's repeated pleas for their support more useless than a box of Trojans and Mitt gained "only a footstool at the Christian conservative table, whose leadership increasingly was troubled over his flip-flops on gay civil unions and abortion."

When Mike Huckabee achieved mixed success courting evangelical power brokers in 2008, his pitch was, "The other candidates come to you. I come from you." The plea moved some, but as Smith described, others were distracted with the notion of electability.

When Vander Plaats endorsed Santorum in Iowa, he said the exact same thing: "Rick Santorum comes from us—not just to us, from us."

In South Carolina, Santorum just wrapped up the endorsement of hashtag-happy Gary Bauer, an evangelical former Reagan administration official, president of the Family Research Council and a senior VP of Focus on the Family, who now heads up the organization American Values and also serves the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel. He's important. After endorsing McCain in 2008, Bauer had declined to back anyone this cycle, but then noted that "it has become obvious that conservative voters are deeply divided about who should carry the banner for our values into the 2012 election."

In the coming months, when pro-Santorum forces use the term "values," they are not just talking about conservative pro-life/"pro-family" values versus liberal ones. They are talking about Romney and Mormonism. In his 2007 Chronicle piece, Santorum painted what might be a dire prophecy for a Romney-Santorum showdown in 2012: "Romney is a Mormon because he accepts the beliefs of the Mormon faith. This permits us, therefore, to make inferences about his judgment and character, good or bad." Indeed, an hour after tweeting his endorsement for Santorum, Gary Bauer sent a link to his new USA Today column. Titled "Why voters should apply a religious test," the piece is an astoundingly naked indictment of Romney's Mormonism, going so far as top basically compare it to being Wiccan: "After all, Wicca involves magic, spell-casting and sorcery—not exactly mainstream religious practices."

Mitt Romney is still the presumptive and even presumptuous Republican nominee, mainly because of this "electability." But what if Republicans, despite the "anyone but Obama" mantra, don't want to elect anyone as much as they want to force a showdown between Obama and a candidate as starkly different as possible? The running line is that conservatives are struggling with whether to compromise or to position for the best chance at winning an election, to have a candidate as much like Obama as possible to woo independents. But that storyline is four years too old. Conservatives already feel as if they compromised, to disastrous results, in 2008. The 2012 election is a do-over for conservative Christian leaders and voters.

Given how the Tea Party—which is now inseparable from the Christian right—has behaved so far, it's plumb stupid to think it wouldn't relish the chance to go down swinging with a principled candidate, bloodying everyone in the process.


Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota and bets Rick Santorum will be Romney's VP. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com. Photo from Santorum 2012's Facebook.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

70 comments

]]> It's a fine how-do-you-do. Fifty years after Democrats struggled to prove that their candidate for President "just happened to be a Catholic," now they face the prospect of painting a Republican challenger as a dangerous follower of Rome's socially extreme dogma.

The ascension of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum to maybe-viable contender for his party's nomination and even a Pennsylvania Avenue address promises a number of rather unique possibilities. (Get ready for the "surprise" when he takes North Carolina.)

Most immediately, and a source of far more spiritual indigestion, a Santorum nomination would mean the most bloody dust-up over abortion and faith modern America has ever experienced. That's exactly what a lot of people want—Santorum included.

In what almost seems like an impossible fact, the office of President has been held by twice as many Quakers as Catholics. [Thanks to the commenter for pointing that out!] Santorum would be only the second ever.

According to The Pew Forum on Religion, 31% of living Americans were raised Catholic but only 24% currently self-identify as Team Pope—and that's with a boost from largely Catholic Hispanic immigration. Sensing a dwindling reserve of souls, Rome has launched a new $4-million "Catholics Come Home" campaign, with the goal of reactivating one million of the former faithful. And while 24% is not a voting base to sneeze at, Santorum is a new hybrid: a Cathovangelical.

Maybe because, to them, all far-right Christians look alike, much of the media often lumps Rick Santorum in with evangelical politicians. In some cases, Santorum is identified as "evangelical." Even The New York Times is not immune.

Another reason for the confusion might be the way evangelicals have lined up behind Santorum. His Iowa surprise has justifiably been credited to the "retail politics" of gumption and Alfani shoe rubber. But also in Iowa, where evangelical leaders commonly appear in the press identified by the term "kingmaker," Rick secured the pubic endorsement of Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats, the kingmaker of Iowa kingmakers.

This misidentification also happens because of his outspoken positions on "family values." Santorum's extreme positions on abortion, gay marriage and even contraception—a key "Catholic" giveaway—knit him in well with the ultimate social goals of many top evangelical activists. Some evangelicals even claim to see through Santorum's "ruse." After the Iowa caucus, David Brody, the chief political correspondent for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, wrote that Santorum "may technically not call himself an evangelical but he is definitely one when it comes to social issues. So don’t get too caught up in the title of 'Roman Catholic.' Santorum is an evangelical at heart." Santorum, outed.

All this confusion is not on account of Santorum, who regularly states his denomination. In a 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed from his column cleverly titled "The Elephant in the Room," Santorum began "How did my own Roman Catholicism shape my work as a senator?" On the way to an answer, he calls J.F.K. a "cop out." (This is a guy who once told the National Catholic Reporter that Kennedy's dismissal of his Catholicism did "great harm in America.")

The real elephant in any room that Santorum happens to inhabit is abortion.

Most politicians, even pro-life ones, like to speak about abortion as little as possible. Put a pro-choice/pro-life position statement on the website and move on. There is simply no truck in it. There is no wiggle room. It's dead on the stump. Few voters are on the fence about it. It cannot be spun. Say even the slightest wrong thing, your ass is grass. Why bother?

But Santorum? Santorum loves abortion.

* * *

According to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, in his 11-year span in Congress from January 1996 to January 3, 2007, Santorum "spoke the following words more than anybody else in the Senate: abortion, partial-birth, fetus, fetal, womb. He also uttered the following phrases more than anyone else: 'base of the skull,' and 'life of the mother.'"

During his tenure, Santorum alone accounted for over 12% of all mentions of the term "abortion" and over 18 percent of all utterances of "fetus."

In a general election against Obama, Santorum will no doubt go after the abortion subject, from the ramifications of "activist judges" to the limitations of science. Santorum has already started. In a January, 2011, interview with CNS News, Santorum criticized Obama for his opinion that a fetus is not a person under the Constitution. Santorum, blankly, said he found it "almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'No, we are going to decide who are people, and who are not.'"

Santorum's remarks were immediately criticized as racist by liberals, an outrage that was immediately criticized as despicable political correctness by conservatives, who see fetal life as the civil rights issue of the age. While it may seem anathema to political and media observers, a race-abortion showdown would be welcome by hard-right conservatives.

Once the litigious fringe, the Personhood Movement is now gaining nationwide recognition, if not victories. (Up next, Wisconsin.) While many pro-life candidates find the idea of personhood both a political bridge too far as well as a knotted mess of unintended consequences, they are forced to play host to the hardcore anti-abortion activists whose endorsements they depend on. For all its bravado and snarl, the Tea Party's power still runs a far second to the pro-life movement, in part because it often overlaps. (It's a misconception that the tactic of "primary-ing" an incumbent in one's own party was invented by the Tea Party.)

Even America's most popular entertainment is signaling to Santorum that the time is ripe for his cause. In just the last two months, two of the biggest box office hits with teen and younger audiences were Twilight: Breaking Dawn and The Devil Inside. Both had plots heavy on abortion. Americans seem like they're chomping at the bit to answer the deep philosophical question opened by the court ruling of the former generation: When is life?

Slowly, on Facebook and on the backroads of conservative web pages and radio shows nobody talks much about, a detail is creeping into the running "socialist" criticism of Obama: The president has been to church only nine times since taking office. Add that to the fact that a Pew poll found 43% of American adults don't know Obama's religion and this is a battle Obama should take seriously. It's certainly one where he is vulnerable—though only to Santorum.

* * *

Nothing will fuel a pro-life confrontation, and Santorum's popularity, more than liberals continuing to ridicule Santorum for how the family dealt with a son that died two hours after premature birth in the 1990s. Santorum has publicly described how the family took the dead Gabriel home, slept with him, and had their other children "meet" him. Throbbingly useless person Alan Colmes mocked Santorum for "playing" with the dead child. He later apologized. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson went on Maddow and called the behavior "weird." The blowback was immediate, intense and, more importantly, it even came from New England moderates.

Anyone who speaks with a number of obstetricians or neonatal nurses (such as Karen Santorum) will find the family's was far from uncommon behavior. Presented with the anecdote, birth center professionals soberly asked what the big deal was. (And with just such a tragic event within my own close family, I can say from personal experience that further "criticism" of Santorum on this subject will only create sympathy, as well as giving him the window he and so many of his supporters want to talk about their favorite issue.) On Fox's Hannity the night before the New Hampshire primary, Santorum brought up the criticism, and, like a machine, used it to plow into questions about the pro-life credentials of other candidates.

The follow-up effort that everyone can expect to see soon? That before meeting Rick, Karen Santorum cohabited with the OB-GYN founder of Pittsburgh’s first abortion clinic. It's a bear trap the Santorum campaign is begging the media to step in.

* * *

The most under-cited piece of journalism informing the 2012 election is Warren Cole Smith's April 5, 2008 "Divided We Stand" in the Christian publication World. In it, Smith chronicles "how several dozen leaders of the 'Christian right'" came together in New Orleans to discuss "missteps in the [2008] GOP presidential campaign."

There, Paul Weyrich (a founder of Moral Majority, Heritage Foundation and Council for National Policy), stood and admitted his gross fault in backing Romney simply on the issue of electability. The Christian right eventually fractured over supporting McCain over Huckabee. Meanwhile, the synod found Romney's repeated pleas for their support more useless than a box of Trojans and Mitt gained "only a footstool at the Christian conservative table, whose leadership increasingly was troubled over his flip-flops on gay civil unions and abortion."

When Mike Huckabee achieved mixed success courting evangelical power brokers in 2008, his pitch was, "The other candidates come to you. I come from you." The plea moved some, but as Smith described, others were distracted with the notion of electability.

When Vander Plaats endorsed Santorum in Iowa, he said the exact same thing: "Rick Santorum comes from us—not just to us, from us."

In South Carolina, Santorum just wrapped up the endorsement of hashtag-happy Gary Bauer, an evangelical former Reagan administration official, president of the Family Research Council and a senior VP of Focus on the Family, who now heads up the organization American Values and also serves the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel. He's important. After endorsing McCain in 2008, Bauer had declined to back anyone this cycle, but then noted that "it has become obvious that conservative voters are deeply divided about who should carry the banner for our values into the 2012 election."

In the coming months, when pro-Santorum forces use the term "values," they are not just talking about conservative pro-life/"pro-family" values versus liberal ones. They are talking about Romney and Mormonism. In his 2007 Chronicle piece, Santorum painted what might be a dire prophecy for a Romney-Santorum showdown in 2012: "Romney is a Mormon because he accepts the beliefs of the Mormon faith. This permits us, therefore, to make inferences about his judgment and character, good or bad." Indeed, an hour after tweeting his endorsement for Santorum, Gary Bauer sent a link to his new USA Today column. Titled "Why voters should apply a religious test," the piece is an astoundingly naked indictment of Romney's Mormonism, going so far as top basically compare it to being Wiccan: "After all, Wicca involves magic, spell-casting and sorcery—not exactly mainstream religious practices."

