One Should Never Miss An Opportunity To Slag This Vapid, Feculent, Suppurating Running-Sore.

Via TPM:

At (the recent) conservative "Code Red" rally against the health care bill, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) rallied the faithful with a fun historical and literacy reference: "It's the charge of the light brigade!"

The fun part here is that the Light Brigade lost that famous battle of the Crimean War -- they lost it badly, sustaining heavy numbers of deaths and injuries. They are celebrated not for victory, but for their bravery in taking on truly insurmountable odds in a military disaster. It's hardly the sort of positive example that could truly rally the political faithful to success, is it?

Had Bachmann actually read about the Light Brigade, she might have understood this reference from the famous poem by Lord Tennyson:

Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

When it comes to appreciating Tennyson, Bachmann is no Rod Blagojevich!

Actually, we could do worse than hope that the "charges" she advocates will have precisely the same consequences on the teabaggers that the Russian artillery had on the Light Brigade--decimated the fuck out of 'em...Here's a link to the IMDb page of the Tony Richardson version, in 1968, in which I think he got it just about right: The Light Brigade was badly led, by incompetent officers, into the wrong battle, which they fought with supreme--albeit futile--bravery, and from which fewer than a third returned.