Bumper Stickers--Personality Warning Signals?

Do you ever wonder at the bumper stickers people have on their cars and feel thankful that you have been warned about their thinking processes in advance? Yesterday, at the bank, the car in front of me had the tired old 60's bumper sticker slogan, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." This bumper sticker owner looked exactly like you would expect a guy like that should look, long hair, young (of course, older boomers love these slogans also) and idealistic.

I wondered if he had ever thought through the gist of the bumper sticker or had ever read Jay Greene's book, Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn't So. Greene points out that "despite nonstop whining to the contrary, the truth is that public schools receive a fairly large amount of money for each child. And that amount has been rising steadily for the last few decades, easily exceeding the dollars spent on defense." But idealistic guy probably doesn't give a damn about this fact and drives around feeling superior that he is an educated twit whose freedom is preserved by the very Air Force he belittles on his bumper sticker.

My favorite bumper sticker as of late is one that states, "Bumper Stickers Are Not the Answer." I bought a bunch of them just because I thought it was funny. However, sometimes bumper stickers are the answer, they can tell you oodles about the person in front of you and warn you to avoid the person or just make you laugh. A good laugh is nothing to sneeze at and frankly, neither is an early warning system that tells you that the driver in front of you lacks critical thought, is emotionally fragile, or just has a wicked sense of humor when you see a bumper sticker that says something like this: "Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?" So, love them or hate them, bumper stickers tell us a lot about the driver's personality and thoughts, unless, of course, you have borrowed your hippie dad's car and are reluctantly shouting to the world at the bank that you despise the U.S. Air Force.