Mitt Romney is still the presumptive and even presumptuous Republican nominee, mainly because of this "electability." But what if Republicans, despite the "anyone but Obama" mantra, don't want to elect anyone as much as they want to force a showdown between Obama and a candidate as starkly different as possible? The running line is that conservatives are struggling with whether to compromise or to position for the best chance at winning an election, to have a candidate as much like Obama as possible to woo independents. But that storyline is four years too old. Conservatives already feel as if they compromised, to disastrous results, in 2008. The 2012 election is a do-over for conservative Christian leaders and voters.

Given how the Tea Party—which is now inseparable from the Christian right—has behaved so far, it's plumb stupid to think it wouldn't relish the chance to go down swinging with a principled candidate, bloodying everyone in the process.


Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota and bets Rick Santorum will be Romney's VP. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com. Photo from Santorum 2012's Facebook.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

70 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/the-cathovangelical-rick-santorums-abortion-election/feed 70 It's Time for Michelle Obama to Get Pregnant http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/its-time-for-michelle-obama-to-get-pregnant http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/its-time-for-michelle-obama-to-get-pregnant#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:50:14 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/its-time-for-michelle-obama-to-get-pregnant

Worried about Barack Obama's reelection chances in the face of flagging support from his base, experienced Democratic political strategists, former White House administration officials and professional political pundits have called for the president to "go bold." Last week, former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich even predicted that Obama dump Biden in 2012 and make Hillary Clinton his new vice president: "Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base."

Only a Yale-educated statusquocrat's idea of "bold" would be to add another Clinton. I have a far more truly bold political strategy for 2012 (one based on absolutely no inside information): Get Michelle Obama pregnant. In other words, put a pregnant First Lady on the Democratic ticket for 2012.

Why do I say this? Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of not just a Democratic base that’s lost the "hope" and passion of 2008, but also of the only large group of undecided voters left: Grandmas. A Michelle heavy into her third term in October can give the reelection campaign that kind of (baby) bump. Here's why:

A lack of perceived sex appeal has never been Obama's problem. But what sitting president's image, hobbled with a flaccid economy and a impotent Congress, couldn't use a shot of virility?

A First Lady with child is an unlimited well for campaign stump speech jokes about a pregnant wife that speechwriters can punctuate with crushing moments of gravity about "securing the future for my unborn child." Just imagine the President speaking with trademark Obama gravitas while placing a hand on the swollen belly. At any given time, about least 3.3 million American women are pregnant. Assuming 2.8 million of them are of voting age, a pregnant Michelle Obama could be counted on for at least a 2.6 million "pregnant vote" landslide. Imagine the "Meet the Press" episode of December 2012 that mentions the "womb vote."

Not only will all of those "Michelle Obama has a fat butt" jokes go away, those who told them will feel rightfully ashamed.

By not aborting the baby, Obama will have improved his standing with the pro-life voters—a standing that currently could not possibly be worse.

Certainly there are some drawbacks to this strategy. For example, some might bristle at the suggestion that the First Lady of the United States be used as a broodmare to advance her husband's political prospects. To these I say, "Think of England." Or more specifically, "Think of Cherie Blair."

Blair was then 46. Michelle is 47. Which, as it happens, is only a year or so older than the Duggar family mom who just months ago announced that she was pregnant again. America loves the Duggars. With the Duggars having endorsed Rick Santorum, this is a perfect way to neutralize any Duggar bump. Of course, Mrs. Duggar (also named Michelle) just recently revealed that she suffered a miscarriage. While the Obama camp clearly could not plan (or wish) for such an unfortunate incident to occur, I would point out it would clearly be worth a 12 to 14 point bounce for his campaign. It might even reach 16 points should anti-Obama activists launch a "Where's the death certificate" action.

Finally, with Ron Paul now the sure GOP nominee after his unexpectedly high showing in Iowa, Obama will be loaded with charming, disarming debate jokes about how being at an event with Rep. Ron Paul is reassuring as Paul is an obstetrician.

Sure, earlier this year, President Obama told ABC News not to expect any more little Obamas, saying, "I think what Michelle's general view is, 'we're done.'" But Obama has not seemed particularly bothered by not keeping campaign promises before.

Obviously, Obama needs to get started on this campaign strategy immediately. By late October, Michelle would ideally be in her 38th week or later. My suggestion: The Lincoln bedroom.

Only one baby has been born to a president in the White House. In 1893, President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances welcomed daughter Esther. While I would not go so far as to say the Obamas should hint that they would name the baby Esther, it would almost certainly be worth another half point to a point with that important swing grandma demographic.

Obamas +1 in 2012. It’s a natural, even if the birth itself isn't.



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

52 comments

]]>

Worried about Barack Obama's reelection chances in the face of flagging support from his base, experienced Democratic political strategists, former White House administration officials and professional political pundits have called for the president to "go bold." Last week, former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich even predicted that Obama dump Biden in 2012 and make Hillary Clinton his new vice president: "Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base."

Only a Yale-educated statusquocrat's idea of "bold" would be to add another Clinton. I have a far more truly bold political strategy for 2012 (one based on absolutely no inside information): Get Michelle Obama pregnant. In other words, put a pregnant First Lady on the Democratic ticket for 2012.

Why do I say this? Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of not just a Democratic base that’s lost the "hope" and passion of 2008, but also of the only large group of undecided voters left: Grandmas. A Michelle heavy into her third term in October can give the reelection campaign that kind of (baby) bump. Here's why:

A lack of perceived sex appeal has never been Obama's problem. But what sitting president's image, hobbled with a flaccid economy and a impotent Congress, couldn't use a shot of virility?

A First Lady with child is an unlimited well for campaign stump speech jokes about a pregnant wife that speechwriters can punctuate with crushing moments of gravity about "securing the future for my unborn child." Just imagine the President speaking with trademark Obama gravitas while placing a hand on the swollen belly. At any given time, about least 3.3 million American women are pregnant. Assuming 2.8 million of them are of voting age, a pregnant Michelle Obama could be counted on for at least a 2.6 million "pregnant vote" landslide. Imagine the "Meet the Press" episode of December 2012 that mentions the "womb vote."

Not only will all of those "Michelle Obama has a fat butt" jokes go away, those who told them will feel rightfully ashamed.

By not aborting the baby, Obama will have improved his standing with the pro-life voters—a standing that currently could not possibly be worse.

Certainly there are some drawbacks to this strategy. For example, some might bristle at the suggestion that the First Lady of the United States be used as a broodmare to advance her husband's political prospects. To these I say, "Think of England." Or more specifically, "Think of Cherie Blair."

Blair was then 46. Michelle is 47. Which, as it happens, is only a year or so older than the Duggar family mom who just months ago announced that she was pregnant again. America loves the Duggars. With the Duggars having endorsed Rick Santorum, this is a perfect way to neutralize any Duggar bump. Of course, Mrs. Duggar (also named Michelle) just recently revealed that she suffered a miscarriage. While the Obama camp clearly could not plan (or wish) for such an unfortunate incident to occur, I would point out it would clearly be worth a 12 to 14 point bounce for his campaign. It might even reach 16 points should anti-Obama activists launch a "Where's the death certificate" action.

Finally, with Ron Paul now the sure GOP nominee after his unexpectedly high showing in Iowa, Obama will be loaded with charming, disarming debate jokes about how being at an event with Rep. Ron Paul is reassuring as Paul is an obstetrician.

Sure, earlier this year, President Obama told ABC News not to expect any more little Obamas, saying, "I think what Michelle's general view is, 'we're done.'" But Obama has not seemed particularly bothered by not keeping campaign promises before.

Obviously, Obama needs to get started on this campaign strategy immediately. By late October, Michelle would ideally be in her 38th week or later. My suggestion: The Lincoln bedroom.

Only one baby has been born to a president in the White House. In 1893, President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances welcomed daughter Esther. While I would not go so far as to say the Obamas should hint that they would name the baby Esther, it would almost certainly be worth another half point to a point with that important swing grandma demographic.

Obamas +1 in 2012. It’s a natural, even if the birth itself isn't.



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

52 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/its-time-for-michelle-obama-to-get-pregnant/feed 52 Michele Bachmann, America's Perfect Monster http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/michele-bachmann-americas-perfect-monster http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/michele-bachmann-americas-perfect-monster#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:50:45 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/michele-bachmann-americas-perfect-monster In a campaign field that includes a twice-divorced anti-gay-marriage candidate who took an oath against adultery and who believes in mining the moon, it takes a special candidate to stand out. Michele Bachmann is just that special.

As she prepares to caucus dead last in her "home state" of Iowa, Minnesota's 6th District Congresswoman insists she still has a chance to win the Republican nomination for president. Odder things have happened, like that time one day's worth of lamp oil lasted eight.

Like a lot of impossible things Bachmann says—from claiming the HPV vaccine causes retardation, to the fact Obama is grooming NASA "for outreach to the Muslim community," to the Alaskan wildlife refuge oil development being good for wildlife habitats because of "the warmth of the pipeline"—she probably believes herself. "We think people are going to be very surprised with what the vote is tonight," Bachmann said this morning in Iowa. But sometimes God calls on us to do things He never intends us to achieve. And when we pray to Him and ask why… well, He's busy helping Tim Tebow make the playoffs.

So what will God ask Michele Bachmann to do now that the Minnesota congresswoman has spent the summer telling the world she's an "Iowa girl?"

Bachmann is despised (and even sometimes loved) for her social positions. When the Congresswoman gets "glitter-bombed" at some event, it's not because last year the conservative leader of the Tea Party Caucus spent 46 cents per each mass mailing compared to the 22 to 28 cents spent by her Minnesota colleagues. When some joker programs a "Bachmann Crazy Eyes App," it's not because between 2008 and 2009, the heart of the financial crisis, Bachmann's staff salary increased 26 percent.

Bachmann, who has made it a campaign point to accuse her primary opponents of being bought and paid for, has lived the lavish life for a couple weeks nearly every summer at the expense of pro-Israel lobbyists. A new book, The Madness of Michele Bachmann, notes that Bachmann and her family "enjoyed free trips to Israel in 2007, 2008 and 2009, to the tune of $44,380." In 2009, a single trip for the rep and her daughter ran $19,414.74. All compliments of the American Israel Education Foundation. (Late last spring, Bachmann began a speech: "I am convinced in my heart and in my mind, that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States.")

A collection of reporting, insight and posts from the authors behind the blogs DumpBachmann.com and Ripple in Stillwater, The Madness of Michele Bachmann paints a finger-painting of a Congresswoman who has made a career of refusing to comply with both the explicit and implicit rules of "the game" even while making herself out to be a victim when opponents and detractors do likewise.

Though it does a remarkable job keeping the sarcastic, spiteful commentary to an absolute minimum, the book, like its authors, is biased. Yet its straightforward recounting of Bachmann's lesser known boondoggles—like personal rapid transit, or the third party commercial she unblushingly shot inside the state legislative chambers—raises a journalism conundrum: Is it actually bias to just state the facts?

To say the book is a hit piece would not be a misstatement. But it's a hit piece that reflects the authors' longstanding coverage of a politician who, even by the standards of the circus of late-stage American democracy, is a clown. (The founding author of Dump Bachmann was a Republican; another is a constituent.) While a lot of Bachmann's migraine-inducing mutterings are contained in "The Quotable Bachmann," the final chapter, the book's focus is well beyond the worn media trail of "crazy eyes" that launched one- and three-dollar-a-word profiles by Rolling Stone and The New Yorker and that controversial Newsweek cover.

