Signs of the Apocalypse: Bumper Stickers

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

Wearers of “legible clothing” are the ignorant feigning success.—Paraphrase of Paul Fussell

Bumper stickers add “more to our humor than to our rancor.”—Robert Samuelson

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/23/12—Many years ago, I was heading north on I-85 toward Greenville in some pre-Christmas traffic. I was in the right lane, driving my usual semi-respectful five miles over the speed limit. The carols on the radio were not much better than the roar and hum of the afternoon traffic. Suddenly, however, the tedium was relieved: a Cadillac El Dorado intently driven by a white-haired lady (who might have been sitting on a Miami phone book) filled up my rear-view mirrors. As she breezed by on the left, I managed a sidelong look at her back seat, which was piled so high with wrapped packages and unwrapped toys that I hoped she was in no need of her own mirrors. As she passed, I glanced at her Florida license plate, framed in rhinestones, which read: “GRAMMA 1.” Later the same evening, I told my wife that that 15-second scenario was the best Christmas greeting from a stranger I’d ever received.

Neither my wife nor I have vanity plates, and the only bumper stickers we have are two German flags in honor of her birthplace. About a year ago, I added a SAIL sticker (“Smith Academy of International Languages”) to my bumper to promote the school that one of our grandchildren attends. Most people who have commented, however, want to know how long my sailboat is. As a rule I have forsworn bumper stickers because I once tried to remove one. SAIL and the two flags, I can assure you, will be on our bumpers when we sell those cars.

Yet, for perhaps the majority of Americans, the rear of their cars or trucks is where they are the most passively aggressive. It hasn’t happened, yet, but I won’t be surprised when I’m waiting for a light to change, and I read to my right, “I Love My Country But Fear My Government,” and to my left, “I’m Already Against the Next War.”

I recall reading the social psychologist Randy Fisher who theorized that, as these small, rectangular billboards proliferate so does road rage. I mentioned this notion to a colleague whose car is wall-papered with left-wing stickers and whose license plate reads, “ECAEP” (“We don’t recognize peace even when we see it,” she explained.) She just laughed at the psychologist’s theory and offered her own 1990 Toyota Tercel as an example: it didn’t have a key scratch or dent on it. (Of course, she rarely drives outside of Clemson, a blue enclave in a red state.) If her car were a part of the sound-byte “attack culture,” she didn’t see it that way.

But who knows what fantasies are stirred to life in those following this gentle advocate of co-existence? In 2008, an Obama sticker in South Carolina amounted to a posted invitation to have your car keyed. The “text-speak” that so many stickers and tags use is also easily misinterpreted.

A male colleague once told me how offended he was when he read “I LUV 2 SK 8” on a license plate, but what he read as an invitation to fellatio was likely just an innocent expression of skating love. “PHUC” did slip by the North Carolina censors a few years ago, and nearly a hundred people returned their North Carolina tags with the prefix “WTF” in 2008, but bureaucrats are usually lynx-eyed when it comes to spotting profanity.

Taken as a whole, bumper stickers offer a microcosm on a number of issues. Living in the South Carolina upstate, I had no idea how Miss Shannon Faulkner’s wish to enter The Citadel, a publicly-funded military college in Charleston, had offended people until I drove to the coast a couple of times in 1996. After a court battle, a federal judge ordered her admitted to the school in 1995, which led one cadet’s bumper to exclaim, “Don’t blame me—I voted for Jefferson Davis.”

Because Shannon was a trifle overweight, another bumper said, “Save the males and shave the whale.”

Though Shannon was born in South Carolina, one ignorant bumper blared, “Beautify South Carolina—send a Yankee home.”

The underlying male fear was best expressed in, “Heaven don’t want me, and hell is scared I’ll take over.”

After The Citadel admitted her, bumpers all over the state complained, “2000 Bulldogs and 1 Bitch.”

A short while later, Shannon withdrew from her classes and was admitted to a clinic, suffering from psychological exhaustion. She did eventually graduate from another university and is now teaching middle-school science in Greenville but, since her departure, over 200 women have graduated from the school she opened up to them.

With perhaps the exception of gun advocacy and the latest election, no topic is more popular with local un-hyphenated Americans than fundamental-style religion. But this being a college town, there’s usually a smart ass for every dumb s%$t. For every “Jesus saves,” there’s a “Jesus saves at First Federal.” For every Jesus fish, there’s a Darwin fish. For every “Jesus is coming,” there’s a “Look busy, Jesus is coming.” For every “Jesus loves you,” there’s a “Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot.” And for every “It started with the Big Bang,” there is a “Big Bang Theory—who lit the fuse?”

Over the last 30 or 40 years, I’ve also enjoyed keeping tabs on the “honking wars,” which began in the Clemson area with,“Honk if you love Jesus.”

Critics returned fire with a double salvo of, “Honk if you think I’m Jesus,” and, “Honk if you’re Jesus.”

Surrealists lobbed in a mortar round with, “Honk if you love cheeses.” But good natured fun has a way of turning ugly and, recently, I saw: “Honk if your people killed Jesus.” In one form or another, that one has been around for nearly 2,000 years.

If I ever spend another dollar on some printed vinyl, it will be for the following anonymous quotation: “If your beliefs fit on a bumper sticker—think harder.”

Proponents of stickers might want to turn off Rush Limbaugh and do a little reading as well. I suspect that the fellow who sports, “How ‘bout I put my carbon footprint up your liberal ass?” has not read very objectively about the environmental issues facing the globe. But first, he might want to get out a razor blade and have a go at removing his “free-speech zone.” In 1996, a South Carolina state trooper caused a stir when he issued a $119 citation to a woman with a decal on her rear window showing Calvin (of “Calvin and Hobbes”) urinating on the “IRS.” The decal, the trooper said, violated a state law banning “indecency.”

Shortly after this incident blew over, our son came home with “F&#k Corporate Rock” on his trunk. It took the two of us over an hour to remove the thing, which had bonded to the paint. Like I said, never again.