Yes, a video of the last Republican presidential candidates debate (in Iowa) shows Rep. Michele Bachmann voluntarily filling the water glasses of her fellow contenders before the event, since apparently the organizers expected them to pour their own. The Horror.
The Huffington Post is sure this is a significant and unseemly display of subservience to men by Bachmann, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs suggest that she accepts the concept of women submitting to their husbands in the marital relationship. Over at The Frisky, Jessica Wakeman accuses Bachmann of staging the whole thing for the cameras, so she will be perceived as nicer than she really is…and she thinks it gives women a black eye:
“…Even if Bachmann frequently talks about “conservative values” and the “traditional marriage” she has with her husband, she surely knows the power of imagery that shows her behaving nicely. But unfortunately, I don’t think the water-pouring makes her look “nice”: I think it makes her look a little foolish. Would Hillary have done that? Hell no, she wouldn’t. (Hillary would have been sharpening her shiv underneath the table.) I’m somebody who is OK with more traditional relationships between men and women (if chosen, not imposed) and this display of subservience even gave me an icky feeling. Completely independent of my distaste for Michele Bachmann’s bigotry and political opinions, I cringe as a woman when I see another woman serving water to a bunch of dudes who are supposed to be her equals. Playing Susie Housewife to Rick Perry, Herman Cain and other dudes with crappy records towards women is as lame as a fallen souflee.”
Thus does hatred and confirmation bias render one a hyper-critical, mean-spirited, suspicious fool. You know, I’ve been on panels where I poured water for the other speakers, and I’ve been on panels when one of the other speakers poured water for me. Believe me when I say that I am not a believer in being subservient to assorted middle-aged men and women that I don’t even know. I was being nice. Not trying to be perceived as nice, because usually when I’m on panels people don’t think of me as nice; I was just being nice, doing something for strangers and colleagues that I would appreciate if they did it for me. And this is all Michele Bachmann was doing. Honest. She was being nice. Believe it or not, even though Michele Bachmann gets John Adams and John Quincy Adams confused, she is a human being and a mother, and fully capable of being nice. Republicans can be nice. Conservatives can be nice. It’s amazing, I know.
Her critics are just incapable of being fair, and giving her that tiny shred of credit.
How sad and small of them.
Ethics Alarms 
Really? It is getting more and more trivial. I don’t care if someone does or doesn’t poor water for anyone else. I have poured beverages for people I don’t like me and I am sure they have done the same. I don’t care if someone takes over 10 seconds to answer a question as long as it is fluent, consistant, and not a lie. Big deal.
Wakeman cuts Michele and Hillary – and herself – with the same shank. The evident niceness of Michele is presumed simultaneously phony, self-demeaning, and demeaning to all women by association, while Hillary is projected to exemplify the noblest of unniceness and modern female sensibility. There’s one commentator whose pathological pettiness has earned my determined, deliberate effort not to pay any attention to her.
I’m sure if she had permitted a man to pour a glass of water for her, she’d instead be receiving criticism for being weak. She needs to man-up. Real men fill their own glasses and pour water for no one else! (Wait a minute . . . )
After further review (of the video), the set-up seemed incidental enough to give Bachmann the benefit of doubt, and the observable evidence inconclusive: the water pitcher was placed initially at her end of the table. Had the pitcher been any less within easy reach of her designated seat and had she walked to it to start pouring instead of walking directly to her seat, then more speculation, suspicion and scolding might have been justified.