For example, the book recounts Bachmann's abysmal voting record. While the average Congressional missed-vote percentage was 3.8 percent, Bachmann missed 11 percent of all votes (25th worst of 435 members). And that was before God told her to run for president. Between June and September of 2011, Bachmann missed 58.7 percent of all House votes. Since September, she's missed 91.3 percent. In a shocking display, Bachmann even missed the November vote "Reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings."

In the Bachmann style encountered over and over again in the book, this tardiness has not stopped her from slamming those who voted for the "gimmick" extension.

Madness is an amusing encyclopedia devoted to one candidate. But it is also a condemnation of our system.

Many know that Bachmann has never carried Stillwater, the town most often listed as her home. Less well-known is that the majority of her funding comes from outside her district. As the book notes, during Bachmann's first Congressional campaign, "78 percent of itemized campaign contributions came from outside the 6th." In the last quarter of that campaign, "a whopping 91 percent came from outside the 6th." Bachmann is a proxy for wealthy Evangelicals like Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, who, along with his wife, eavily supported Bachmann both personally and through Target's PAC until a huge outcry by gay activists in 2010. Steinhafel lives in Minnesota's 3rd district. But many like him from outside the state have also backed Bachmann, their own modern Joan of Arc.

Another major Bachmann funder from outside her district was Frank Vennes, Jr. Vennes, currently under indictment, was the largest gravy pipe for Tom Petters, the architect of a billion-dollar Minnesota Ponzi scheme you've never heard of because it was uncovered at the same time as Madoff's larger Ponzi scheme. The book's authors have been dogging Vennes forever and dedicate an entire chapter of the book to a convincing case for how Bachmann shilled for a presidential pardon for an earlier Vennes crime in exchange for massive donations to her campaign. Incidentally, larger-profile media have recently taken interest in Vennes. Showing just how influential (and generally uncredited) their work on Bachmann has been, The New Republic recently used one of the authors' photos of Vennes for its Petters-Vennes-Bachmann cover story. Having failed to credit much info in the piece to the Dump Bachmann and Ripple blogs, the magazine probably didn't think twice about using the photo. (The author has since sued The New Republic.)

But she is also, by the very design of our representative democracy, a proxy for her electorate. Every time one sees Bachmann, the words "Anoka School District" should come to mind. Anoka, a northern Minneapolis suburb, is a core of the Congresswoman's 6th district support and also home to nine student suicides in just two years, many of them gay, others rumored to have been gay-bullied. Last year, the school was sued by students, who allege its administration has negligently and intentionally created a hostile and anti-gay atmosphere. The school maintains a policy of refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of homosexuality. It's a policy driven by the locals.

Much of the Congressional (and school) district's atmosphere of homophobia is set by pro-Bachmann groups like the Parents Action League and the Minnesota Family Council, which, as the book notes, opposes "the health risks to students who are affirmed and labeled as 'gay'" and "pro-gay activist teachers." The Minnesota Family Council is also the organization behind November's ballot initiative that, if passed, will amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. One of the few bills Bachmann ever authored as a state senator was Minnesota's first effort to ban gay marriage in 2003. Several later bills also failed and the issue was finally made a ballot initiative in 2011 by Republican legislatures, the leader of which, Senator Amy Koch, just resigned over an extramarital affair with an aide.

Bachmann is not some fluke, an unraveled thread on an otherwise good sweater. She exists exactly as the framers of our democracy intended, to represent the primary interests of a select group of Americans.

It's a damning thing, this book. But it probably won't hurt Bachmann, whose reputation with her faithful is coated in teflon and smeared with a thick layer of Astroglide by home-schooled kids with soft hands. Even if the new book contained a naked photo of her participating in a lesbian orgy where everyone was injecting each other with HPV vaccine from Planned Parenthood, Bachmann would likely come out with about the same level of support. And that brings us to the worst possible outcome when it comes to Michele Bachmann: nothing happens.

Unlike Fred Thompson, there will be no reverse mortgage shilling. There will be no too-smart-by-half pistachios commercial. Those who say she'll join Fox News like Huckabee don't understand Bachmann. Huckabee is generally a nice guy. Nobody, even grumpy old people, want to watch an hour of the kind of fire and brimstone Bachmann sells. For that they have church.

Bachmann has committed to not running for her old seat in 2012. Bachmann frames this commitment as an issue of principle. It's really an issue of Minnesota law, which forbids candidates from simultaneously campaigning for dual federal offices. When Bachmann finally loses enough primaries, or runs out of money, she can still return to the 6th where her deadline to declare for her position is June 5th. It's worth noting Bachmann's recent behavior has not warmed her already chilly relationship with Minnesota's Republican Party, which, anyway, is now a smoking crater of debt, scandal, rudderlessness.

Despite spending like a drunken sailor, both of Bachmann's last two elections have been won thanks in part to what's been called "The Anderson Effect," in which any candidate named "Anderson" on any Minnesota ballot inexplicably pulls a large number of voters. In Minnesota's 6th, that Anderson is Independence Party candidate Bob Anderson. In both 2008 and 2010, Bob Anderson sucked votes from Bachmann's opponent.

In 2008, she was sent back to Congress with only 46 percent of her district's votes. (Coincidentally, the latest Rasmussen poll puts President Obama's approval rating at 46 percent.) In 2010, in the greatest Republican election landslide of all time, Bachmann garnered 52 percent of the 6th. To accomplish this, she spent $8.5 million, more than any other member of Congress. It was the first time Bachmann managed to get more than 50 percent of her district's votes.

When Bachmann and crusaders slouch home from their defeat in far-off lands, they may find the kingdom much changed. On January 4th, a five judge panel will begin hearing arguments about the proposed changes to Minnesota's congressional districts, as the Republican legislature and Democrat governor having been unable to reach agreement. Depending on how the justices side, Bachmann could come away sharing a district with another incumbent Republican. She might also land in a shifted district with a strong incumbent Congressional Democrat. Then there's the open race against Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a popular senator with Minnesotans.

But since Bachmann has been pitching herself as a job-creating small business owner, one would hope she could always fall back on that.

Bachmann is a national clown and a global embarrassment, an extremist so foul that she poses nearly as much of a threat to Republican legislators as to Democratic ones. She's a Republican bomb-thrower who forgets the throwing part. Both parties will certainly be glad to be rid of her. But Bachmann's repose only means the absence of the messenger, not the absence of those who paid for the message.

Photo via Bachmann 2012 Facebook page.



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

44 comments

]]> In a campaign field that includes a twice-divorced anti-gay-marriage candidate who took an oath against adultery and who believes in mining the moon, it takes a special candidate to stand out. Michele Bachmann is just that special.

As she prepares to caucus dead last in her "home state" of Iowa, Minnesota's 6th District Congresswoman insists she still has a chance to win the Republican nomination for president. Odder things have happened, like that time one day's worth of lamp oil lasted eight.

Like a lot of impossible things Bachmann says—from claiming the HPV vaccine causes retardation, to the fact Obama is grooming NASA "for outreach to the Muslim community," to the Alaskan wildlife refuge oil development being good for wildlife habitats because of "the warmth of the pipeline"—she probably believes herself. "We think people are going to be very surprised with what the vote is tonight," Bachmann said this morning in Iowa. But sometimes God calls on us to do things He never intends us to achieve. And when we pray to Him and ask why… well, He's busy helping Tim Tebow make the playoffs.

So what will God ask Michele Bachmann to do now that the Minnesota congresswoman has spent the summer telling the world she's an "Iowa girl?"

Bachmann is despised (and even sometimes loved) for her social positions. When the Congresswoman gets "glitter-bombed" at some event, it's not because last year the conservative leader of the Tea Party Caucus spent 46 cents per each mass mailing compared to the 22 to 28 cents spent by her Minnesota colleagues. When some joker programs a "Bachmann Crazy Eyes App," it's not because between 2008 and 2009, the heart of the financial crisis, Bachmann's staff salary increased 26 percent.

Bachmann, who has made it a campaign point to accuse her primary opponents of being bought and paid for, has lived the lavish life for a couple weeks nearly every summer at the expense of pro-Israel lobbyists. A new book, The Madness of Michele Bachmann, notes that Bachmann and her family "enjoyed free trips to Israel in 2007, 2008 and 2009, to the tune of $44,380." In 2009, a single trip for the rep and her daughter ran $19,414.74. All compliments of the American Israel Education Foundation. (Late last spring, Bachmann began a speech: "I am convinced in my heart and in my mind, that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States.")

A collection of reporting, insight and posts from the authors behind the blogs DumpBachmann.com and Ripple in Stillwater, The Madness of Michele Bachmann paints a finger-painting of a Congresswoman who has made a career of refusing to comply with both the explicit and implicit rules of "the game" even while making herself out to be a victim when opponents and detractors do likewise.

Though it does a remarkable job keeping the sarcastic, spiteful commentary to an absolute minimum, the book, like its authors, is biased. Yet its straightforward recounting of Bachmann's lesser known boondoggles—like personal rapid transit, or the third party commercial she unblushingly shot inside the state legislative chambers—raises a journalism conundrum: Is it actually bias to just state the facts?

To say the book is a hit piece would not be a misstatement. But it's a hit piece that reflects the authors' longstanding coverage of a politician who, even by the standards of the circus of late-stage American democracy, is a clown. (The founding author of Dump Bachmann was a Republican; another is a constituent.) While a lot of Bachmann's migraine-inducing mutterings are contained in "The Quotable Bachmann," the final chapter, the book's focus is well beyond the worn media trail of "crazy eyes" that launched one- and three-dollar-a-word profiles by Rolling Stone and The New Yorker and that controversial Newsweek cover.

For example, the book recounts Bachmann's abysmal voting record. While the average Congressional missed-vote percentage was 3.8 percent, Bachmann missed 11 percent of all votes (25th worst of 435 members). And that was before God told her to run for president. Between June and September of 2011, Bachmann missed 58.7 percent of all House votes. Since September, she's missed 91.3 percent. In a shocking display, Bachmann even missed the November vote "Reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings."

In the Bachmann style encountered over and over again in the book, this tardiness has not stopped her from slamming those who voted for the "gimmick" extension.

Madness is an amusing encyclopedia devoted to one candidate. But it is also a condemnation of our system.

Many know that Bachmann has never carried Stillwater, the town most often listed as her home. Less well-known is that the majority of her funding comes from outside her district. As the book notes, during Bachmann's first Congressional campaign, "78 percent of itemized campaign contributions came from outside the 6th." In the last quarter of that campaign, "a whopping 91 percent came from outside the 6th." Bachmann is a proxy for wealthy Evangelicals like Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, who, along with his wife, eavily supported Bachmann both personally and through Target's PAC until a huge outcry by gay activists in 2010. Steinhafel lives in Minnesota's 3rd district. But many like him from outside the state have also backed Bachmann, their own modern Joan of Arc.

