I recently returned from a road trip - from Missouri, through Kansas, Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, New Mexico, to our destination in southern Arizona.
I decided to play my version of "Liberal Survivor" on this trip, placing a "Doing my part to PISS OFF the religious right" bumper sticker on my vehicle right below the "'No'W" and peace sign stickers. (I'm no dummy, all my bumper stickers are on magnetic sheets, cut to size - I remove them before entering working class bars, parking at the anti-union chain store parking lot, and when having my car serviced at the local dealership...)
The seed for this idea came from the (now old)
Texas Survivor joke:
Due to the popularity of the Survivor shows, Texas is planning to do its own, entitled Survivor, Texas Style:
Contestants will start in Dallas, travel to Waco, Austin, San Antonio, over to Houston, and down to Brownsville.
They will then head up to Del Rio, on to El Paso, then to Midland, Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo. From there, they'll proceed to Abilene, Ft. Worth and finally back to Dallas.
Each will drive a pink Volvo with a bumper sticker that reads, "I'm gay, I'm vegetarian, I voted for Al Gore, and I'm here to confiscate your guns!"
The first one to make it back to Dallas alive wins.
And, in my observation - comparing road trips to Wisconsin last December and earlier this month, the frequency of of "W '04" bumper stickers on cars seems to be diminishing. I do realize that the plural of anecdote is not data.
An activist friend in my community told me that when she's on the road with her daughter and the eight year old spies a "W '04" bumper sticker on a car she'll cry out "Ram him mommy!" That little girl succinctly reflects my attitude.
So, all I can offer are my road trip anecdotes.
On the first day, as we were stopped for gas in a small town in Kansas, a biker walked past, stopped, walked up to the stickers, smiled, then laughed out loud. He then walked away. Afterwards, my spouse told me that when she first saw him stop to read the bumper stickers she thought, "Uh oh..."
We made a wrong turn in Amarillo. While trying to get back on the freeway we pulled behind a car with Texas plates and a "Pink Slip Bush" sticker in the window.
Late in the afternoon in the Texas panhandle I noticed a vehicle with Texas plates shadowing me in the passing lane. He then overtook me, signaled the lane change, pulled in front of me, flashed his lights, and then flashed his left turn signal.
We stopped in Clovis, New Mexico the first night. I removed the magnetic bumper stickers and placed them inside our vehicle for the overnight stay at the hotel.
We saw one "W '04" bumper sticker on the outward bound part of the journey - right after we crossed into Arizona. My spouse and I looked at each other and called out "Ram him mommy!"
We spent a week visiting relatives and old friends. We saw one more "W '04" sticker on a vehicle. I also noted that there appeared to be a lower frequency of yellow ribbon magnets on vehicles when compared to the town where I currently live (both house major military installations). In conversation on the subject my uncle related that my cousin (his daughter) who lives in a large city in the east refuses to put a yellow ribbon magnet on her vehicle because she considers it "superficial and false patriotism".
On the return trip we saw one "W '04" bumper sticker and one "Bush/Cheney" bumper sticker, the latter while waiting in the drive through window at a chain fast food joint. We looked at each other and cried out, "Ram him mommy!" This latter sighting was also mitigated by the vehicle with the "aWol" sticker in the parking lot. Both vehicles had Texas plates.
At one point while driving across Oklahoma we noted a sedan with what appeared to be four teenagers overtaking us in the passing lane and pulling up to take a look at the people driving the vehicle with the blasphemous bumper stickers. They all took an obvious look and then accelerated away.
Throughout the trip, aside from the first day, at food, gas, and rest stops no one directly approached us or spoke to us about our bumper stickers.
We saw the highest concentration of "W '04" bumper stickers at the end of the trip when we made the turn back into our neighborhood.