Michele Bachmann, the Republican Congresswoman, never said that “if English was good enough for Jesus when he wrote the Bible, it should be good enough for Coke” on Fox.
Some versions of the Coke meme--which appears to have been made and spread this week--has the Christians For Michele Bachmann logo on it. Christians For Michele Bachmann is a satire Facebook page that pokes fun of the Minnesota Congresswoman.
The Coke meme was published on Feb. 3 on the group’s Facebook page.
No news sources or transcripts contain the any of the aforementioned quotes from Bachmann, according to hoax-debunking site Wafflesatnoon.com. A search of Fox News’ website shows that she made no statements to the broadcaster this week.
“The Congresswoman and former Presidential candidate has been no stranger to controversy, and the internet is rife with blog posts devoted to some of her more colorful quotes. Our first guess was that the quote above may have originated with a political satire piece from The Onion or one of its clones. We could, however, find no such article,” says Wafflesatnoon.
Another Bachmann meme that “Christianity isn’t a Middle Eastern religion ... the Bible is written in English.” And another says, “Jesus loves America the most... that’s why the Bible is written in English.” These statements weren’t made by the Congresswoman.
The first instances of this meme were posted on Reddit in December but it’s been tracked to August 2013 when it was first uploaded to Seduced by the New. It also appeared on the United Atheists of America Facebook page and later, Google+.
Bachmann has made some controversial statements in the past. “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence,” she said in 2009 when swine flu broke out.
The memes were being spread virally via Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday.
According to the University of Pennsylvania’s website, there’s a quote from 1881 that reads: “If the King’s English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for the children of Texas!” A New York Times article at the time allegedly quoted a farmer as saying that.
Over the next four decades the same quote appeared in a few other publications. At one point, it was incorrectly attributed to Texas Governor Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson regarding bilingualism in Texas schools, according to the university.