Another major Bachmann funder from outside her district was Frank Vennes, Jr. Vennes, currently under indictment, was the largest gravy pipe for Tom Petters, the architect of a billion-dollar Minnesota Ponzi scheme you've never heard of because it was uncovered at the same time as Madoff's larger Ponzi scheme. The book's authors have been dogging Vennes forever and dedicate an entire chapter of the book to a convincing case for how Bachmann shilled for a presidential pardon for an earlier Vennes crime in exchange for massive donations to her campaign. Incidentally, larger-profile media have recently taken interest in Vennes. Showing just how influential (and generally uncredited) their work on Bachmann has been, The New Republic recently used one of the authors' photos of Vennes for its Petters-Vennes-Bachmann cover story. Having failed to credit much info in the piece to the Dump Bachmann and Ripple blogs, the magazine probably didn't think twice about using the photo. (The author has since sued The New Republic.)

But she is also, by the very design of our representative democracy, a proxy for her electorate. Every time one sees Bachmann, the words "Anoka School District" should come to mind. Anoka, a northern Minneapolis suburb, is a core of the Congresswoman's 6th district support and also home to nine student suicides in just two years, many of them gay, others rumored to have been gay-bullied. Last year, the school was sued by students, who allege its administration has negligently and intentionally created a hostile and anti-gay atmosphere. The school maintains a policy of refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of homosexuality. It's a policy driven by the locals.

Much of the Congressional (and school) district's atmosphere of homophobia is set by pro-Bachmann groups like the Parents Action League and the Minnesota Family Council, which, as the book notes, opposes "the health risks to students who are affirmed and labeled as 'gay'" and "pro-gay activist teachers." The Minnesota Family Council is also the organization behind November's ballot initiative that, if passed, will amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. One of the few bills Bachmann ever authored as a state senator was Minnesota's first effort to ban gay marriage in 2003. Several later bills also failed and the issue was finally made a ballot initiative in 2011 by Republican legislatures, the leader of which, Senator Amy Koch, just resigned over an extramarital affair with an aide.

Bachmann is not some fluke, an unraveled thread on an otherwise good sweater. She exists exactly as the framers of our democracy intended, to represent the primary interests of a select group of Americans.

It's a damning thing, this book. But it probably won't hurt Bachmann, whose reputation with her faithful is coated in teflon and smeared with a thick layer of Astroglide by home-schooled kids with soft hands. Even if the new book contained a naked photo of her participating in a lesbian orgy where everyone was injecting each other with HPV vaccine from Planned Parenthood, Bachmann would likely come out with about the same level of support. And that brings us to the worst possible outcome when it comes to Michele Bachmann: nothing happens.

Unlike Fred Thompson, there will be no reverse mortgage shilling. There will be no too-smart-by-half pistachios commercial. Those who say she'll join Fox News like Huckabee don't understand Bachmann. Huckabee is generally a nice guy. Nobody, even grumpy old people, want to watch an hour of the kind of fire and brimstone Bachmann sells. For that they have church.

Bachmann has committed to not running for her old seat in 2012. Bachmann frames this commitment as an issue of principle. It's really an issue of Minnesota law, which forbids candidates from simultaneously campaigning for dual federal offices. When Bachmann finally loses enough primaries, or runs out of money, she can still return to the 6th where her deadline to declare for her position is June 5th. It's worth noting Bachmann's recent behavior has not warmed her already chilly relationship with Minnesota's Republican Party, which, anyway, is now a smoking crater of debt, scandal, rudderlessness.

Despite spending like a drunken sailor, both of Bachmann's last two elections have been won thanks in part to what's been called "The Anderson Effect," in which any candidate named "Anderson" on any Minnesota ballot inexplicably pulls a large number of voters. In Minnesota's 6th, that Anderson is Independence Party candidate Bob Anderson. In both 2008 and 2010, Bob Anderson sucked votes from Bachmann's opponent.

In 2008, she was sent back to Congress with only 46 percent of her district's votes. (Coincidentally, the latest Rasmussen poll puts President Obama's approval rating at 46 percent.) In 2010, in the greatest Republican election landslide of all time, Bachmann garnered 52 percent of the 6th. To accomplish this, she spent $8.5 million, more than any other member of Congress. It was the first time Bachmann managed to get more than 50 percent of her district's votes.

When Bachmann and crusaders slouch home from their defeat in far-off lands, they may find the kingdom much changed. On January 4th, a five judge panel will begin hearing arguments about the proposed changes to Minnesota's congressional districts, as the Republican legislature and Democrat governor having been unable to reach agreement. Depending on how the justices side, Bachmann could come away sharing a district with another incumbent Republican. She might also land in a shifted district with a strong incumbent Congressional Democrat. Then there's the open race against Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a popular senator with Minnesotans.

But since Bachmann has been pitching herself as a job-creating small business owner, one would hope she could always fall back on that.

Bachmann is a national clown and a global embarrassment, an extremist so foul that she poses nearly as much of a threat to Republican legislators as to Democratic ones. She's a Republican bomb-thrower who forgets the throwing part. Both parties will certainly be glad to be rid of her. But Bachmann's repose only means the absence of the messenger, not the absence of those who paid for the message.

Photo via Bachmann 2012 Facebook page.



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

44 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/michele-bachmann-americas-perfect-monster/feed 44 "Not So Pure Michigan": The Man Who Hates Wisconsin and Ohio http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/not-so-pure-michigan-the-man-who-hates-wisconsin-and-ohio http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/not-so-pure-michigan-the-man-who-hates-wisconsin-and-ohio#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:00:21 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/not-so-pure-michigan-the-man-who-hates-wisconsin-and-ohio When Wisconsin's tourism bureau launched a war on its neighbor by suggesting Wisconsin is actually the "mitten state," Michigan saw an unlikely ally come to its defense: a 30-something video pro named John Kerfoot.

Since 2006, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has run a branding campaign titled "Pure Michigan." A few years into the campaign, Kerfoot took his camera to nearby Lake St. Clair to shoot a Pure Michigan spoof about the lake's scourge of fish flies, which appear every year in swarms so great that, as the voiceover goes, "visitors are left wondering, 'Why the hell do I live in Michigan?'" (Insert blanket headphones-at-work warning for the videos here.) The video logged nearly 500,000 views. Kerfoot made a few more Pure Michigan spoofs and became a regional sensation. Last year he said he'd retire. He hasn't. And he probably won't.

Abe Sauer: Your videos have a combined 9.6 million views. That's almost equal to the entire population of Michigan. How often do you run into people who know you?

John Kerfoot: Ninety-nine percent of people who know my videos don't know me by face, since I'm on the other end of the camera and my voiceover is... well, not exactly how I talk. That voiceover is trying to be all soft and whispery into the microphone, like I'm about to make love to it. I usually don't talk that way to people in public. If I did, I'd probably be in jail. Most people don't know—but my friends will let them. My best friend is a lawyer and he thinks he's Jerry Maguire and is my agent or something, and as soon as I meet somebody his first words are "Hey, do you know those Pure Michigan spoofs…?" It's somewhere between funny and annoying.

Help your friend help you! Have the videos led to any further work or development deals?

For the most part, no. I have had a couple small gigs pop up because of the popularity of the Pure Michigan videos, but for the most part they were just small video projects. What I typically get is messages from groups or small businesses that say "Hey, we love your videos and we think it would be great if you did a video on our business. There is no pay, but it would be a good opportunity for you…" First off, I want to say to them, "Look, I can't go from making a video about the Detroit Lions or the whole state of Ohio to making a video about your power-washing business that has 30 clients."

That would basically kill the whole thing, like I sold out… and selling out for no money? Maybe my saying "I'm broke" has led people to think I don't care about money. Well, I do. I like to get paid for my work, and if I'm not, then I'm just going to go make something because I was inspired to, because I think it's funny. And usually doing something self-serving for somebody's business... usually not funny.

There are now 20 videos in the "Not So Pure Michigan" collection. Young Michigan natives, especially the diaspora, have almost certainly seen one or passed one around a Facebook page.

Those non-natives who may have some experience with the spoofs probably have done so through the installment "Pure Michigan: U of M Football."

Shortly after you did the first Pure Michigan spoof, you said nobody should bother suing you because you were "too broke.” With over 9 million views, have you managed to make any money off ad revenue?

I'm still broke. I've made a little off of the ad-revenue over the past year and a half, but not enough to live on. Not enough to buy a new car either. But good side money, if that gives you an idea. Truth be told, the amount of work I've put it on the videos in total was really not that much. They don't take me that long to do. So for the time spent, the payoff has been nice. But obviously getting money was never the intention. In fact, my most recent video I was denied ad revenue sharing because I showed little kids drinking beers and a little kid giving the middle finger. That is frustrating because the video is getting a good amount of views and I will see no cash from it. Ah well, it's still more of a high just getting good feedback. But money is nice too. Someday...

That's a lesson for filmmakers or young emerging assholes: always be first. It's not about making the best video sometimes; it's about being the first one.
What's the process for making the videos? Do you script it? Storyboards?

The fun of doing the Pure Michigan spoofs was that I never really knew what I was going to get—except with my latest video. With the latest video on Wisconsin & Ohio, the idea came to mock the whole Mitten controversy and I knew I had to act quick and I didn't have the time to drive to Wisconsin and so I just used pictures and old footage I had. So in that regard it was rushed and lazy, but had I taken another day or two it would have been fairly dead. That's a lesson for filmmakers or young emerging assholes: always be first. It's not about making the best video sometimes; it's about being the first one.

But anyway, with the rest of the videos I've gone out and shot renegade style. Half the time I would go to a location having some ideas of what I wanted, whether it's a Wal-Mart Wolverine-looking dude, or two gay men in Saugatuck holding hands, or fishflies. But even then the fun was seeing things you'd never expect that would give me ideas as I'm shooting. So the quick answer is there was no storyboarding, and the scripting actually comes after I shoot the video. I look at what I have and then write it from the visuals. The real Pure Michigan videos have big crews and cranes and are done commercial style. In that way, mine is documentary, to keep it real... and because I'm lazy.

One reason Not So Pure Michigan is not well known outside Michigan is its focus on detailed places outsiders have no experience with. The Wolverines football video was accessible only because, after Ohio State, Michigan football is the most despised program in the Big 10. But who outside the state even knows where Royal Oak is, let alone enough about it to enjoy a lampoon of it?

After your video on the city of Royal Oak, its city commissioner poo-pooed the effort, calling it something "eighth-graders might think was hysterical." You seemed to take this as not so much a compliment but as a statement of fact.

I am so glad you asked about this because the newspaper didn't quote me correctly on what I said and I didn't understand until later as to why. So I made the video on Royal Oak, basically calling everybody in the city a "douchebag." The reporter called me, and I could tell she was not a fan of the videos at all but was doing a story (sided with Royal Oak City Commissioner). I was picking up her vibe and was kind of tired from working all night, when she said, "The Royal Oak City Commissioner has said that your videos are just amateurish and not funny. What do you have to say about that?" My reply was, "Well, he's probably a douchebag, too. Please print that." They didn't. I forget what they ended up printing, probably some afterthought I had to try and not sound like as big of an asshole, but my first reaction was really what I thought and meant. Found out later that the word "douchebag" couldn't be printed. So, yeah, I guess my videos aren't the only thing at the maturity level on an 8th grader. Did I mention I love Beavis & Butthead?

Do you have groupies?

