While Michele Bachmann’s Wacky Family Business is familiar to anyone who follows politics, it hasn’t been part of the Lamestream Narrative. Until now.

ABC’s World News Tonight:

A former patient who sought help from the Christian counseling clinic owned by GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, told ABC News he was advised that prayer could rid him of his homosexual urges and he could eventually be “re-oriented.”

NBC’s Today Show:

NBC’s Michael Isikoff reports that undercover video taken from Michele Bachmann’s Christian counseling center reveals that her therapists are using prayer and Bible scriptures to help cure people of homosexual tendencies.

Welcome to the Show, Michele. Your bigoted teabagger fans won’t care, but the rest of America just caught their first glimpse of what you’re really about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZFX7C1a94U

Our guest columnist is Matthew Chapman, writer and director of the new movie “The Ledge”, which does for atheists what the “Atlas Shrugged” movie did for Libertarians.

This could be the Brokeback Mountain moment for atheists, our tipping point, when we finally get the attention we deserve. Although books have put atheists into the intellectual mainstream, The Ledge is the first Hollywood drama to target the broader movie-going public with an openly atheist hero in a production big enough to attract A-list stars. This is unprecedented.

Although the film was nominated for Best US Drama for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and has huge potential to promote atheism, it could also be a crushing defeat. How many watch it — and it just came in 3rd in Russia against Pirates of the Caribbean and Kung Fu Panda — determines the push it will get nationwide. If Brokeback Mountain had failed at the box office, it would have scared investors away from gay-centric films for a decade. When Passion Of The Christ came out, it was heavily supported by Christians, and consequently Hollywood made several more faith-based films. It is vital that we atheists prove that we support films that support us. This is how the door opens.

How to help The Ledge [Ledge Movie]

Director hopes new film will be ‘Brokeback Mountain’ for atheists [Raw Story]

Fifteen years ago, Herman Cain recorded an album of gospel tunes. You’ll have to visit Weigel to listen to them, because we just don’t have the nerve.

If you haven’t heard, Sarah Palin, um, graces the cover of the latest Newsweek, which is now run by Tina Brown, which explains the shamelessness.

And if, like us, you find yourself visiting the web version of the cover story, you’ll see the above photo, captioned “See more images from Sarah Palin’s cover shoot with photographer Emily Shur.”

And if, like us, you dawdle your mouse over that photo, you’ll see the alt-text “palin-newsweek-tease”.

Which is easily explained: In the biz, a “tease” is just a promo, an offer to click through for more detail. For the geeks running the Newsweek site, it’s merely a means of labeling one of the elements of the presentation, for easy reference.

We suspect, however, that like us, you don’t really care. For palin-newsweek-tease so perfectly captures the story, the person, the presentation, and the phenomenon, the only possible explanation is Divine Intervention by a mischievous deity who has an adorable weakness for shits & giggles.

Palin Plots Her Next Move [Newsweek]

So, are we having fun yet?

The Guardian:

Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account, his legal file as well as his family’s medical records.

Daily Mirror:

Desperate Rupert Murdoch yesterday flew to London to try to save his crumbling empire.

He arrived in a cowboy-style hat to be hit by claims News of the World reporters hacked the phones of 9/11 victims.

Read more »

You expect Michele Bachmann to sign a Bigotry Pledge, because Michele Bachmann is a bigot, and signing a Bigotry Pledge is just self-affirmation.

You expect Mitt Romney to pander, because Mitt Romney is a Pandroid (“Pander Bear” is too cuddly and warm-blooded), and pandering is just his programming.

And by now, you should probably expect Tim Pawlenty to be Michele & Mitt’s lovechild: A Bigoted Pandroid.

Or, because he’s so bad at it: A Special Needs Bigoted Pandroid Lovechild…

GREGORY: Is being gay a choice?

PAWLENTY: Well, the science in that regard is in dispute. I mean, scientists work on that and try to figure out if it’s behavioral or if it’s partly genetic—

GREGORY: What do you think?

PAWLENTY: Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard.

GREGORY: So you think it’s not a choice? That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you’re born that way.

PAWLENTY: There’s no scientific conclusion that it’s genetic. We don’t know that.

Well, of course we do, and Tim Pawlenty knows that, just as he knows that climate change isn’t happening all by itself, only he can’t say that either, not if he wants to be the Republican nominee for Preznit.

Read more »

Title: “Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times”

Author: Jon M. Huntsman (Senior)

Rank: 8,009

Blurb: “The man who revolutionized the world by giving it the plastic spoon, fork, knife and Styrofoam take-out food container will once again change how you live your life.” —Glenn Beck

Review: “One of my new found favorite quotes is ‘Values provide us with ethical water wings.'”

Customers Also Bought: “Make Your Own Rules: A Renegade Guide to Unconventional Success”, by Wayne Rogers and Josh Young

Footnote: So Dad’s a self-made billionaire? That’s more interesting to us than Junior being Mitt’s Mormon understudy.

Winners Never Cheat [Fuck Amazon]