Crazy 8: Our Year in Review

May 21, 2010 Sharyn Jackson, Stephanie Schroeder, Abby Tallmer

Marriage Equality The battle for same-gender marriage raged on these past months, with Maine voters echoing the 2008 decision of California voters on Proposition 8 and choosing to take away marriage rights that had previously been given to gays and lesbians. On the upside, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia all passed laws allowing same-gender marriage in the past year. Connecticut and Massachusetts already have formalized gay marriage provisions.

This year has been a whirlwind. As we celebrate yet another milestone, we invite you to reflect with us upon the last 364 plus days’ high moments, low moments, and everything in between. In no particular order, the events that helped shape our year…

We Party, You Party, Tea Party

This past year also saw the emergence of the Tea Party (or Tea Bagger) phenomenon. Started as an unofficial “people’s party” during the 2008 Presidential campaign, the Tea Partyers, urged on by their unofficial den mother, half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her sidekick, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, purported to represent the so-called “average American:” those concerned citizens who are fed up with so-called “Big Government,” with high taxes and with having a “Kenyan-born socialist” in the White House. The Tea Partyers distinguished themselves through their polarizing anti-immigrant quasi-white power rhetoric about wanting to “take America back,” and held rallies where those in the crowd felt free to wear visible weapons as part of their ensemble while holding up signs depicting President Obama as the Joker, with a Hitler mustache, and so on. Liberals reacted with a mix of horror and amusement— horror at the incendiary rhetoric the Tea Partyers espoused but also amusement at the inside joke hidden within the Tea Baggers’ name, which we still can’t believe they haven’t changed yet.