No, I do not have groupies. Although there was a time, probably a few months after the videos started getting hot, and I was at a popular bar in the Detroit area and a girl recognized me from a video that I was in, where I was playing a disabled lawyer. I never thought that would score me lady attention. Anyway, a few of her friends came over, and I noticed a few feet behind me was Detroit Lions player Ndamukong Suh. He was just standing there with a pack of great looking girls surrounding him, basically standing in line to talk to him. And I'm across from him. So, basically, there was a pack of hot girls around him, and a pack of nice girls (and a couple dudes) around me. That's about as cool as it ever got. But, no, I don't really have any groupies. If I did, I'd probably think there was something extremely wrong with them for being such.

Where was that?

BlackFinn in Royal Oak.

Why nothing yet on the Upper Peninsula? Too easy a target? Or would even acknowledging the You-Pee's existence be a compliment?

Nah, it's really not that deep. I think the honest answer is laziness. I have to drive six hours to get there. But maybe the bigger reality is that I don't know the U.P. as well and so I'd be fishing for material, trying to find things, and worried I wouldn't really nail it.

Some people have sent emails with ideas and some are good. I'll likely go hit on it eventually. However, the other issue is that the best time to shoot is during the summer when it's warm and people are outside, and the best places to shoot are popular spots, even events (parades, outdoor festivals, etc.), where it's good people-watching and the weirdos come in full force, and I can be more hidden in the crowd with a camera. So with the U.P., do they even have any places that have more than seven people congregating together?

When it comes to the U.P. and "knowing it," do you think this "love to hate it" approach is acceptable as long as the one "hating" is a local?

That's common comedian stuff. Like only black comedians can joke about black people, or Jews with Jewish folk. I don't know if the person necessarily needs to be from Michigan to rip on it, but they just better know what they're talking about and really know the realities that are going on.

The popularity of the videos is a testament that most people have a good sense of humor about where they come from and can take a joke. I have had a few people comment on YouTube something angry about a video like "If you hate it here so much they why don't you just leave?!" and I think to myself, wow, these people just don't get it. But most people do, because these videos are a roast, and when people suggest video ideas to me they usually are asking me to rip on their hometown. They want me to make fun of the place that they are from, not because they hate it but because they love it and love to tease it playfully and celebrate it with laughter. And that's really all I'm trying to do.

I've lived in Michigan my whole life and, for the most part, when I do a video I know what I'm ripping on, which just makes it easier and usually speaks from a place of truth. That is why I've avoided the U.P. It truly is almost like another state from the Lower Penninsula and I'm a little fearful of treading in like an outsider and roasting everything.

A favorite target of Kerfoot's, and the universe's, is Michigan's pro sports teams.

You teach at Wayne State University. Are your students aware of your Pure Michigan work?

Some of them are. A handful might be impressed or think it's cool. Many of them don't give a shit because students, in general, are angry young self-absorbed assholes, and I say this knowing I was just like them at their age. When it comes to film students, I think many of them don't really care for it because they're very competitive. They look to criticize first, rather than enjoy. But it's just the opposite of how most people watch a video or movie. Usually they go watch it for the enjoyment, then get critical later. The film students (supposedly) love movies, they love filmmakers, and they love good filmmaking... but they only love it when it's 3,000 miles away. They love works made by people nobody knows yet, or that even they don't know. They won't like films made by people they know.

I know a guy who blew my stuff off (to my face) with a "puff, that's just Youtube bullshit, dude." Meanwhile, he hadn't made anything for me to even criticize, so I just don't really pay much attention to what film students think. If Steven Spielberg was in their class and made Jurassic Park or Jaws during the semester, students would be like, "Eh, that's that geek Spielberg with his glossy action bullshit… it has no real edge, man."

If Steven Spielberg was in their class and made Jurassic Park or Jaws during the semester, students would be like, "Eh, that's that geek Spielberg with his glossy action bullshit… it has no real edge, man."

You also shoot wedding parties. That must be awkward... sometimes.

No, actually it's not. I like shooting weddings (editing is a different story). But I started doing weddings for side money while I was working on my masters. And when I finished school, word of mouth had spread so it could be my business. I like working from home, having odd hours. When I go to shoot a wedding everybody is dolled up and in a good mood. I think, lately, because of my videos and their popularity with my clients, I'm rather embraced by the wedding party. So yeah, it's kind of funny how unimpressed my film students are with my filmmaking, but wedding parties, who pay me to be there to work, love the videos and want to party with me. Go figure.

Kerfoot's has attempted to branch out with his humor. His re-cut of LeBron James' "decision" has over a million views, though it will not win critical acclaim anytime soon. Last year, Kerfoot submitted a Michigan-focused spot to Doritos' crowd-sourced Super Bowl ad contest. He says"Digested in Detroit" was "rejected within two hours" by Frito-Lay.

The most recent Pure Michigan spoof was a departure, taking Michigan's side against Wisconsin in "Mittengate" and correctly pointing out that, like everything else bad, it's all the fault of that craphole, Ohio. Does this herald a new era where Not So Pure Michigan will look outside the state?

Haha, I don't know. It has to be tied to Michigan in some way, or else it's not really a Pure Michigan spoof, right? Don't want to force it and kill the comedy. Certain topics and subjects work with the Pure Michigan spoof style, but some don't. I have spoofed local lawyers, but not in a Pure Michigan style video. Their commercials are ridiculous enough for me to parody. But I must say, it spoils you when you find something that clicks like the Pure Michigan spoofs because, quite frankly, the whole format (the music, pretty shots and my voiceover) is pretty easy to me by now, I've got it down, and I know that so long as the video is just decent, it's going to get views because it has a ready-audience. I'll sometimes try something new, a video parodying something with a departure in style altogether, and it's just not very popular...and it makes me realize how much I really struck a chord with the Pure Michigan thing. Though for me it can get a little old doing the same style, so I try not to do too many Pure Michigan videos...I average 1/month. But I love trying new things and last summer, I was at a bar with friends watching LeBron James and the Miami Heat lose to Dallas in the NBA Finals. Somebody said, "Go make a video about it" and so I went home and that night I did a spoof of the LeBron James' decision where he decided he will "now take his talents to the WNBA.' The video got a million views in one week and for one day it was the #1 video on YouTube. That was probably my highlight, because it was outside the Pure Michigan realm, I wasn't using that crutch, and it hit. Oh, and because I did it drunk.

The Pure Michigan ads keeps chugging along. Will you keep doing these as long as the campaign continues?

I planned on being done with these a long time ago. Honestly, I feel like the last one, branching outside of Michigan and ripping on other states and actually defending Michigan, might have been my way of capping it. But then a month or two will go by and some idea will hit me and I'll just grab my camera and go shoot. It's really not that planned out. In fact, the best videos I've done were more "grab the camera and go shoot" in a hurry, not really knowing what I'd get (Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions Redux, Royal Oak, etc). The videos where I had more ideas and thought, "Oooh, this will be big, can't wait to do this..." usually were disappointments (Renaissance festival, Detroit Electronic Musical Festival, maybe even the first Detroit Lions video). But truthfully, I don't see myself doing that many more. I'm not one who likes to be annoying, or I'm at least not unaware of when I'm being annoying. I'm pretty self aware, and I just don't want to be the asshole who doesn't leave the party when it's dead.



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

2 comments

]]> When Wisconsin's tourism bureau launched a war on its neighbor by suggesting Wisconsin is actually the "mitten state," Michigan saw an unlikely ally come to its defense: a 30-something video pro named John Kerfoot.

Since 2006, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has run a branding campaign titled "Pure Michigan." A few years into the campaign, Kerfoot took his camera to nearby Lake St. Clair to shoot a Pure Michigan spoof about the lake's scourge of fish flies, which appear every year in swarms so great that, as the voiceover goes, "visitors are left wondering, 'Why the hell do I live in Michigan?'" (Insert blanket headphones-at-work warning for the videos here.) The video logged nearly 500,000 views. Kerfoot made a few more Pure Michigan spoofs and became a regional sensation. Last year he said he'd retire. He hasn't. And he probably won't.

Abe Sauer: Your videos have a combined 9.6 million views. That's almost equal to the entire population of Michigan. How often do you run into people who know you?

John Kerfoot: Ninety-nine percent of people who know my videos don't know me by face, since I'm on the other end of the camera and my voiceover is... well, not exactly how I talk. That voiceover is trying to be all soft and whispery into the microphone, like I'm about to make love to it. I usually don't talk that way to people in public. If I did, I'd probably be in jail. Most people don't know—but my friends will let them. My best friend is a lawyer and he thinks he's Jerry Maguire and is my agent or something, and as soon as I meet somebody his first words are "Hey, do you know those Pure Michigan spoofs…?" It's somewhere between funny and annoying.

Help your friend help you! Have the videos led to any further work or development deals?

For the most part, no. I have had a couple small gigs pop up because of the popularity of the Pure Michigan videos, but for the most part they were just small video projects. What I typically get is messages from groups or small businesses that say "Hey, we love your videos and we think it would be great if you did a video on our business. There is no pay, but it would be a good opportunity for you…" First off, I want to say to them, "Look, I can't go from making a video about the Detroit Lions or the whole state of Ohio to making a video about your power-washing business that has 30 clients."

That would basically kill the whole thing, like I sold out… and selling out for no money? Maybe my saying "I'm broke" has led people to think I don't care about money. Well, I do. I like to get paid for my work, and if I'm not, then I'm just going to go make something because I was inspired to, because I think it's funny. And usually doing something self-serving for somebody's business... usually not funny.

There are now 20 videos in the "Not So Pure Michigan" collection. Young Michigan natives, especially the diaspora, have almost certainly seen one or passed one around a Facebook page.

Those non-natives who may have some experience with the spoofs probably have done so through the installment "Pure Michigan: U of M Football."

Shortly after you did the first Pure Michigan spoof, you said nobody should bother suing you because you were "too broke.” With over 9 million views, have you managed to make any money off ad revenue?

I'm still broke. I've made a little off of the ad-revenue over the past year and a half, but not enough to live on. Not enough to buy a new car either. But good side money, if that gives you an idea. Truth be told, the amount of work I've put it on the videos in total was really not that much. They don't take me that long to do. So for the time spent, the payoff has been nice. But obviously getting money was never the intention. In fact, my most recent video I was denied ad revenue sharing because I showed little kids drinking beers and a little kid giving the middle finger. That is frustrating because the video is getting a good amount of views and I will see no cash from it. Ah well, it's still more of a high just getting good feedback. But money is nice too. Someday...

That's a lesson for filmmakers or young emerging assholes: always be first. It's not about making the best video sometimes; it's about being the first one.
What's the process for making the videos? Do you script it? Storyboards?

The fun of doing the Pure Michigan spoofs was that I never really knew what I was going to get—except with my latest video. With the latest video on Wisconsin & Ohio, the idea came to mock the whole Mitten controversy and I knew I had to act quick and I didn't have the time to drive to Wisconsin and so I just used pictures and old footage I had. So in that regard it was rushed and lazy, but had I taken another day or two it would have been fairly dead. That's a lesson for filmmakers or young emerging assholes: always be first. It's not about making the best video sometimes; it's about being the first one.

But anyway, with the rest of the videos I've gone out and shot renegade style. Half the time I would go to a location having some ideas of what I wanted, whether it's a Wal-Mart Wolverine-looking dude, or two gay men in Saugatuck holding hands, or fishflies. But even then the fun was seeing things you'd never expect that would give me ideas as I'm shooting. So the quick answer is there was no storyboarding, and the scripting actually comes after I shoot the video. I look at what I have and then write it from the visuals. The real Pure Michigan videos have big crews and cranes and are done commercial style. In that way, mine is documentary, to keep it real... and because I'm lazy.

