On Bumperstickers

I was never much of a bumpersticker gal, though I loved "Mean People Suck" when I first saw it. There were some jolly Grateful Dead dancing bears that I liked for a nanosecond, but not enough to plaster my car with them. I get annoyed, frankly, when I’m driving behind someone, a captive audience, forced to read about their kid’s academic achievements and their unfailing faith in Dubya. I have seen a campaign one recently that reads: "Stewart/Colbert ’08". That’s funny stuff.

I’ve had an "End the Cruelty and Killing of Greyhound Racing" bumpersticker in my Element for several months. I keep asking my husband to apply it (I know not of such things, and I’d rather him screw it up than I), and he’s made various excuses, including that he keeps forgetting. I caught on that he was indeed not forgetting, and that there was more to his non-performance than memory lapse.

The truth came out yesterday. He was reluctant. Why? Well, only someone with road rage, which I am not unfortunate enough to be possessed by, would understand. His argument went something like this:

• You don’t know what you’re dealing with. You don’t know the kinds of people who go to the track. They’re not your peeps. You have nothing in common with them.
• The bumpersticker alerts them to the fact that I might have greyhounds in the car (most of the Element’s windows are nearly blacked out, so you might not see them immediately, even if their snouts were against the back window).
• These are people who might have had a bad run at the track, and then they see your rig, and maybe even the dogs, and they want revenge for their bad run. And remember, these are people who carry shotguns in their pickups.
• People who go to the track are probably gamblers, and gamblers have issues to begin with. You are way to unfamiliar with their personalities and values to blindly take them on. Your bumpersticker is an invitation to them.

Meanwhile, you have to have had a certain kind of life experience to even raise the above points, and because my husband went to Florida State, and is well-versed in the ways of people in the American South, he is a credible source. I was shocked by how well thought out his response was.

So my "End the Cruelty and Killing of Greyhound Racing" sticker will have to go somewhere less public, thereby becoming useless. But because I do feel strongly about the topic, I wondered if there was an alternative. I found one that said, "Race Cars, Not Dogs." It’s less in-your-face (and this is coming from a woman who admittedly doesn’t know anything about the faces of the people at the track), and it makes provides a solution: How about concentrating your need-for-adrenalin-at-the-expense-of-someone-else efforts on people with tons of money, who are willing participants, rather than on dogs forced to run and who live in hideous conditions. I like the idea of racing cars, not dogs.

What do you think? Should I abandon the bumpersticker quest, or is the new one viable?