Bumper Sticker Madness

Generally, when I present a bumper sticker to someone, I get the response "you don't expect me to put that on my car, do you?" This isn't for lack of commitment to whatever candidate or cause the bumper sticker promotes, mind you, but merely a concern for maintaining a pristine car exterior, which I can understand, although my car is a 1993 so I have no such concern. But as it happens, when Kerry locked up the nomination, I went to replace my Clark sticker with a Kerry sticker and Clark came off on the first try leaving no residue behind. In fact, I keep it intact to this day. These were good things I thought -- I can proudly adorn my car with stickers galore -- John Kerry, then Kerry/Edwards, and MoveOn's "Nothing Accomplished" -- without fear of lowering the resale value of my car (yeeeah riiight), and, hey, I'd be able to strip the stickers off and keep them for posterity. Well, my friends, I saw the dark side of this bumper sticker game this weekend.

While my car was parked, minding its own business in the Savon parking lot in Glendale, my John Kerry sticker was swiped, just stripped right off my bumper with, of course, no residue left behind. I'd never heard of such a thing in my life. It didn't even occur to me that that was an option -- oh how naive I was. Was it an envious (and felonious) Kerry supporter? Probably not -- certainly they would have gone for the newer and fancier Kerry/Edwards sticker. It must have been a Bush supporter, surely intending to start with the left-most sticker and work his way up the bumper. It's sort of a metaphor for the entire Bush/Cheney campaign -- asserting a positive -- vote for Bush -- by going negative -- tearing down Kerry. Or maybe he just thought it was easier than getting his own sticker (not to mention the added bonus of not affecting the resale value if his car.)

Anyway, I was browsing dailyKos today and was pleased (sort of) to find that I'm not alone in having had my bumpersticker nicked. User jmelli had this to say:

In an earlier diary I posted about how someone removed two of my three bumper stickers from my car. I replaced the Kerry sticker with a Kerry-Edwards one, and I put up a poll to ask which sticker should replace my other one. The winner of the poll was "A Republican Removed my Other Bumper Sticker". Zackpunk suggested I change the wording slightly, and I adopted half of his suggestion. It now reads: A Republican Stole My Other Bumper Sticker"There ought to be limits to freedom." -GWB

I created the sticker on cafepress, so whoever wants it can pick one up.

Disclaimer: all profits ($1/sticker) will go to Democracy For America.

I look forward to proudly adding this sticker to my bumper.