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Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone gets all Alinksyed up over Michele Bachmann:

In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you’ve always got a puncher’s chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she’s living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she’s built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.

So she’s a rock star, in other words. Or the second coming of Obama. Either way, for Rolling Stone, what’s the problem here? As another publication with a Dylan-inspired moniker responds:

It doesn’t matter who you are: if you raise your head up over the trenches, they do this to you. And they are rougher on Conservative women than on the men – although Taibbi would have written a similar hit piece on Reagan — “ignorant and batshit crazy” — I’m sure.

But of course. I’d like to say this isn’t your grandfather’s Rolling Stone, but in terms of the sclerotic mindset and ancient readership demographics — it is.