One reason Not So Pure Michigan is not well known outside Michigan is its focus on detailed places outsiders have no experience with. The Wolverines football video was accessible only because, after Ohio State, Michigan football is the most despised program in the Big 10. But who outside the state even knows where Royal Oak is, let alone enough about it to enjoy a lampoon of it?

After your video on the city of Royal Oak, its city commissioner poo-pooed the effort, calling it something "eighth-graders might think was hysterical." You seemed to take this as not so much a compliment but as a statement of fact.

I am so glad you asked about this because the newspaper didn't quote me correctly on what I said and I didn't understand until later as to why. So I made the video on Royal Oak, basically calling everybody in the city a "douchebag." The reporter called me, and I could tell she was not a fan of the videos at all but was doing a story (sided with Royal Oak City Commissioner). I was picking up her vibe and was kind of tired from working all night, when she said, "The Royal Oak City Commissioner has said that your videos are just amateurish and not funny. What do you have to say about that?" My reply was, "Well, he's probably a douchebag, too. Please print that." They didn't. I forget what they ended up printing, probably some afterthought I had to try and not sound like as big of an asshole, but my first reaction was really what I thought and meant. Found out later that the word "douchebag" couldn't be printed. So, yeah, I guess my videos aren't the only thing at the maturity level on an 8th grader. Did I mention I love Beavis & Butthead?

Do you have groupies?

No, I do not have groupies. Although there was a time, probably a few months after the videos started getting hot, and I was at a popular bar in the Detroit area and a girl recognized me from a video that I was in, where I was playing a disabled lawyer. I never thought that would score me lady attention. Anyway, a few of her friends came over, and I noticed a few feet behind me was Detroit Lions player Ndamukong Suh. He was just standing there with a pack of great looking girls surrounding him, basically standing in line to talk to him. And I'm across from him. So, basically, there was a pack of hot girls around him, and a pack of nice girls (and a couple dudes) around me. That's about as cool as it ever got. But, no, I don't really have any groupies. If I did, I'd probably think there was something extremely wrong with them for being such.

Where was that?

BlackFinn in Royal Oak.

Why nothing yet on the Upper Peninsula? Too easy a target? Or would even acknowledging the You-Pee's existence be a compliment?

Nah, it's really not that deep. I think the honest answer is laziness. I have to drive six hours to get there. But maybe the bigger reality is that I don't know the U.P. as well and so I'd be fishing for material, trying to find things, and worried I wouldn't really nail it.

Some people have sent emails with ideas and some are good. I'll likely go hit on it eventually. However, the other issue is that the best time to shoot is during the summer when it's warm and people are outside, and the best places to shoot are popular spots, even events (parades, outdoor festivals, etc.), where it's good people-watching and the weirdos come in full force, and I can be more hidden in the crowd with a camera. So with the U.P., do they even have any places that have more than seven people congregating together?

When it comes to the U.P. and "knowing it," do you think this "love to hate it" approach is acceptable as long as the one "hating" is a local?

That's common comedian stuff. Like only black comedians can joke about black people, or Jews with Jewish folk. I don't know if the person necessarily needs to be from Michigan to rip on it, but they just better know what they're talking about and really know the realities that are going on.

The popularity of the videos is a testament that most people have a good sense of humor about where they come from and can take a joke. I have had a few people comment on YouTube something angry about a video like "If you hate it here so much they why don't you just leave?!" and I think to myself, wow, these people just don't get it. But most people do, because these videos are a roast, and when people suggest video ideas to me they usually are asking me to rip on their hometown. They want me to make fun of the place that they are from, not because they hate it but because they love it and love to tease it playfully and celebrate it with laughter. And that's really all I'm trying to do.

I've lived in Michigan my whole life and, for the most part, when I do a video I know what I'm ripping on, which just makes it easier and usually speaks from a place of truth. That is why I've avoided the U.P. It truly is almost like another state from the Lower Penninsula and I'm a little fearful of treading in like an outsider and roasting everything.

A favorite target of Kerfoot's, and the universe's, is Michigan's pro sports teams.

You teach at Wayne State University. Are your students aware of your Pure Michigan work?

Some of them are. A handful might be impressed or think it's cool. Many of them don't give a shit because students, in general, are angry young self-absorbed assholes, and I say this knowing I was just like them at their age. When it comes to film students, I think many of them don't really care for it because they're very competitive. They look to criticize first, rather than enjoy. But it's just the opposite of how most people watch a video or movie. Usually they go watch it for the enjoyment, then get critical later. The film students (supposedly) love movies, they love filmmakers, and they love good filmmaking... but they only love it when it's 3,000 miles away. They love works made by people nobody knows yet, or that even they don't know. They won't like films made by people they know.

I know a guy who blew my stuff off (to my face) with a "puff, that's just Youtube bullshit, dude." Meanwhile, he hadn't made anything for me to even criticize, so I just don't really pay much attention to what film students think. If Steven Spielberg was in their class and made Jurassic Park or Jaws during the semester, students would be like, "Eh, that's that geek Spielberg with his glossy action bullshit… it has no real edge, man."

If Steven Spielberg was in their class and made Jurassic Park or Jaws during the semester, students would be like, "Eh, that's that geek Spielberg with his glossy action bullshit… it has no real edge, man."

You also shoot wedding parties. That must be awkward... sometimes.

No, actually it's not. I like shooting weddings (editing is a different story). But I started doing weddings for side money while I was working on my masters. And when I finished school, word of mouth had spread so it could be my business. I like working from home, having odd hours. When I go to shoot a wedding everybody is dolled up and in a good mood. I think, lately, because of my videos and their popularity with my clients, I'm rather embraced by the wedding party. So yeah, it's kind of funny how unimpressed my film students are with my filmmaking, but wedding parties, who pay me to be there to work, love the videos and want to party with me. Go figure.

Kerfoot's has attempted to branch out with his humor. His re-cut of LeBron James' "decision" has over a million views, though it will not win critical acclaim anytime soon. Last year, Kerfoot submitted a Michigan-focused spot to Doritos' crowd-sourced Super Bowl ad contest. He says"Digested in Detroit" was "rejected within two hours" by Frito-Lay.

The most recent Pure Michigan spoof was a departure, taking Michigan's side against Wisconsin in "Mittengate" and correctly pointing out that, like everything else bad, it's all the fault of that craphole, Ohio. Does this herald a new era where Not So Pure Michigan will look outside the state?

Haha, I don't know. It has to be tied to Michigan in some way, or else it's not really a Pure Michigan spoof, right? Don't want to force it and kill the comedy. Certain topics and subjects work with the Pure Michigan spoof style, but some don't. I have spoofed local lawyers, but not in a Pure Michigan style video. Their commercials are ridiculous enough for me to parody. But I must say, it spoils you when you find something that clicks like the Pure Michigan spoofs because, quite frankly, the whole format (the music, pretty shots and my voiceover) is pretty easy to me by now, I've got it down, and I know that so long as the video is just decent, it's going to get views because it has a ready-audience. I'll sometimes try something new, a video parodying something with a departure in style altogether, and it's just not very popular...and it makes me realize how much I really struck a chord with the Pure Michigan thing. Though for me it can get a little old doing the same style, so I try not to do too many Pure Michigan videos...I average 1/month. But I love trying new things and last summer, I was at a bar with friends watching LeBron James and the Miami Heat lose to Dallas in the NBA Finals. Somebody said, "Go make a video about it" and so I went home and that night I did a spoof of the LeBron James' decision where he decided he will "now take his talents to the WNBA.' The video got a million views in one week and for one day it was the #1 video on YouTube. That was probably my highlight, because it was outside the Pure Michigan realm, I wasn't using that crutch, and it hit. Oh, and because I did it drunk.

The Pure Michigan ads keeps chugging along. Will you keep doing these as long as the campaign continues?

I planned on being done with these a long time ago. Honestly, I feel like the last one, branching outside of Michigan and ripping on other states and actually defending Michigan, might have been my way of capping it. But then a month or two will go by and some idea will hit me and I'll just grab my camera and go shoot. It's really not that planned out. In fact, the best videos I've done were more "grab the camera and go shoot" in a hurry, not really knowing what I'd get (Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions Redux, Royal Oak, etc). The videos where I had more ideas and thought, "Oooh, this will be big, can't wait to do this..." usually were disappointments (Renaissance festival, Detroit Electronic Musical Festival, maybe even the first Detroit Lions video). But truthfully, I don't see myself doing that many more. I'm not one who likes to be annoying, or I'm at least not unaware of when I'm being annoying. I'm pretty self aware, and I just don't want to be the asshole who doesn't leave the party when it's dead.



Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

2 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/not-so-pure-michigan-the-man-who-hates-wisconsin-and-ohio/feed 2 Man Promotes Book http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/man-promotes-book http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/man-promotes-book#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:30:39 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/man-promotes-book Listen to Awl pal Abe Sauer discuss his new book How to Be: North Dakota right here.

---

See more posts by Alex Balk

8 comments

]]> Listen to Awl pal Abe Sauer discuss his new book How to Be: North Dakota right here.

---

See more posts by Alex Balk

8 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/man-promotes-book/feed 8 North Dakota: The Rise of an American Petrostate http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/north-dakota-the-rise-of-an-american-petrostate http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/north-dakota-the-rise-of-an-american-petrostate#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:40:42 +0000 Abe Sauer http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/north-dakota-the-rise-of-an-american-petrostate
North Dakota is suing Minnesota, alleging the Land of 10,000 Lakes is discriminating against it because it is black. Lignite black. Lignite coal black. The lawsuit contends that the Next Generation Energy Act—a law signed in 2007 by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, which limits the amount of power Minnesota utilities can acquire from new fossil-fuel plants—violates the commerce clause of the Constitution. The federal rules, the suit argues, should force Minnesota to buy more of North Dakota's coal-fired power. The EPA, the suit argues, is the only authority whose regulations should matter.

Most experts have scoffed at the suit. But it's made all the more bizarre by the fact that participant North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is also currently party to the legal challenge to "Obamacare," which accuses the feds of attempting to "usurp the general police power reserved to the States."

The AG's hypocritical participation in the coal lawsuit exemplifies how North Dakota is slowly becoming a proxy petrostate base of operations for the energy industry to launch a war against federal regulation.

On November 2nd, the North Dakota AG issued a "fact sheet" on the Next Generation Energy Act, which is a gem of Big Energy passive-aggression. It calls the law "purely a symbolic gesture that could only have a negligible impact toward actually achieving the purpose of reducing greenhouse gases on a global scale." When it mentions global warming, it puts the term quote marks.

The document concludes with a line that is 100-percent "Minnesota Nice": "As Minnesota seeks to rebuild its economy, it will need energy." It then goes on to, more of less, call Minnesotans too dumb to know what's for good for them. And that's essentially what the lawsuit boils down to: one state telling another state it's too stupid to know what's good for it.

In the press, the Attorney General didn't even bother with the passive-aggression, telling the Star Tribune, "With all respect to regulators in Minnesota, we love our environment more than they do."

* * *

A recent viral video stitching together time-lapse footage from the International Space Station wowed viewers with a view of earth never seen before. But what everyone missed except one eagle-eyed writer at Midwest Energy News was that the video featured the glowing lights of one "enormous 'city' in the middle of nowhere." That "city," Ken Paulman discovered, was in fact the fires of natural gas being flared off from thousands of wells in the Bakken oil shale formation. Without a pipeline nearby, 35 percent of all natural gas produced from oil extraction is flared. In a region where average daily temperatures this time of year range from 3 to (a high of) 24 degrees (before wind chill), the sight of a frozen landscape blazing with "Dakota candles" is truly apocalyptic.

