I still have my Obama/Biden bumper sticker from 2008 on my car. A couple of days ago, I noticed that someone has used a black marker pen and drawn an angry X across it.
It's the kind of thing I might not notice for several days, unless I went to the rear of my car to put something in the hatchback. So I don't have much clue as to when or in what parking lot someone vented his/her feelings about our president. But it had to have happened in my neighborhood or in parking lots in middle or upscale parts of town.
Now my dilemma is this: do I leave it on, and perhaps give the false impression that I have crossed out my former allegiance, or do I take it off and thus give in to the vandal?
What I would like is to find an Obama 2012 bumper sticker to put alongside it. Or maybe one that says something like "hate is not a family value."
Anyway, I'm off to the beach for a few days to quiet, relatively uncommercialized St. George Island on the Gulf panhandle -- a boost to the return of tourist spending in the area -- with a stop over to visit my grandson in graduate school in nearby Tallahassee.
Back next week.
Ralph
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Hi Ralph, Sorry to hear about the cowardly defacement. I think, however, that your dilemma is illusory upon close examination. A bumper sticker is put on one's car to make a statement to the unknown world at large about one's personality (views, opinions, values, likes-dislikes, etc.). The important word is "unknown": your friends, family and peers already know about you. In this instance it is saying: "Look at me in my eco-friendly Prius: I am a passionate liberal who supports (now supported) Obama/Biden: this is the winning politico-moral combination!" By leaving the defaced sticker on your car you are now saying: "I may still be liberal (or perhaps not) but I am VERY disallusioned and angry with my presidential choice; indeed, so much so, that I am defacing my bumper sticker for all to see!" Now, of course, your friends know that this is absurd. But for those thousands of others who see your car each week, this is what they glean. And do you want to be an unwitting party to that growing discontented group who is just looking for any and all reasons to drop the democrats and rail against Obama? Placing the "hate is not a family value" next to it is too intellectual and subtle for a quick bumper view, and perhaps it was there all along anyway. So, I'm afraid, given the realities of bumper sticker culture, it must be removed. . . Giving in to angry cowards is never pleasant!
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