Meanwhile, inside Michele Bachmann’s head

run subroutine {real Americans} ^not found^ :: gosub {made-up statistics} ^catalog error^ /fail

Like a child who insists that everyone watch her do a roundoff after her older sister’s piano recital, Michele Bachmann held a rally of her own Saturday at the Washington Monument, across the Mall from Glenn Beck. The event was essentially a campaign speech—outside of the state in which she is campaigning, which adds to the terrifying accumulation of evidence that Bachmann is trying to become some sort of national figure—but it occasioned perhaps the funniest Washington Post story ever written. Emi Kolawole packs more gems of dry paragraph-structure humor into her 275 words than I have time to enumerate here, including:

The Republican lawmaker also took the opportunity to list members of the House Tea Party Caucus, which she chairs. When she reached the name of Rep. Joe Wilson, best known for shouting “you lie” during President Obama’s address to Congress, the crowd started chanting “you lie.”

The best journalism makes you feel like you’re there. My favorite quote from Kolawole’s report, however, and the big story from the event, was Bachmann’s absurd estimate of the size of the crowd. Lay down some plastic, because your head is going to explode when you click on “More…”

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Glenn Beck leads religious nationalist rally

God, I wish I had Photoshop.

It’s possible you’ve heard about this, but Glenn Beck held his “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, drawing anywhere from 87,000 to 1,000,000 middle-class, white conservatives to reclaim the civil rights movement. That’s not fair; it was really to honor American troops and raise money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Except it was actually more of a religious revival. Exactly what Glenn Beck did on Saturday and how many people came to watch him and what the fudge the whole thing might mean is frankly unclear. Fortunately, we had a whole list of questions worked out beforehand.

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