Ban all Bumperstickers

If the Wikipedia is accurate, the bumper sticker was the brainchild of a certain Forest P. Gill of Kansas City, who in 1934 developed a technique for applying adhesive to the back of silk screened messages that could then be stuck to a vehicle's bumper.

Whatever.

Useful or not, bumper stickers have become a prime medium for communicating one's deepest thoughts to fellow roadway users, much like the ubiquitous t-shirt. By the way, I recently spotted this nicety on the back of a lone Harley rider's t-shirt: If you can read this, the bitch fell off (emphasis not mine).

If you want to speak to others via your rear bumper, fine. What I cannot stomach, however, is the frequent utter hypocrisy that is evident when the message runs counter to the reality of the driver, as evidenced by his vehicle. I'm referring to various anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-capitalist, anti-exploitation messages found on the ass-ends of huge gas-guzzling monstrosities piloted by individuals who seem too dense to realize that if you really think that there should be No Blood For Oil or that Bush Lied then one way of supporting such a sentiment would be to either a) not drive an internal combustion-powered vehicle, or b) drive one that consumed less petrol and thereby, in a small and, yes, almost infinitesimal way reduced the USA's dependence on (addiction to) foreign crude oil.

Sometimes, I have to suppress the urge to pull up next to the driver of the Swedish hatchback with the Free Tibet sticker on it and query her on what she actually thinks about the Chinese invasion/occupation of Tibet, and what she has actually done about it, other than try to gain some street cred by decorating her car with a nice yellow and red sticker.

Other examples are too numerous to add and should be obvious.

Reminds me of a t-shirt inscription I once saw many years ago in a mall in Houston: "If nobody wants to talk to you, what makes you think they want to read your t-shirt?" I'm still pondering the various metaphysical connotations of that one.