Signs of the Times

Am I the only one around here who is becoming uneasy about bumper stickers? Does anyone else find them a little discomforting, even alarming at times?

Bumper stickers have been around a long, long time, and they have gone through many changes. But now they seem to have become moral emblems, statements of a driver’s creed, and some of those statements have me worried.

You used to see bumper stickers only during election years (and for the following year as they slowly rotted away). Then came the bumper stickers for nonpolitical endeavors, informing other motorists of the brand of cosmetics or the radio station the driver preferred.

At some point, however, someone discovered that people would buy these little signs if they were cleverly written. Businessmen aimed them especially at people of modest wit who wanted to appear witty.

Some of these bumper stickers really seemed to have no purpose other than to amuse. Those kind still appear now and then: “The Next Time You Feel Perfect, Try Walking on Water!”

But at about the time people began displaying advertising slogans and logos on their clothing, the bumper stickers began to be marketed as reflections of the man or woman at the wheel.

I blame the guy who devised the “I N Y” poster for that development. It was such a smash that it was quickly converted to a bumper sticker. Suddenly bumper stickers said something about the driver’s way of life, or at least the way he or she looked at life. Which meant that a driver could infuriate you even before he ran you off the on-ramp or cut you off from a choice parking space. He could anger you just by whatever he chose to display on his rear bumper.

A car is an isolation booth, and it makes it easier to be aggressive, even belligerent, on the road. If he honks, you honk back louder. And if his bumper says “Save the Whales” and “Better Active Today Than Radioactive Tomorrow,” you buy a bumper sticker that says “Nuke the Whales!”

This pavement competition wasn’t limited to political philosophy. Bumper stickers began to justify or apologize for the way we live our lives. They spawned whole schools of bumper-stickery.

There were the “my other car” stickers, which at first were apologetic for the junker you were driving (“My Other Car Is a Porsche”), then were defiant (“My Other Car Is Up My Nose”), then snooty (on a Rolls-Royce: “My Other Car Is a Rolls-Royce”).

The “I’d Rather Be . . .” and the “I . . .” schools were so overused they became maddening no matter what they said. The reaction: “I Don’t Care What You , What You’d Rather Be Doing or What Your Other Car Is.”

You could easily not care, were it not for the turn that bumper stickers now have taken. Now almost every day you are confronted with proof that there are people in your environment you would like to think aren’t there.

You’re alarmed by their love, their worship, of guns: “This Car Insured by Smith and Wesson,” “Go Ahead, Make My Day,” “This House Protected by Shotgun Three Days a Week--You Guess Which Days,” “They’ll Get My Gun When They Pry It From My Cold, Dead Fingers,” “Have You Hugged Your Handgun Today?”

Sometimes the reasoning is too jumbled to comprehend: “Jesus Never Registered His Handgun.” Who wrote that one, the pro- or anti-gunners?

You’re alarmed by their pride in being fools: “Of Course I’m Drunk, I’m No Stunt Driver,” “DAMM--Drunks Against Mad Mothers,” “Heaven Doesn’t Want Me and Hell’s Afraid I’ll Take Over.”

You’re alarmed by their intolerance: “God Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It,” “Harpoon Fat Chicks,” “No Fags” and a road-sign emblem that translates to “No Asian Drivers.”

And you’re aghast at their pride in outright obscenity--not just the dirty words, but the truly obscene intentions: “Will the Last White Man Leaving Garden Grove Please Take the Flag With Him.” It’s frightening to be reminded that some consider that patriotism.

John Wong, marketing vice president for J&P; Products, says his sales office in Huntington Beach handles the biggest part of his firm’s $6-million-a-year bumper-sticker business. They are in racks in grocery stores, auto parts stores, liquor stores. He said his company is one of the biggest and therefore steers clear of extremes of bad taste.

Blue-collar types are the biggest market, he said. “They are much more predictable: sports, guns and four-wheelers. And the two groups that are most predictable are the gun nuts and the Jesus people.

“We’ve had to relearn what the average American is. We survey construction workers for our sayings. We’re college graduates here, and we don’t understand it as well.

“People really want to make a statement. With a bumper sticker, you don’t have to put it on your person. You can get away with more. People are just out to have fun.”

I hope you’re right, Mr. Wong. I hope it is mainly bombast. I hope that if I accidentally get into one of those Smith-and-Wesson insured cars because it looks just like mine, I’ll live long enough to apologize. But I wonder.