In Defense of Chris Wallace

I can’t believe I’m defending Chris Wallace, the FoxNews “legitimate” newsperson, but here goes. 

Chris Wallace has apologized to Michele Bachmann for implying the truth.  If anything, Mr. Wallace should be criticized for his timidity and for his backing down at pressure from those people so addled as to consider Michele Bachmann anything more than an adequate, if very flaky, citizen.  He should have used the declarative rather than the interrogatory mode. 

It happened Sunday while Wallace was interviewing Bachmann.  Perhaps remembering the endless laundry list of stupid things Bachmann has said, perhaps noting her graduation from a whackjob fourth-rate law school, perhaps remembering the photo of Bachmann cowering behind bushes to spy on a gay rights rally, or the one of Bachmann laying a big fat one on George Bush after the SOTU speech, or so many other things, Wallace got the unmistaken notion that Michele Bachmann is a flake, wondered about how a flake felt about running for the highest office in the land, and thought he’d ask her.  Michele, “are you a flake?”  Since then the political correctness brigade at FoxNews, around the whole innnertubes and even in our comment section here at www.bloggingblue.com has been up in arms over whether Chris Wallace commited a sexism crime and should go on the sexism crime registry. 

The real issue should be why the media can’t seem to be declarative on this issue, why the media can’t seem to spell out the facts as they are on the ground.  Michele Bachmann is a flake, and she continues to be such a flake, mostly unannounced by mainstream media, that it remains for blogs like this to point out the truth, which we stumble and do once, twice, three times in our eagerness to fill the factual void of mainstream news.   That truth is that Michele Bachmann is batshit crazy and a danger to ordinary citizens, and that she’s a darling of the Tea Partiers makes them batshit crazy as well.  At least we’re getting it right, and not apologizing, even if we repeat ourselves. 

Chris Wallace surely made at least two mistakes.  He asked Bachmann whether she’s a flake instead of simply declaring what is evident.  Perhaps this is what reporting has come to nowadays, that one can stub one’s toe on reality and still have to ask if it’s real.  Samuel Johnson weeps in his grave.  Wallace’s second mistake was to apologize, for nobody should have to apologize for presenting reality to an audience. 

Should Wallace have used the word “flake?”  Should I have used “Teabag Queen?”  Both words are accurate, but some are sensitive to political correctness, so why not “whackjob,” or “seriously deranged” or “suffering from delusions of adequacy?”  Are those politically incorrect?  You make the call, or decide for yourselves.