"Does this kind of stuff concern anybody else?"

Michelle Bachmann in Sarasota

A member of a college group I email with asked us if we were concerned by the report of Michelle Bachmann's having told a gathering in Florida Sunday that

I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, "Are you going to start listening to me here?"

    Another member of the group said that his suitcase is packed, and he's prepared to retreat to his beach house and try to figure out how the island it's on can secede. He said he could see filling each of his cabinet positions with a member of the email group.
    He can sign me up for communications director. That way, when he says things like he's got his suitcase packed, I can announce what Bachmann's spokeswoman, Alice Steward, said: "Obviously [he] was saying it in jest." Those who want to believe he was serious can (and will) go on believing that he really has a bag packed, ready to emigrate if someone like Bachmann should come to power, and the ones who believe me can feel relieved that he didn't really mean it (because he doesn't think such a thing will happen). Ms. Bachmann's followers, that is, are still turned on and wound up, whatever her spokeswoman may have announced for the sake of the rest of the world.

But I am concerned. I'm concerned by the sheer number of people in this country whose days are uplifted by the Bachmanns on the political entertainment circuit. Some of these people seem to be my neighbors, too. There have been so many letters lately to the editor of the Burlington Times-News from people arguing over the correct interpretation of the Bible that someone published a letter to its editor yesterday ("Religious views a private matter, not a topic for the Open Forum") calling for the editor to "exercise some editing."

Why not keep the religious debate in the churches and set some limits for this section to local matters that concern all?

    There are so many church-related articles in the Region section of this newspaper that I almost always mis-read the section's label as "Religion."