Bachmann pwnd by 8 year old 'activist'

[Upchurch]

Why?

We should be encouraging more moms to use their kids for just this. If it helps drive home what horrible bigots these candidates are then so much the better.

We should be encouraging parents to teach their kids critical thinking skills (yes, even in politics). What this mom was engaging in is an appeal to emotion, which is a logical fallacy.

There are legitimates way to defend the proposition that gay people are, in fact, people and don't need to be fixed. This is not one of them

The ends justify the means in these things.

ಠ_ಠ

 

[Minoosh]

I think Bachmann came across very positively in this.

I do too and I really dislike her but she seemed gentle and humble, two words I would not previously have ascribed to her. I love the "me ears were too far away" line. It came across as a failed stunt.

 

[Minoosh]

What is pwnd?

and while I'm at it meh & teh?

 

[Checkmite]

What is pwnd?

and while I'm at it meh & teh?

noob.

 

[332nd]

What is pwnd?

and while I'm at it meh & teh?

Pwnd= owned. Humiliated, beaten badly.

Meh= not a big deal.

Teh= the. Intentional misspelling.

 

[SezMe]

If the mom comes up and says she's lesbian Bachmann's liable to just punch her or spit on her.

Doesn't help the conversation when you exaggerate like that.

 

[Spindrift]

Doesn't help the conversation when you exaggerate like that.

So what's the correct way to exaggerate?

 

[citizenzen]

We should be encouraging more moms to use their kids for just this.

And moms on the other side of the political spectrum?

Should they use their kids to wave signs showing photos of aborted fetuses, or "God Hates Fags"?

 

[Number Six]

I just saw the video and I think it's awful. It's not that the mother was using the child as a pawn. She would be using the child as a pawn if the child willingly parroted whatever the mother told him to say.

But that's not what happened. Instead the child obviously did not want to talk Bachmann or if he did want to talk to her then he didn't want to say what his mother told him to say. It seems pretty clear to me that he was being forced into it.

What the kid said or who he said it to isn't the point. The point is that the mother forced the kid to do something in public that the kid didn't want to do (and not something for his own direct benefit like take medicine) and that the mother either planned to put on Youtube or else knew someone else would film and put on Youtube. The kid didn't want to do it at all but not only was he forced to do it now the entire nation is watching him do it.

Bachmann is nuts on the gay stuff but her attitudes towards gays is no worse than someone treating a child like that mother did.

 

[TragicMonkey]

So the final score is:

Child: +10 pts for embarrassing a politicians, +25 points for sympathy for having a pushy mom.
Mother: -50 points for using her kid in a political PR stunt, +2 points for using low-energy light bulbs in her home.
Bachmann: +10 points for not freaking out, punching the child, or screaming swears at the audience, -10,000 points for being Bachmann.

Anybody going to vote for her now that wasn't before? Anybody going to not vote for her now that was before? No, and no.

So ultimately, it's a total draw, with the only real losers being, voila, us for spending time arguing about it.

 

[Barber Shop]

We should be encouraging parents to teach their kids critical thinking skills (yes, even in politics). What this mom was engaging in is an appeal to emotion, which is a logical fallacy.

There are legitimates way to defend the proposition that gay people are, in fact, people and don't need to be fixed. This is not one of them

+1

 

[Barber Shop]

So the final score is:

Child: +10 pts for embarrassing a politicians, +25 points for sympathy for having a pushy mom.
Mother: -50 points for using her kid in a political PR stunt, +2 points for using low-energy light bulbs in her home.
Bachmann: +10 points for not freaking out, punching the child, or screaming swears at the audience, -10,000 points for being Bachmann.

Anybody going to vote for her now that wasn't before? Anybody going to not vote for her now that was before? No, and no.

So ultimately, it's a total draw, with the only real losers being, voila, us for spending time arguing about it.

I think Mr. Monkey has hit the nail on the head...

 

[Number Six]

The loser is it the kid for (a) having to endure it in the first place and (b) having it put on Youtube.

And I think some people will vote for her that wouldn't vote for her before. There are people that don't pay close attention to politics but are swayed by stuff like this. The reasoning is "I don't know much about the position of either side but I know the people on that one side are pigs that abuse their kids, therefore I'll vote for the other side." Of course, there are pigs on the other side too and some of the piggy stuff they do is put on Youtube but it's possible some people will see poor behavior of one side but not of the other.

ETA: Maybe other people will happen to notice the pig behavior in reverse in the largest picture the amount of votes lost by pig behavior will cancel out and there will be no overall effect. So it's not like we can say there is an overall net benefit to anyone. But IMO the big hit in the grand picture is taken by civility and decency.

 

[Barber Shop]

And moms on the other side of the political spectrum?

