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Michelle Bachmann: she just has a crazy face

Conservatives made a bit of an uproar over the choice of picture for Michelle Bachmann’s Newsweek cover photo. And honestly, yeah, that’s definitely a fair point they’re making. It  appears that Newsweek editors tried to find the craziest, bug-eyed, weird-forced-smile photo of the congresswoman they could.

That is, until you see the cover of her autobiography, Core of Conviction.

That is the photo she chose. They did not just take one photo and say “Well, she looks like a robot who is trying to understand this feeling we call ‘joy,’ but we have to go with that.” They did not ring up Bill Maher and say, “So, I know you generally come down pretty hard on conservatives, but I feel like we can trust you to pick a good cover for Rep. Bachmann’s book cover. I’ll send over the proofs.” They had a photo shoot. It likely lasted for hours. Probably hundreds of photos were taken. There was likely a session where Bachmann and advisers looked over dozens of the best photos all printed out. A very skilled airbrush artist probably made an concerted effort to improve her expression. And yet still we get this:

The most forced expression in the history of mankind. She looks like there’s a gun to her back. You can’t even call what her mouth is doing a “smile” as the corners are not even upturned. It’s more like how chimpanzees bare their teeth when they feel threatened. They say you can tell a smile is fake by whether the person has has “smiling eyes.” Those eyes are more aptly described as “murder eyes.” Her head is cocked at an angle that suggests it can turn all the way around. Even her hands are clasped like she just now learned this concept of “clasping hands.” At this point I think Newsweek tried and tried to get a normal, flattering photo of the representative, eventually giving up and saying, “Fuck it, let’s just use a headline that makes it seem like we’re deliberately trying to make her look nutty.” But it turns out Michelle Bachmann just constantly has a crazy fucking expression to match her politics/personality/bigotries/general demeanor.