I dislike Michele Bachman very much. I find her personally annoying and think her political beliefs are despicable. But I am thrilled she is running for president.

Unlike Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann has real political experience, first serving in the Minnesota State Sate and now the U.S. House of Representatives. She is playing presidential politics according to longstanding rules, courting voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and actually showing up to the first major debate for GOP presidential contenders. Thanks to Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Smith Chase, Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Rodham Clinton and yes, Sarah Palin, we have finally arrived to see the day when an ambitious woman is no longer automatically disqualified from running due to her gender.

Or have we? In his blistering, hatchet-job of a profile for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi skewers Congresswoman Bachmann as a Botoxed, lying, homophobic religious zealot. In fact, Taibbi lists Bachmann’s greatest quality as “her gigantic set of burnished titanium Terminator-testicles swinging under her skirt”. And there you have it. She’s just too damn ambitious. So how do you get rid of a little lady who has gotten too big for her bloomers? Call her looney tunes. Or, in this case, “batshit crazy”.

Calling a woman hysterical, looney tunes or “batshit crazy” has long been a fool-proof method for keeping women submissive to men. After all, it’s very hard to challenge a man’s authority when you’re drugged and locked up in a mental institution.

Too many women have been dismissed as “batshit crazy”. Michele Bachmann has a legitimate right to run for the Republican nomination for president. The press has a responsibility to ask serious questions about her political record, inconsistencies in her public statements, religious beliefs and so much more. But Matt Taibbi did not ask those questions. He did not let the facts, which were pretty startling, speak for themselves. Instead, he did a hell of a lot of sexist, ableist mudslinging.