Idiot Bumper Stickers, Part 1

Ah! Only nine months after I started blogging, I have begun something I'd intended to be a recurring feature of my blog from the start: posts about various and sundry stupid bumper stickers I have seen during my drives through Houston. This post ends up being a two-fer as a result. You learn something about its author in addition to what he thinks of said bumper sticker.

Okay. We'll get the confession and the self-flagellation out of the way first. I am a procrastinator! (Hmmmm! Note to self: When your home brewing repertoire expands into the doppelbocks, name one for yourself in the grand tradition of Optimator, Salvator, and Celebrator!) Why, you may ask, has the author been so slow to start such a good feature? This is embarrassing, but entertaining. I have been meaning to get a digital camera to photograph particularly stupid bumper stickers so I could just dump the images onto my blog when the time came to post about them. I have yet to buy the camera. Why a digital camera? Because I put off developing regular film for ages and I wanted to nullify that problem! And so here I am months later with zero posts on bumper stickers! Oy!

Actually, It's not really that bad. In my defense: I'm busy and have to contend with scheduling that, thanks to my job, combines the worst aspects of rigidity with those of unpredictability. I hate shopping and find that a store is the last place I want to end up when I'm off. And, in the final analysis, posting about bumper stickers is not as high a priority as I thought it might be when I began blogging. When you have a place to say your piece or to blow steam, the urge to vent about the latest bozo who wants to "flash" you with his opinions while you are unable to say anything back drops to about zero. In short: I've had bigger fish to fry. As you will see, my continuing lack of a digital camera is no serious impediment to posting about bumper stickers anyway. (So there, mister bumper sticker man! :-P)

But I still find it amusing that I've posted nothing about bumper stickers until now....

Anyway, I have always hated most bumper stickers, particularly those that advocate causes. There are many reasons for this, ranging from personal preference to the desire to debunk whatever pet cause is being pushed: Why would someone ruin the paint job on their car with easily-damaged, short-lived paper affixed with a permanent adhesive? Why the neurotic need to inflict one's opinion on those who just happen to be going about their daily lives? How the hell can someone actually believe something so stupid? And finally: Oh, God! That's actually clever. It might be nice to post a charity refutation of that one!

The last reason is really the most compelling one and frankly, not too many bumper stickers really cut the mustard. Some come close, but I think that on balance, my desire to just be able to "say something" when seeing some bumper stickers has largely subsided. But it has not disappeared entirely. In some cases, like the one I will showcase today, amusement has come to replace annoyance as my immediate reaction; testimony methinks to the salutary effects of having one's own web log.

So I have inaugurated a series at long last, but don't see myself adding to it terribly frequently.

***

On the way home from work Friday, I saw the following affixed to the trunk of an otherwise well-kept older car.


I did not need a photograph of this as it appears on the web already. I haven't much to say about this one aside from noting that this has hallmarks of the religious left on it: It appeals to the authority of God, slams Republicans, and at the same time parenthetically notes, in the name of the appearance of impartiality, that God isn't a Democrat either. But this last is really just a clever way of seizing the moral high ground from other Christians -- by being the ones not to presume that God has chosen their side. Of course, this also oozes with leftist cultural relativism, given its implicit assertion that no "side" is any better than another. Interestingly, our politically correct God seems to agree with this idea, and our "Sojourners" are somehow privy to this knowledge....

It is mildly alarming to me to have learned upon researching this bumper sticker that there is already such a well-established organization for a religious left, but this is really unsurprising after a few moments' thought. Annoyance trumps alarm for someone like me who is sick and tired of religionists attempting to use government force to make me live by their code of morality. God belongs neither in my bedroom nor in my wallet. However, it was amusement that carried the day, caused by my initial reaction to seeing this beauty: "Damn! I spotted him the first letter and he still misspelled 'Gus'!"

-- CAV