Impromptus today is devoted to “Sticky Issues: A wide, gaudy, screwy world of bumper stickers.” This is mainly a romp, but laced with political seriousness, I would say. Anyway, it’s mainly fun (though maybe mainly for conservatives).
Okay, I’m done with the word “mainly” — and would like to share some mail.
A reader who lives in Japan says, “Here, bumper stickers are rare, except for Baby on Board and celebrations of dog breeds. This is my all-time fave.” It says, What If the Hokey Pokey Really Is What It’s All About?
In my column, I say that, in my dear old lefty hometown,
there was a sticker that went, If You Don’t Like Abortion, Don’t Have One. I thought a cheeky counter-sticker might go, If You Don’t Like Slavery, Don’t Own One.
My colleague Nick Frankovich e-mails, “Stephen Douglas said just that, if in more words, in his debates with Lincoln.” Nick also mentions “a bumper sticker I ran across recently in the parking lot of my church after Latin Mass.” It says, Sona Si Latine Loqueris (“Honk If You Speak Latin”).
Another colleague, Roger Clegg, says, “When I read the first part of your piece, I thought of a sticker from the days of the early Reagan administration: Weinberger for President: Let’s Get It Over With.”
This leads me to mention possibly my favorite political bumper sticker of all time. But first, I have to set the stage. You have to realize, chillen, that the idea of Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House was at one time preposterous. He was a renegade, a flamethrower, a guerrilla. And he led this glorious revolution in 1994. And wound up in the top chair.
Shortly after Election Day, a bumper sticker appeared on Capitol Hill: Speaker Newt: Deal with it.
I think it’s impossible, at this remove, to recapture or convey the thrill of this bumper sticker (for someone like me), because now the idea of Newt as speaker is natural. And Nancy as speaker! But in 1994 — whoa.
And there hadn’t been a Republican speaker of the House, of any stripe, in 40 years!
Imagine the following sticker, appearing in late 2016: President Trump: Deal with it. Yowzer!
P.S. The idea of Nancy Pelosi as speaker was so absurd in 2006 that some of us said the words “Speaker Pelosi” in order to communicate, “Of course you can’t turn the House over to the Democrats. For goodness’ sake, their leader is a San Francisco radical!” But voters will do what they do …
P.P.S. This just in — a masterstroke by Ramesh Ponnuru. In Impromptus, I mention a popular bumper sticker of my youth: It Will Be a Great Day When the Schools Have All the Money They Need and the Pentagon Has to Hold a Bake Sale. Wordy, yes, but a lot of people thought it was wonderful, a real zinger.
RP rejoins, It Will Be a Great Day When the Kids Have the Education They Need and the Teachers’ Unions Have to Hold a Bake Sale.
Heh.