Glittering Rage

[n2doc]

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
Published: August 27, 2011

YOU can see it all on YouTube. There is the former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, signing copies of “Rediscovering God in America” at an event in Minneapolis. Suddenly, an attendee withdraws a Cheez-It box filled with sparkly glitter and dumps it on the authors.

“Feel the rainbow, Newt!” he says as he is hustled out of the room. “Stop the hate! Stop the anti-gay politics!” Welcome to “glitter bombing,” the latest act of political theater from the L.G.B.T. (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights movement. The targets, not surprisingly, are individuals who activists feel are hostile or insensitive to gay marriage and similar issues.

The Gingrich onslaught, on May 17, was the opening salvo. On June 16 in San Francisco, Nancy Mancias and Chelsea Byers of the group Codepink: Women for Peace poured glitter and bunches of long, thin, curly strips of pink paper — the kind found packed in gift baskets — on Tim Pawlenty, then a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Two days later, a lawyer, Rachel E. B. Lang, sprinkled Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, also a candidate. Then, on July 21, a contingent that included Nick Espinosa, who glittered the Gingriches, spread glitter at the headquarters of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian-oriented counseling practice run by Mrs. Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. The group was responding to stories that the clinic engaged in “reparative therapy,” which aims to persuade gays to become heterosexual.

“You can’t pray away the gay; baby, I was born this way!” they chanted as they tossed their sparkle of fairy dust. (Mr. Espinosa and his cohort returned to the clinic on Thursday; there they glittered a Marcus Bachmann impersonator who then joined in a celebratory dance.)

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/glitter-a-kinder-gentler-prank.html

[asthmaticeog]

1. Oh, wow.

That's actually kind of inspired. I used to work with glitter, it's really tenacious stuff. It was three years after I left that job that the stuff finally stopped showing up in my dryer's lint trap, there's a good reason people call the stuff 'the herpes of craft supplies.' So yeah, I think people who get glitter-bombed are going to remember the message for awhile.