Michele Bachmann’s John Wayne Mixup: What the Media Isn’t Telling You

Somewhere between the creation of the printing press and today media outlets have developed a sense that all Americans are morons.  We will believe anything and everything they say without ever raising the first question.  For the longest time, I thought the media was wrong in its assessment, but following Michele Bachmann‘s presidential candidacy announcement I’m starting to think that we really are idiots.

In her Waterloo, Iowa, campaign kickoff speech, Bachmann, who is from Waterloo, referenced sharing hometowns with American icon John Wayne.  Unfortunately, while John Wayne’s family was from Waterloo, he was not.  There is, however, another John Wayne from Waterloo who happens to have been a serial killer and rapist with a clown fetish.  A misfire on the part of Bachmann, but certainly an extremely minor problem that warranted maybe five minutes of discussion, ten minutes tops.

Judging by the media firestorm following the speech, however, someone completely unfamiliar with the situation would have thought that Bachmann brought serial killer John Wayne on the stage, gave him a Purple Heart, and proceeded to layer compliments on a dead serial killer wearing a clown suit.

"Whoops, wrong dude!"

Most media outlets feverishly reporting on this “scandal” are giving Bachmann enough credit that they know she doesn’t really admire the spirit of serial killer John Wayne Gacy and are instead suggesting that she tried and failed to make herself look like “a hometown girl” to her fellow Iowans.  What most outlets are leaving out, however, is that John Wayne’s family was in fact from Waterloo and had lived there for many years before he was born.  So while the media would have you believe that Bachmann skimmed the “Famous Waterlooites” Wikipedia page too quickly in an effort to look like a true Waterloo native, it’s important to note that there is a strong possibly she knew that fact about Wayne’s family and made the assumption that John Wayne was also from his family’s hometown.

Regardless of what caused the mixup, be it too briefly skimming Wikipedia or making assumptions about the real John Wayne’s past, this is a non-issue and means absolutely nothing.  Any blog or website that’s trying to feed you some BS that this is evidence of Michele Bachmann‘s idiocy or of a disconnect between Bachmann and reality is a complete moron.  Unfollow their blog STAT.

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Thanks for reading!

Rick

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