The Bakken formation stretches from Montana through western North Dakota through Saskatchewan. The heart is near Williston, North Dakota, a town that has gone from a population of around 12,000 to 20,000 in just a few years. When a new Motel 6 opened last week, Hallibuton immediately offered to rent the entire thing. By the end of next year, North Dakota will be the nation's number two oil producer. Every month, the state sets a new record for output. The U.S. Energy Information Administration animated map of Bakken drilling activity between 1985 and 2010 is shocking.

Thanks to advances in a process called horizontal drilling, and the growth of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) as an extraction process, the hard-to-reach oil of the Bakken is now affordable to extract. The absolute best source of exactly how this process works is an industry video.

What the video doesn't mention is exactly what chemical mix goes into fracking fluid. It doesn't mention that intentionally, of course. A Clean Water Act Safe Drinking Water Act exemption (called the "Haliburton loophole") allows fracking fluid recipes to remain undisclosed as a proprietary secret. Kind of like Coca-Cola's secret recipe, if that secret recipe contained poison and was being injected near drinking water.

Questions about the safety of fracking are widespread, ranging from tapwater that catches fire and mutating farm animals to simple unpleasant odors and the unsightliness of towering gas flares. It remains to be seen how dangerous it is; it's certainly not good for the earth.

But then, a lot of human activity—maybe most—is not good for the earth. The glowing screen upon which this text currently hovers takes power. Where is that power going to come from? Things Americans like (and like more and more) require power. As for oil, North Dakotan skepticism about a new fuel revolution is well-founded, especially in personal experience. Cell phone batteries struggle to respond on January days in Grand Forks, why would an electric car be any different? (Psst. They aren't.)

This is to say nothing of how North Dakota's drive to drag the nation to some semblance of energy independence and better job numbers (those roughnecks making six figures all pay federal income taxes) inspires associated economic development elsewhere. To supply fracking operations, fine silica sand mining is booming in states like Wisconsin, bringing jobs (and associated concerns.) Duluth, Minnesota, is hoping fracking will lead to more work for its port.

This is why fracking will continue and why the Environmental Protection Agency is about to release new guidance for states to use when issuing fracking well permits. Not to get into the boring technicalities, but the rules concern the use of diesel fuel in the fracking slurry, a measure especially necessary when fracking in extremely cold regions. North Dakota, as noted, can be cold. Cue the sky falling.

During his "oops" debate moment, Texas Governor Rick Perry joked that one federal agency he would eliminate was the EPA. When asked if he was joking, the governor said, no, it only needed to "be rebuilt." But guaranteed, in the fellow oil-state of North Dakota, cheers erupted at the thought.

In 2010, Lynn Helms, the director of the state's Department of Mineral Resources and the gatekeeper to North Dakota's oil, said in a weekly address that "the threat of federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing has diminished." Jump ahead nearly two years and Helms, backed by most of the state's top politicians, is banging the EPA bogeyman drum. In November, Helms was quoted in the Bismarck Tribune speculating that the EPA was "on track to stop fracking as soon as January." Naturally, everyone freaked out.

It should be noted that Helms is a former Hess oil executive. That's the North Dakota equivalent of the Goldman Sachs-U.S. Treasury relationship.

Later, Helms more or less called the reporter a liar. A regional administrator for the EPA penned a follow up piece for the Tribune, writing that Helms' claim was "grounded in inaccurate information and is misleading." (The piece was run in the op-ed section.)

Many in North Dakota sought further "assurances" than the word of the EPA. In a recent flood-relief and highway patrol bill, Governor Jack Dalrymple even included a million dollars to pay for a potential lawsuit against the EPA over new fracking regulations.

The industry is seeking even more assurances by turning the entire state of North Dakota into its proxy.

The candidates for national office coming out of North Dakota are beholden to the state's energy industry hydra. Republican Representative Rick Berg, who replaced the Democrat Earl Pomeroy in 2011, is now running for the Senate seat being vacated by the state's single remaining federal Democrat, Kent Conrad. Berg regularly speaks out against the EPA and has supported fracking for oil in Teddy Roosevelt National Park as a way to pay for Social Security. After the EPA stated it would not suspend fracking, Rep. Berg stated his distrust, adding, "What we need to do is we need to ensure that the states are going to regulate this." (Like Minnesota did.)

"What threatens to SHUTDOWN the Bakken," hollers the website of State Representative Bette Grande, a Republican native of Williston, running herself to replace Rick Berg. There is no question mark and the only two click options available are "Federal Government" and "The EPA." As if the two were different.

Grande, who now lives in and represents Fargo (330 miles from the fracking in Williston), recently launched the campaign FracBabyFrac.com which won the Orwell Grave-Roll Doublethink Award for 2012, with its motto "Let's Save the Bakken." When Grande implores "We can protect the Bakken!" what she means is that we can save the Bakken from government regulation (hint: "The EPA"). She calls the state's oil industry "over-regulated" and has called the EPA the "Employment Prevention Agency." In Grande's view, as with many others who have bought the federal regulations boogeyman story, the EPA wants to shut down oil production because it has a personal grudge against North Dakota. Even among North Dakota's pro-oil, anti-EPA candidiates (which include most Democrats), Grande stands out in her desire to turn North Dakota into a de-facto petrostate.

It's noteworthy that State oil director Helms' position on the EPA is simply that it needs oversight by those elected to Congress. (You know: politicians like Grande and Berg.)

It's the sort of enthusiasm displayed by Grande that is most worrisome to many North Dakotans. Like any sane, realistic, reasonable people, most residents understand that fracking, and the energy industry as a whole, are an economic necessity for a state whose other industries (such as defense) rely on the exact kind of federal subsidies that are increasingly falling out of favor. But the gung-ho sentiment that an endeavor like fracking is somehow almost "good" for the plains is absurd. It's an attitude that leaves many wishing for former Governor Art Link, who died last year at the age of 96. Link, who served from 1973 to 1980 in the heart of North Dakota's first oil and coal boom, is most famous for "When the Landscape is Quiet Again" his passionate 1973 address pleading for a measured approach to energy development.

North Dakotans may be seen as rubes, and many may actually be, but even a rube knows injecting tons of poisonous chemicals into the earth is, at best, only moderately dangerous. This is to say nothing of the ancillary "benefits" the energy boom is bringing to the state, such as massive jumps in crime, $7-a-gallon milk, and elderly residents thrown out of their apartments as rents skyrocket. Massive "man camps" that house rig workers come with the expected crime increase. In the northwest region—the heart of the Bakken boom—the highway patrol just reported a 100% year-over-year jump in road fatalities. Double, in one year. Still, it's common that pro-energy development interests paint any citizens concerned about these things as pro-EPA radicals who want to send the state back into financial hardship.

* * *

Kris Kitko, the founder of Bakken Watch, a site that's chronicled some disturbing instances of fracking side effects, tells me the organization has no official stance and its members "range from 'don't halt but regulate or slow down' to 'halt.' Personally, she said, "I understand that jobs, etc. are at stake. But so is the land we grow our food on and the water we use to make it grow. I don't have an answer as to 'what to do,' but at the very least, fracking needs to be studied and chemicals need to be disclosed." She believes closing the "Halliburton Loophole" would at least be a start. Right? Typical hippie nutjob with her ludicrous peace, love and "disclosure" claptrap.

Wary of the increased skepticism of how the energy developers are changing the state and how activists are gaining momentum, industry groups have launched extensive PR efforts such as "Oil Can!" An adorable pun, "Oil Can!" is the propaganda effort of The North Dakota Petroleum Council, whose logo of a massive nodding donkey juicing the entire state could not better explain the organization's true desire.

There is also the site Fracfocus.org, a "joint project of the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission." It is also a project of an Oklahoma PR firm which counts among its energy industry portfolio America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the Kansas Oil & Gas Resources Fund and the American Clean Skies Foundation. That last uses the wonderful line "It's not a drilling rig. It's a factory."

Meanwhile, in community after community, oil groups are hosting town halls and sponsoring local picnics and make-nice community events. Truckers who wheel the thousands and thousands of heavy semis through small towns have been given candy to toss to children. The efforts are not all that different than what one would expect in war zone where winning the hearts and minds of the locals was a necessary battle for winning the war.

Just a month ago at an oil conference in Houston, one presenter called pushback against the industry "an insurgency." He went on to recommend that PR experts in the industry make it a top priority to download the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual, as "there are a lot of good lessons in there."

But it's not just the local populations or helping send fracking-friendly candidates to the halls of government. The oil industry is also rolling out the big guns for a national information campaign to spin North Dakotan oil production as the solution to national energy independence.
An October Wall Street Journal piece on Harold Hamm, the CEO of America's 14th-largest oil company and the man credited with "discovering" the Bakken, surely rankled some very Christian residents with the title "How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia." But the message of a man whose company sits on hundreds of millions of barrels of proven Bakken reserves got a warm reception. The federal government, Hamm said, is "sticking a regulatory boot at our necks." Hamm goes on to complain that the feds sued his company for killing migratory birds; "It's not even a rare bird. There're jillions of them." Coincidentally, this bird preposterousness is a favorite storyline of one Ms. Bette Grande.

In case the boot of Mr. Hamm's point wasn't squarely at the reader's neck, the Journal added, "It's hard to disagree with Mr. Hamm's assessment that Barack Obama has the energy story in America wrong." The article has been Facebook-shared nearly 7,500 times.

There is a legitimate argument that if America is to gain energy independence and destroy some of itself in the process, why shouldn't it be a part that most Americans (and many North Dakotans) will never bother visiting? At some time or another, every spiritual North Dakotan will openly wonder of the Bakken, "God could not have intended human beings to live here." Atheists have no such doubts, of course; evolution confirms to them that humans were not meant to live there.

The Bakken boasts its particular wonders and beauties, like everywhere else. And it's very easy to not care about the future of the far reaches of more or less unpopulated North Dakota—even within North Dakota. But you don't have to visit to understand that, as goes North Dakota energy policy, so goes, eventually, the comparatively hospitable state you live in.

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

47 comments

]]>
North Dakota is suing Minnesota, alleging the Land of 10,000 Lakes is discriminating against it because it is black. Lignite black. Lignite coal black. The lawsuit contends that the Next Generation Energy Act—a law signed in 2007 by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, which limits the amount of power Minnesota utilities can acquire from new fossil-fuel plants—violates the commerce clause of the Constitution. The federal rules, the suit argues, should force Minnesota to buy more of North Dakota's coal-fired power. The EPA, the suit argues, is the only authority whose regulations should matter.

Most experts have scoffed at the suit. But it's made all the more bizarre by the fact that participant North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is also currently party to the legal challenge to "Obamacare," which accuses the feds of attempting to "usurp the general police power reserved to the States."

The AG's hypocritical participation in the coal lawsuit exemplifies how North Dakota is slowly becoming a proxy petrostate base of operations for the energy industry to launch a war against federal regulation.

On November 2nd, the North Dakota AG issued a "fact sheet" on the Next Generation Energy Act, which is a gem of Big Energy passive-aggression. It calls the law "purely a symbolic gesture that could only have a negligible impact toward actually achieving the purpose of reducing greenhouse gases on a global scale." When it mentions global warming, it puts the term quote marks.