Should they use their kids to wave signs showing photos of aborted fetuses, or "God Hates Fags"?

Hey! Those kids are 'activists'! Leave 'em alone and let them fight the good fight!

 

[TheAnachronism]

Should they use their kids to wave signs showing photos of aborted fetuses, or "God Hates Fags"?

If you're using "should" to mean "ought," then my opinion would most definitely be no. Should they be allowed? Sure. Are they allowed? Most certainly. Unfortunately, I live in an area where fundamentalists regularly participate in these kinds of activities with their children. During home games on my college campus, we have one group that regularly hangs out by the bars with Chick tracts and signs about repentance; they usually have at least a couple kids who look to be under 10 years old.

Honestly, I don't think what the mother did in coercing* her child to do this stunt is in very good taste, but I don't feel as negative about it as some people on here apparently do. Did I miss a part in the video where the child gets hit? Heckled? Yelled at? Molested?

Contrary to popular belief, children (precious as they are) are not delicate glass sculptures of innocence who are scarred at every life event that meets them. I can think of several things that my mother did in my childhood that would have effected me much more than this event likely impressed upon this child--perfectly ordinary things like picking me up several hours late from school, etc. Kid's gonna be find.

*To be fair, I have no direct evidence that he was coerced, but I can't imagine that there was no input from the mother.

 

[Number Six]

Honestly, I don't think what the mother did in coercing* her child to do this stunt is in very good taste, but I don't feel as negative about it as some people on here apparently do. Did I miss a part in the video where the child gets hit? Heckled? Yelled at? Molested?

Contrary to popular belief, children (precious as they are) are not delicate glass sculptures of innocence who are scarred at every life event that meets them. I can think of several things that my mother did in my childhood that would have effected me much more than this event likely impressed upon this child--perfectly ordinary things like picking me up several hours late from school, etc. Kid's gonna be find.

And how many time did your mother embarrass you in public and then put the film of it in the national media? Observe the child in the video. Getting heckled or yelled at in a situation he entered voluntarily would be preferable to being pushed into doing that.

 

[TheAnachronism]

And how many time did your mother embarrass you in public and then put the film of it in the national media? Observe the child in the video. Getting heckled or yelled at in a situation he entered voluntarily would be preferable to being pushed into doing that.

Ah, right. Since this hasn't happened to me personally, I can't possibly have an opinion on the matter and therefore have nothing further to say. Or perhaps it not so much that I have an opinion, but that I chose the wrong one?

Look, I watched the video. The child seems shy and introverted, hardly the type to do this on his own accord. I cannot imagine pushing my child into a similar situation so that I could film Bachmann's* reaction.

And yet I fail to feel any real outrage. We can all now hypothesize on what this child's mother is like, what her reasoning was for bringing her child to this event, how she treats her child(ren) regularly, how this incident has effected the child, how he might turn into a serial killer because of this, etc. If you think, in two weeks, this child's life will be in any appreciable way different than it was before this incident, I'm afraid I can't agree. I haven't been trained by the media to become outraged at every non-story there is.

*Just out of curiosity, what is Bachmann's ethnic background? I've known several Bachmanns (Bachmänner?) who were Jewish. ETA: Actually, thinking about it, her surname is most likely that of her husband's, so wouldn't provide any clues to ancestry.

 

[SezMe]

Doesn't help the conversation when you exaggerate like that.

So what's the correct way to exaggerate?

Awright, awright. Let me rephrase the point, your honor.

Doesn't help the conversation when you exaggerate like that.

 

[Shadowdweller]

*Just out of curiosity, what is Bachmann's ethnic background? I've known several Bachmanns (Bachmänner?) who were Jewish. ETA: Actually, thinking about it, her surname is most likely that of her husband's, so wouldn't provide any clues to ancestry.

Wikipedia to the rescue:

Michele Marie Amble was born in Waterloo, Iowa "into a family of Norwegian Lutheran Democrats";[9] her family moved from Iowa to Minnesota when she was 13 years old.[10] After her parents divorced, Bachmann's father, David John Amble, moved to California, and Bachmann was raised by her mother, Jean (née Johnson), who worked at the First National Bank in Anoka, Minnesota.[10][11] Her mother remarried when Bachmann was a teenager; the new marriage resulted in a family with nine children.[12]

 

[Tricky]

I have little doubt that the child was coached, although I'd not call it "coercion". What is funny about this is that Michelle Bachmann was trying to get off without any difficult questions by asking a bunch of kids, and it backfired on her. If Michelle had had a reasonable answer that she was familiar with, she could have given it and moved on. Instead, she goes ballistic about being caught unprepared. It seems fools (like Bachmann and Perry) don't perform well under pressure.