<< Back 7/3/02 A bumper crop of freedom flags for the Fourth By Michael Beadle When it comes to celebrating the essence of who we are as Americans, what comes to mind? For me, it’s not apple pie or baseball or the summer blockbuster Hollywood hypes at a theater near you. For my money, nothing says “American” quite like a bumper sticker, that modern day declaration of independence we place on the rump of our cars to tell the world what we stand for and what’s on our minds. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are unmistakably American, and after 226 years of expressing our freedom of speech, the bumper sticker has become a small reminder of our democratic right to spout off philosophical, religious, political and social views no matter how crazy or controversial they might seem to unsuspecting motorists. Whether it’s a sarcastic statement (Earth First, We’ll Strip Mine the Other Planets Later) or the witty epigram (The more you complain, the longer God makes you live) or the trippy hippy slogan (Visualize Whirled Peas), or the political barb (If we quit voting, will they all go away?), we have come to expect a little laugh or thoughtful reminder in our daily drives. I’ve been to half a dozen countries in Europe and never once recall spotting a bumper sticker. Never once saw a bumper sticker in Canada either. Surely I might have missed one somewhere, but then again maybe, just maybe, the world is leaving this bumper sticker craze to the brash Americans and their gas-guzzling, road-tripping vehicles. I don’t actually have a bumper sticker on my car. It’s about a year-and-a-half old. I’m still pretending to think it’s a new car, and new cars can’t get bumper stickered. There’s some kind of unwritten rule that says new cars can’t get bumper stickered. It’s like giving a 4-month-old baby a tattoo. You have to break a car in, and then she’s ready to be adorned with the pun du jour. Added on to the unwritten rules of bumper stickerism, the number of bumper stickers can increase geometrically after the car reaches a certain age. I’ll get a bumper sticker eventually. When the time is right. I’m not a bumper sticker snob, shunning that plebeian urge to attach some cheap adhesive to a perfectly good paint job. Sure, there are plenty of those who choose not to participate in bumper sticker trends. More power to them. No hard feelings. My point is that bumper stickers continue to hold our attention as a society, as a modern-day Roman Empire, as a nation of relatively young upstarts on the global scene. The bumper sticker has become an icon as readily accessible as the beer commercials we have come to expect in the middle of a prime-time sitcom. The strange part is that we voluntarily choose to advertise ourselves on our cars. We feel compelled somehow to announce our arrival on the dirt roads and boulevards and highways of this great nation. And we may lead otherwise very private lives. Let our bumper stickers do the talking. Let our bumper stickers sound the revolution. Let our bumper stickers proclaim our flaws, our bravado, our idealism, our humor. I enjoy the creativity that goes into a bumper sticker. For example: “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.” The silly and psychotic ones catch my eye: “It’s been lovely but I have to scream now” and “You’re just jealous because the voices are talking to me and not you!” We can all relate to those times of futility, so why not go with a slogan like “Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway” or “Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.” And cleverness gets bonus points. We in Western North Carolina have long heard the comment, “If it’s tourist season, can we shoot ‘em?” Sure, it might sound morbidly funny at first, but then it gets old. So you need a twist on a worn-out phrase: “Tourists go home — but leave your daughters behind.” The whole “We Still Pray” campaign was ripe for mockery. Launched as a campaign to allow prayer in schools and student sporting events, it became omnipresent and omni-annoying. I pray all the time, but I don’t need a bumper sticker to prove it, many argued. So along came reconfigurations: “We Still Play,” “We Still Prey” and, my personal favorite, “We Still Read.” In that same category of poking fun of religious fundamentalists, we have bumper stickers like “667 — neighbor of the beast” and “Sorry I haven’t been to church lately. I’ve been practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.” I remember passing an old VW van with a bumper sticker that read, “All who wander are not lost.” That one still haunts me. For the last few years, I’ve been keeping a running list of favorites. As an exercise in language appreciation for my creative writing classes, I’ve had my students go out into a parking lot and jot down all the bumper stickers they see. Some in the Tuscola High School student parking lot were frank (Clear the Road, I’m 16) or boldly poetic (This is Chevrolet Country — on a quiet night you can hear a Ford rust). Still others offer discreet warnings: “Don’t tailgate me or I’ll flick a booger on your windshield.” The bumper sticker “Equal Rights for Southern Whites” runs along the same lines as the argument for “White History Month.” Surely someone’s taking notes. After all, white people have had it soooo bad in this country for soooo long. It’s getting so a white person can’t even win an Oscar for Best Actor anymore. Tough times for the Caucasian male. Sex sells, of course, so we have to put up with bumper stickers like “BIG — without Viagra” and “Orgasm Donor.” Others are targeted toward a specific audience: “You are depriving some village of its idiot” and “So you’re a feminist... Isn’t that cute.” There are bumper stickers I still have trouble figuring out. Why in the world would a person want a “Bad Cop, No Donut” sticker? Just in case the driver feels compelled to amuse that ever-so-friendly highway patrolman? What exactly am I supposed to think you “Ain’t Skeered” of? And if “Our God is an awesome God,” who’s left with the pathetically boring, good-for-nothing gods? I guess we’re supposed to pity those poor souls praying to the wrong gods. Thank goodness my God is an awesome God. For all our modern-day complexities and civilized sophistication, we Americans still love to whittle down our most basic arguments and behaviors to a few clever phrases on our car. And go ahead, admit it. You do make the leap and immediately start to stereotype the car’s driver based on what you read next to their license plate. “Are you good for the environment?” the bumper sticker reads. OK, they must be an eco-friendly do-gooder who probably voted for Nader, despises Bush and corporate-loving Republicans, maybe protests and surely nags his neighbors for not recycling enough. Or maybe you spot “Fear This” on a pick-up. Probably a guy who loves fishing and hunting, is a proud card-carrying member of the NRA, hates sissy liberals and doesn’t mind fishtailing on a back road or squalling a tire as he pulls out of a parking lot on a Saturday night. As quick as we are to judge people on the basis of physical appearance and as quick as we might hate to think we’re so shallow minded as to judge someone based on some random words they place on their car, the bumper sticker actually reinforces our willingness to form stereotypes. And what does that say about us as Americans in the year 2002? Why do we have to keep expressing ourselves in this way? Is it because we are driven to such an accelerated state with our light-speed businesses and daily dashes that we have so little time to communicate with one another so we flash quick statements from our cars? Is it not enough that we show off our personality with the style of car we drive? Or is the bumper sticker an inevitable part of the psyche of the American driver? Is your bumper sticker an accurate representation of who you are? And for those of you who choose not to have a bumper sticker, what would your slogan be? What kind of bumper sticker would Thomas Jefferson have had? Or John Adams? Or Ben Franklin? Love ‘em or hate ‘em, bumper stickers are part of the legacy our Founding Fathers gave us 226 years ago, a legacy of expressing ourselves in a myriad of ways to reflect our many ethnicities, races, political interests, and idiosyncracies. We are still declaring our independence today. (Michael Beadle is a writer and teacher living in Waynesville.)