{"id":187030,"date":"2013-07-17T19:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/07\/17\/those-whom-the-gods-destroy-they-first-make-weirder\/"},"modified":"2013-07-17T19:39:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T00:39:00","slug":"those-whom-the-gods-destroy-they-first-make-weirder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/07\/17\/those-whom-the-gods-destroy-they-first-make-weirder\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Whom the Gods Destroy, They First Make Weird(er)"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, Michelle Bachmann is under investigation for campaign finance violations, one of her staff has been charged in petty thefts in other Congressional offices, and now its been revealed that aa Conservative Christian group mailed vibrator to Michele Bachmann<\/a>:<\/p>\n

.Hundreds of pages of email and text message correspondence made public last week shed new light on the infighting and organizational disarray that have plagued America\u2019s leading conservative Christian political consulting firm in recent months.<\/span>

<\/span>As BuzzFeed reported in June,<\/a> the Columbus-based Strategy Group for Media \u2014 which has represented dozens of tea party and religious right Republicans, including Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich \u2014 has been mired in lawsuits and internal tumult since last spring, when seven of the firm\u2019s managers staged a religious intervention with their CEO, Rex Elsass. After the managers made their demands in a dramatic meeting that culminated with them laying hands on their boss and praying for his soul, Elsass fired three of his top lieutenants, including his longtime prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and Strategy Group President Nick Everhart.<\/span>

<\/span>The series of emails and text messages, made public on the Franklin County Court website in the ongoing lawsuit between Everhart and Strategy Group, adds further detail to that meeting, and shows the extent to which the company\u2019s managers were worried about Elsass\u2019 psychological and spiritual health. They also reveal potentially embarrassing anecdotes for the company, including one incident in which an executive said Elsass accidentally mailed a \u201cfemale pleasure machine\u201d to Rep. Michele Bachmann. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>And an email thread from May 29 \u2014 after the three managers were fired \u2014 featured Strategy Group\u2019s former voter-contact consultant P.J. Wenzel making reference to Elsass sending \u201cfemale pleasure machines\u201d to Bachmann. The emails don\u2019t elaborate on the incident, but one person familiar with the story told BuzzFeed that Elsass had intended to give Bachmann a vibrating head massager to help alleviate her migraines, and that the employee he sent to buy the gift accidentally purchased something that more closely resembled a sex toy \u2014 and sent it to her office.<\/span>

<\/span>Tyler said the item in question was purchased at Brookstone and was not a sex toy, but he declined to provide further information about the product. (Brookstone announced<\/a> in 2011 that it had begun selling \u201cpleasure objects.\u201d)<\/span>

<\/span>The person familiar with the story said the firm successfully retrieved the gift before Bachmann could open it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seriously, have you noticed that when a political figure’s career is in a death spiral, that there suddenly emerge a plethora of stories that are even weirder<\/b> than before?<\/p>\n

By this benchmark, I think that Michelle Bachmann will be sent to Gitmo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, Michelle Bachmann is under investigation for campaign finance violations, one of her staff has been charged in petty thefts in other Congressional offices, and now its been revealed that aa Conservative Christian group mailed vibrator to Michele Bachmann: .Hundreds of pages of email and text message correspondence made public last week shed new light …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,978,1019,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-politics","category-schadenfreude","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}