Busted.
Via The Awl:
. . . The parade of uncredited use of material from Ripple in Stillwater, and several other Minnesota blogs that have dogged Bachmann for years now, is likely to continue as well. Publications such as the Minneapolis City Pages and the Dump Bachmann blog have been the original sources of numerous stories about Bachmann’s career foibles.
For example, in the Rolling Stone piece, Taibbi writes:
“For the most part, though, Bachmann’s upbringing seems like pure Americana, a typical Midwestern girl who was ‘in a couple of beauty pageants’ and ‘not overtly political,’ according to her stepbrother Michael LaFave.”
Compare that to the 2006 City Pages profile of Bachmann, “The Chosen One,” which interviewed LaFave:
“By his own admission, LaFave, 51 years old and a union representative who lives in Forest Lake, did not get to know his new stepsister all that well. ‘I remember that she was book-smart, and did pretty well in school,’ he recalls. ‘And she was in a couple of beauty pageants. . . . She was not overtly political.'”
Another passage from that same 2006 City Pages profile:
Stephens and other parents soon had confrontational meetings with Bachmann and the rest of the charter school group. ‘One member of Michele’s entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly,’ Stephens says. ‘He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, ‘This is a cult.’
Rolling Stone:
‘One member of Michele’s entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly,’ recalled Denise Stephens, a parent who was opposed to the religious curriculum at New Heights. ‘He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, ‘This is a cult.”
City Pages, 2006:
‘I came in wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and moccasins, and I had no makeup on at all,’ the story quotes Bachmann as saying. ‘I had not one piece of literature, I had made not one phone call, and spent not five cents and I did not solicit a vote.’
Rolling Stone:
‘I came in wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and moccasins, and I had no makeup on at all,’ she said. ‘I had made not one phone call, and spent not five cents, and I did not solicit a vote.’
Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates told me that this was his doing — that due to space concerns, two of Taibbi’s original notes attributing work to the City Pages piece had been removed, to save space.
Matt Taibbi: Follically challenged thief.