As you’ve quite possibly heard, anti-gay GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was glitter-bombed by a gay activist Tuesday, during a book-signing prior to a fundraiser for the right-wing Minneapolis Family Council. Watch video of the incident from the AP below.
Clayton M. McCleskey, a contributing writer for the Dallas Morning News, writes on the newspaper’s Opinion Blog that he thinks the incident was “an embarrassment to the gay community and to the gay rights movement”:
If gay rights activists take issue with Gingrich’s less-than-enlightened stance on gay rights, then there are many ways for them to raise the issue. Taking a bag of glitter and dumping it on Gingrich’s head is not one of them. That was a cheap shot. If the goal is to show that gays should be treated like the normal folks they are, is it all that productive to bring glitter into the debate?
According to Andrew Belonsky at Death+Taxes, the glitter bomb was not only productive, it was “fabulous”:
ACT-UP’s members enacted the most sensational and compelling of all gay protests: in 1987, they sprawled out at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway to demand more access to newly developed AIDS drugs, and that same year hung their famous “Silence Equals Death” banner in front of Ronald Reagan’s White House. Seventeen years later, ten nude ACT-UP activists protests the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.
Though some of the group’s protests were grim, they all effectively employed a blithe spirit, catapulting them onto front pages around the nation, and the world. So too has Erickson’s stunt, which will hopefully inspire more imaginative and playful protests that capture the nation’s attention.
What do you think?
I think it’s awesome!
When do gay people get embarrassed? What can they do that will actually make them feel like jerks? If someone, anyone, would do that (glitter bomb) to me I’d probably punch them in the jaw – and I would feel justified in doing so.
I, really think his wife liked it and thought it was funny.
I agree with the Dallas News. Though it was certainly attention getting — which I suppose was the whole purpose — it was a cheap shot in my opinion.
I”m all for protesting and confronting politicians like Gingrich, but why do it like a raging queen? God that voice!! Confront him the way the other MAN did who was caught on camera this week confronting Gingrich about his attack on that other GOP jerk Paul Ryan. Confront him like a man for pete’s sake. I wasn’t necessarily embarrassed by it, but I’m tired of queens representing gays in the media. Glitter…really?? It seems as if even gays have bought into the representation of us by the media.
What happens when this is done to Obama? Imagine someone in a crowd throwing glitter near Obama at a handshaking event.
It was embarrassing.