Bachmann’s friendship with anti-gay DJ highlighted
Because you just can’t make this stuff up: Tea Party darling and will-she-or-won’t-she presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann is pals with anti-gay crusader and hair-metal-music DJ talk show host Bradlee Dean.
She’s been on his show, has raised money for his “ministry” and now is scheduled to appear with him in September at the Freedom Jamboree, billed as the first nominating convention for the Tea Party.
Mother Jones features the pair on its website, where it also issues a call-out to our sister site, the Minnesota Independent for keeping an eye on this curious coupling.
In late September, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) will travel to a greyhound racetrack on the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas, to speak at the Freedom Jamboree, a five-day festival billed as “the first national nominating convention” for the tea party. Bachmann, who is considering a run for president, will be joined by some familiar faces—WorldNetDaily editor and arch-birther Joseph Farah will be there; so will Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of Arizona’s harsh immigration law.
“„One confirmed speaker, however, is not like all the others: Bradlee Dean is a Minnesota radio host, anti-gay activist, and drummer for the band Junkyard Prophet, voted “the second-best unsigned band in the nation” in 1996 by Heaven’s Metal magazine. Dean is likely the only scheduled speaker with a tattoo of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on his forearm; he is almost certainly the only scheduled speaker who has ever gone more than a decade without cutting his hair—a lifestyle decision that gives him a more-than-passing resemblance to Poison’s Bret Michaels.
“„But over the last five years, Bachmann, the politician, and Dean, the metal-head, have formed an unlikely but powerful alliance. Bachmann has helped raise money for Dean’s traveling youth ministry, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International; guest-starred in his television series; and prayed for his ministry to multiply 10-fold. Dean, for his part, has embraced Bachmann, whose district includes his suburban community of Annandale, as an ally against the gay agenda. But his inflammatory rhetoric and past links to an anti-government organization make Bachmann’s own controversial views seem downright pedestrian—and raise serious questions about the congresswoman’s choice of associates.