The document concludes with a line that is 100-percent "Minnesota Nice": "As Minnesota seeks to rebuild its economy, it will need energy." It then goes on to, more of less, call Minnesotans too dumb to know what's for good for them. And that's essentially what the lawsuit boils down to: one state telling another state it's too stupid to know what's good for it.

In the press, the Attorney General didn't even bother with the passive-aggression, telling the Star Tribune, "With all respect to regulators in Minnesota, we love our environment more than they do."

* * *

A recent viral video stitching together time-lapse footage from the International Space Station wowed viewers with a view of earth never seen before. But what everyone missed except one eagle-eyed writer at Midwest Energy News was that the video featured the glowing lights of one "enormous 'city' in the middle of nowhere." That "city," Ken Paulman discovered, was in fact the fires of natural gas being flared off from thousands of wells in the Bakken oil shale formation. Without a pipeline nearby, 35 percent of all natural gas produced from oil extraction is flared. In a region where average daily temperatures this time of year range from 3 to (a high of) 24 degrees (before wind chill), the sight of a frozen landscape blazing with "Dakota candles" is truly apocalyptic.

The Bakken formation stretches from Montana through western North Dakota through Saskatchewan. The heart is near Williston, North Dakota, a town that has gone from a population of around 12,000 to 20,000 in just a few years. When a new Motel 6 opened last week, Hallibuton immediately offered to rent the entire thing. By the end of next year, North Dakota will be the nation's number two oil producer. Every month, the state sets a new record for output. The U.S. Energy Information Administration animated map of Bakken drilling activity between 1985 and 2010 is shocking.

Thanks to advances in a process called horizontal drilling, and the growth of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) as an extraction process, the hard-to-reach oil of the Bakken is now affordable to extract. The absolute best source of exactly how this process works is an industry video.

What the video doesn't mention is exactly what chemical mix goes into fracking fluid. It doesn't mention that intentionally, of course. A Clean Water Act Safe Drinking Water Act exemption (called the "Haliburton loophole") allows fracking fluid recipes to remain undisclosed as a proprietary secret. Kind of like Coca-Cola's secret recipe, if that secret recipe contained poison and was being injected near drinking water.

Questions about the safety of fracking are widespread, ranging from tapwater that catches fire and mutating farm animals to simple unpleasant odors and the unsightliness of towering gas flares. It remains to be seen how dangerous it is; it's certainly not good for the earth.

But then, a lot of human activity—maybe most—is not good for the earth. The glowing screen upon which this text currently hovers takes power. Where is that power going to come from? Things Americans like (and like more and more) require power. As for oil, North Dakotan skepticism about a new fuel revolution is well-founded, especially in personal experience. Cell phone batteries struggle to respond on January days in Grand Forks, why would an electric car be any different? (Psst. They aren't.)

This is to say nothing of how North Dakota's drive to drag the nation to some semblance of energy independence and better job numbers (those roughnecks making six figures all pay federal income taxes) inspires associated economic development elsewhere. To supply fracking operations, fine silica sand mining is booming in states like Wisconsin, bringing jobs (and associated concerns.) Duluth, Minnesota, is hoping fracking will lead to more work for its port.

This is why fracking will continue and why the Environmental Protection Agency is about to release new guidance for states to use when issuing fracking well permits. Not to get into the boring technicalities, but the rules concern the use of diesel fuel in the fracking slurry, a measure especially necessary when fracking in extremely cold regions. North Dakota, as noted, can be cold. Cue the sky falling.

During his "oops" debate moment, Texas Governor Rick Perry joked that one federal agency he would eliminate was the EPA. When asked if he was joking, the governor said, no, it only needed to "be rebuilt." But guaranteed, in the fellow oil-state of North Dakota, cheers erupted at the thought.

In 2010, Lynn Helms, the director of the state's Department of Mineral Resources and the gatekeeper to North Dakota's oil, said in a weekly address that "the threat of federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing has diminished." Jump ahead nearly two years and Helms, backed by most of the state's top politicians, is banging the EPA bogeyman drum. In November, Helms was quoted in the Bismarck Tribune speculating that the EPA was "on track to stop fracking as soon as January." Naturally, everyone freaked out.

It should be noted that Helms is a former Hess oil executive. That's the North Dakota equivalent of the Goldman Sachs-U.S. Treasury relationship.

Later, Helms more or less called the reporter a liar. A regional administrator for the EPA penned a follow up piece for the Tribune, writing that Helms' claim was "grounded in inaccurate information and is misleading." (The piece was run in the op-ed section.)

Many in North Dakota sought further "assurances" than the word of the EPA. In a recent flood-relief and highway patrol bill, Governor Jack Dalrymple even included a million dollars to pay for a potential lawsuit against the EPA over new fracking regulations.

The industry is seeking even more assurances by turning the entire state of North Dakota into its proxy.

The candidates for national office coming out of North Dakota are beholden to the state's energy industry hydra. Republican Representative Rick Berg, who replaced the Democrat Earl Pomeroy in 2011, is now running for the Senate seat being vacated by the state's single remaining federal Democrat, Kent Conrad. Berg regularly speaks out against the EPA and has supported fracking for oil in Teddy Roosevelt National Park as a way to pay for Social Security. After the EPA stated it would not suspend fracking, Rep. Berg stated his distrust, adding, "What we need to do is we need to ensure that the states are going to regulate this." (Like Minnesota did.)

"What threatens to SHUTDOWN the Bakken," hollers the website of State Representative Bette Grande, a Republican native of Williston, running herself to replace Rick Berg. There is no question mark and the only two click options available are "Federal Government" and "The EPA." As if the two were different.

Grande, who now lives in and represents Fargo (330 miles from the fracking in Williston), recently launched the campaign FracBabyFrac.com which won the Orwell Grave-Roll Doublethink Award for 2012, with its motto "Let's Save the Bakken." When Grande implores "We can protect the Bakken!" what she means is that we can save the Bakken from government regulation (hint: "The EPA"). She calls the state's oil industry "over-regulated" and has called the EPA the "Employment Prevention Agency." In Grande's view, as with many others who have bought the federal regulations boogeyman story, the EPA wants to shut down oil production because it has a personal grudge against North Dakota. Even among North Dakota's pro-oil, anti-EPA candidiates (which include most Democrats), Grande stands out in her desire to turn North Dakota into a de-facto petrostate.

It's noteworthy that State oil director Helms' position on the EPA is simply that it needs oversight by those elected to Congress. (You know: politicians like Grande and Berg.)

It's the sort of enthusiasm displayed by Grande that is most worrisome to many North Dakotans. Like any sane, realistic, reasonable people, most residents understand that fracking, and the energy industry as a whole, are an economic necessity for a state whose other industries (such as defense) rely on the exact kind of federal subsidies that are increasingly falling out of favor. But the gung-ho sentiment that an endeavor like fracking is somehow almost "good" for the plains is absurd. It's an attitude that leaves many wishing for former Governor Art Link, who died last year at the age of 96. Link, who served from 1973 to 1980 in the heart of North Dakota's first oil and coal boom, is most famous for "When the Landscape is Quiet Again" his passionate 1973 address pleading for a measured approach to energy development.

North Dakotans may be seen as rubes, and many may actually be, but even a rube knows injecting tons of poisonous chemicals into the earth is, at best, only moderately dangerous. This is to say nothing of the ancillary "benefits" the energy boom is bringing to the state, such as massive jumps in crime, $7-a-gallon milk, and elderly residents thrown out of their apartments as rents skyrocket. Massive "man camps" that house rig workers come with the expected crime increase. In the northwest region—the heart of the Bakken boom—the highway patrol just reported a 100% year-over-year jump in road fatalities. Double, in one year. Still, it's common that pro-energy development interests paint any citizens concerned about these things as pro-EPA radicals who want to send the state back into financial hardship.

* * *

Kris Kitko, the founder of Bakken Watch, a site that's chronicled some disturbing instances of fracking side effects, tells me the organization has no official stance and its members "range from 'don't halt but regulate or slow down' to 'halt.' Personally, she said, "I understand that jobs, etc. are at stake. But so is the land we grow our food on and the water we use to make it grow. I don't have an answer as to 'what to do,' but at the very least, fracking needs to be studied and chemicals need to be disclosed." She believes closing the "Halliburton Loophole" would at least be a start. Right? Typical hippie nutjob with her ludicrous peace, love and "disclosure" claptrap.

Wary of the increased skepticism of how the energy developers are changing the state and how activists are gaining momentum, industry groups have launched extensive PR efforts such as "Oil Can!" An adorable pun, "Oil Can!" is the propaganda effort of The North Dakota Petroleum Council, whose logo of a massive nodding donkey juicing the entire state could not better explain the organization's true desire.

There is also the site Fracfocus.org, a "joint project of the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission." It is also a project of an Oklahoma PR firm which counts among its energy industry portfolio America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the Kansas Oil & Gas Resources Fund and the American Clean Skies Foundation. That last uses the wonderful line "It's not a drilling rig. It's a factory."

Meanwhile, in community after community, oil groups are hosting town halls and sponsoring local picnics and make-nice community events. Truckers who wheel the thousands and thousands of heavy semis through small towns have been given candy to toss to children. The efforts are not all that different than what one would expect in war zone where winning the hearts and minds of the locals was a necessary battle for winning the war.

Just a month ago at an oil conference in Houston, one presenter called pushback against the industry "an insurgency." He went on to recommend that PR experts in the industry make it a top priority to download the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual, as "there are a lot of good lessons in there."

But it's not just the local populations or helping send fracking-friendly candidates to the halls of government. The oil industry is also rolling out the big guns for a national information campaign to spin North Dakotan oil production as the solution to national energy independence.
An October Wall Street Journal piece on Harold Hamm, the CEO of America's 14th-largest oil company and the man credited with "discovering" the Bakken, surely rankled some very Christian residents with the title "How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia." But the message of a man whose company sits on hundreds of millions of barrels of proven Bakken reserves got a warm reception. The federal government, Hamm said, is "sticking a regulatory boot at our necks." Hamm goes on to complain that the feds sued his company for killing migratory birds; "It's not even a rare bird. There're jillions of them." Coincidentally, this bird preposterousness is a favorite storyline of one Ms. Bette Grande.

In case the boot of Mr. Hamm's point wasn't squarely at the reader's neck, the Journal added, "It's hard to disagree with Mr. Hamm's assessment that Barack Obama has the energy story in America wrong." The article has been Facebook-shared nearly 7,500 times.

There is a legitimate argument that if America is to gain energy independence and destroy some of itself in the process, why shouldn't it be a part that most Americans (and many North Dakotans) will never bother visiting? At some time or another, every spiritual North Dakotan will openly wonder of the Bakken, "God could not have intended human beings to live here." Atheists have no such doubts, of course; evolution confirms to them that humans were not meant to live there.

The Bakken boasts its particular wonders and beauties, like everywhere else. And it's very easy to not care about the future of the far reaches of more or less unpopulated North Dakota—even within North Dakota. But you don't have to visit to understand that, as goes North Dakota energy policy, so goes, eventually, the comparatively hospitable state you live in.

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

---

See more posts by Abe Sauer

47 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/north-dakota-the-rise-of-an-american-petrostate/feed 47