Ted Anderson Reviews "False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story" in the Minneapolis Examiner on July 4th:

"For several years now, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has been a favorite target of liberal political commentators and blogs, in particular Wonkette. Actually, “target” isn’t quite the right word—it implies that these people have actually had some success in affecting Bachmann’s wild-eyed rhetoric. In fact, the reverse is true: the more they write about how crazy she is, the crazier she gets. Maybe “sideshow attraction” would be a more accurate description.

For those of you who don’t follow politics, Bachmann is, in brief, a nutjob. She’s the political figure who’s been in the news—most recently, anyway—for saying that the government plans to create “re-education camps for young people” under the guise of volunteering, trying to introduce a bill into Congress to ensure that America cannot replace the dollar as its national currency (as she fears Obama and Tim Geithner are trying to do), or vowing not to complete the 2010 census because she apparently worries that the information could be used for nefarious purposes, like putting American citizens in internment camps.

She is also the subject of a new comic book biography, False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story, by Bill Prendergast, issue one of which is currently available. The comic is a fine example of preaching to the choir—chances are, if you’re interested in reading it, you’re already aware of at least the broad outlines of Bachmann’s public insanity. But Prendergast takes you deep into the madness, looking at how Bachmann made her start in politics, the sociopolitical and cultural circumstances that led to her election, and the possible consequences of her over-the-top rhetoric.

Though Bachmann and other politicians and pundits are quoted directly, Prendergast’s own narration is scathing; he has harsh words for the voters who elected Bachmann, the media that ignored her extremist statements, the other politicians who, like Bachmann, pander to an evangelical base in order to claim “grass-roots” support, and, in one especially funny sequence, even those uneducated readers of this very comic who wonder why there aren’t any superheroes in its pages.

Issue two of False Witness is finished and close to press, and Prendergast and his various inkers (all members of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy) are hard at work on issue three. If the quality remains this high, the whole series should be well worth your time and money. And from the look of things, Bachmann will probably be providing them with enough material for years to come."


Immediately is the cover of False Witness issue number one (minus the logo.) It was done by award-winning Minneapolis artist and political activist Ken Avidor. Let me decode it for you.


Okay. The central figure is of course Michele. Michele is wearing the black and white checked "ensemble" that made her famous, perfect for the political campaigning season.

She accesorizes with an M-16 assault rifle in her right hand, an homage to her call for Americans to "rise up" in an "orderly revolution" against the "tyranny" of Barack Obama. (She has also--on the floor of Congress--noted the foresight of Americans who are stocking up on weapons and ammunition in the wake of the Obama election, claiming that these arms purchasers see "the handwriting on the wall." And she's a big gun fan.) In Michele's left hand is a cross, a reference to her exploitation of conservative evangelical rhetoric in furtherance of her political career, and her theocratic backers.

Michele tops off the ensemble with a crown (provided by a rather Aryan-looking Jesus.) This alludes to the story that Michele wore a prom tiara on the night that she was first elected to Congress. I wanted it to look a little more like a prom tiara than a crown, but we must allow Ken Avidor artistic license in interpreting these things, and I signed off on it--so there it is, a crown.

Jesus is crowning her because she has claimed that He told her to run for Congress. And for the Minnesota State Senate. And He told her to go to law school, and several other things. Michele has claimed publicly that she has been in personal contact with God throughout her life and career. More of this in future issues.

Let's move clockwise. Below Jesus is an ape, threatening Michele with a copy of Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Michele is not a fan of Darwin, the scientific community, or the notion that we are biologically related to apes. Michele spoke vehemently and publicly against the credibility of evolution as a theory of the origin of species, and tried to included creationist theories into the public school science curriculum.

Below that is the Statue of Liberty, clearly upset at being "hemmed in" by the gay "Rainbow flag" and two middle aged "butch homosexuals." Michele first made her name in Minnesota politics by "fighting the gay agenda," claiming that "our children were the prize for this community" and that "special rights" for American gays would lead to a loss of freedom for the rest of us.

Next to the Statue of Liberty: George Bush and Dick Cheney. Throughout her political career, Michele was a huge fan of the Bush/Cheney administration, going so far as to lay her hands on the former President and give him a big fat kiss after one of his State of the Union speeches. She has described President Bush's physical condition as "ripped;" these incidents indicate that her admiration for GWB was more than merely political. Oddly enough, she had implicated President Bush and the former GOP Congress in a plan to turn America's children into serfs in socialist planned economy along the lines of the former Soviet Union. So her feelings about Bush are complex, to say the least.

The little guy with the hat with the teabags hanging from it is a "tea-bagger," a conservative anti-tax activist--representing hundreds of the same who use tea bags as a symbol of one of the first American anti-tax rebellions, the Boston Tea Party. (These people clearly have no idea what "tea bagging" refers to in sexual slang, or they would be even angrier than they are.) Michele is on record as saying that she "hates" taxes. These days she's not talking about cutting taxes so much; she tends to talk more about the debt that is caused by the failure to tax. But conservatives still have her down as an anti-tax politician even though she has never successfully lowered anyone's taxes.

Below: two female homosexuals (or "Lesbians," as some people call them.) They look threatening because Michele claimed that she was held against her will by lesbians in a ladies' room after a local town hall meeting here in Minnesota. The police dismissed her claim after investigation, and Michele doesn't like to talk about it anymore.

The threatening lesbians appear to be puzzled by the "CFL lightbulb" that a scientist is displaying to them. During the run-up to the Wall Street meltdown, Michele (a member of the House Committee that is supposed oversee irregularites in the finance and banking sector) spent months on local talk radio railing against the dangers of replacing incandescent light bulbs with new, "more energy/eco-friendly" CFL light bulbs. She claimed that this was a big government intervention that threatened our freedom, and that CFL light bulbs posed a potential danger to our children. Her bid to protect our freedom by stopping their adoption was unsuccessful.

Just above the scientist, you can see "Satan." Satan looms large in Michele's thinking; he is the guiding force behind many of the cultural innovations supported by liberals and other Bachmann opponents. For example, she has stated that gayness is "of Satan." He is everywhere that Michele is not, but Michele's position is superior to his in this artwork, because the Bible has foretold that the forces she claims to represent will ultimately triumph over him.

Next to Satan: Barack Obama, supported by members of the new world order police. Michele believes that Obama is the tool of a global conspiracy to end American freedom and sovereignty. She has stated that Obama is practicing "tyranny" and is leading America into "economic Marxism", hence the red "New World Order" flag that Obama holds. Beside Obama is Osama bin-Laden, who is connected to all this, somehow.

To Obama's left (just barely) are Lenin and Marx, cheering on his conspiracy to end freedom, private enterprise, and American representative democracy. "You go, dude!" they seem to be saying to Obama.

Above them: the Capitol, home of American democracy, is menaced by the ominous "black helicopters" of the new world order. Above them, a seemingly endless formation of "flying imams" swarm over Washington, representing Michele's charge that radical Islam delighted in the election of Minnesota's only Muslim liberal Congressman, her colleague Keith Ellison.

Finally, the nukes: for it was Michele, prior to her first election to Congress, who reminded us that the nuclear option cannot be taken off the table when it comes to dealing with Iran. Michele is a big fan of strenuous and ongoing military intervention by the United States in the Middle East.

Well, that's the cover.