Not the former Veep but his distant cousin (and my favorite writer) Gore Vidal.Apparently the master’s “snottiness” made Michelle Bachmann a Republican. Genetics made her an idiot:
I was a reasonable, fair-minded Democrat. And another secret you need to know: My husband and I met in college. We worked on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. It’s true, it’s true. This is like a 12-step meeting here today, you know that. Because I am here to admit to you, I’m a Minnesotan who had “DFL” – that’s what we call Democrats in our state — stamped on my birth certificate, worked for Jimmy Carter. The first time I ever went to Washington, DC, I went to dance at Jimmy Carter’s inaugural ball! It gets worse!
Until I was reading this snotty novel called ‘Burr,’ by Gore Vidal, and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers. And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, ‘You know what? What he’s writing about, this mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend — just like every one of you in this room would, and as many of you in this roomhave when you wore the uniform of this great country — I knew that that was not representative of my country.
And at that point I put the book down and I laughed. I was riding a train. I looked out the window and I said, ‘You know what? I think I must be a Republican. I don’t think I’m a Democrat.’
Burr remains one of my favorite books, I’ve re-read it many times, but now I like it more than ever. Thanks, GV.
It’s interesting how someone with no sense of humor can be so funny but that’s Michelle Bachmann in a wingnutshell. At least she’s original: most Goopers her age blame Jimmy Carter for making them wingers. Btw, Carter is also a distant cousin of both Al Gore and Gore Vidal. It’s a small fucking world, after all…