Pc Movement Brings You . . . The Boring Bumper Sticker
The Age
Wednesday May 22, 1996
SATIRE doesn't sit easily with the thought police. Once I could send up the anti-car protesters by writing about brown- ricers driving fuming Volkswagen Kombis with stickers like ``Keep Gay Whales In The Ground"; today this would have the PC cops salivating to clap me in stocks in the City Square.
Once upon a time, car stickers were creative. OK, some were about as funny as a fart in a lift, while others were outrageously sexist even by the standards of someone like me who thinks Kevin Bloody Wilson is a comic genius.
Few people smile any more at stickers like ``Rugby Players Have Leather Balls" or ``Large Tool Kit On Board", while ``If You Can Read This You're Too Close To My Bum(per)" and ``I Love (heart shape here) American Pit Bulls" induce a feeling as of gagging. However, you can't imply that ``Baby On Board" is a fertility boast because the thought police will pounce to tell you it's to help emergency services in a crash (it doesn't seem to occur to them the sticker might get just a tad crumpled in the process).
``Mum's Taxi", ``If You Can Read This Thank A Teacher", and ``Nurses Do It With Care" are all politically correct.
I prefer the more subtle ones, like ``It's A Lovely Day - Watch Some Bastard Spoil It", or ``Men Play The Game, Women Know The Score", or ``If You Want More Inches, Stroke It" (which refers to the engine modifying process of getting more cubic inch capacity by lengthening piston stroke, you dirty- minded little things).
But some confuse me. Is it politically correct to have a sticker saying ``Surfing Is Life - The Rest Is Details", or ``As A Matter Of Fact I Do Own The Road"? I'd like one that says something like ``The World Needs A Bicycle Like A Fish needs A Woman", but I guess that wouldn't get past the Malvern Star Chamber.
A BUMPER or, worse, a rear window smothered in stickers like ``I've Been To Andamooka" generally indicates the owner has been no further than a few newsagents outside Melbourne. On the other hand, a real destination sticker is a powerful message, like the heart-shaped ``I Love Berlin" my wife put on her car after we'd been to East Berlin (and that was before the wall came down, so stick that in your Funk & Wagnall).
However, sometimes politically correct sentiments are at odds with behavior. Only this week in Melbourne I was behind a Toyota Camry wagon with an Aboriginal flag in one corner of the rear window, in the other the Christian fish symbol and across the top the sticker: ``Practice Random Acts Of Kindness".
This is a wonderful sentiment, except for the unfortunate big dog prowling around on the back seat. He would have weighed about 30 kilograms, and in a minor (maybe 10 km/h) suburban crash would have become mincemeat as he hurtled through the windscreen in a thoughtless act of unkindness.
Still, I guess that like most politically correct motives, it gives some people a nice warm feeling. Just stay out of my face . . .
© 1996 The Age