Yankee Doodle Dandy

A couple of weeks ago, the liberal web-zine / lifestyle section, Salon.com, ran a contest to pick the Democrats' bumper sticker for 2008. (The tiebreaker: A slogan for the GOP in 2008 that doesn't mention Hillary.) I was amused by some of their choices for a variety of reasons. Some of the slogans were thumpingly dull, written by the ideologues, who probably thought they were funny and clever. Some were turned in by angry pox-on-both-houses types. One penned the pair: Republican: You think we'll allow an election? Democrat: We're Republicans without spines! And, as usual, Salon is a great window into the bien-pensant, too-clever-by-half folks who inhabit the centrist left. I got a few chuckles out of the ones that were either written by liberals with a bit of self-deprecating humor, or by trolling Republicans (Democrats: We're not impotent, honest! Republicans: The devil you know.) But one bumper sticker was mentioned more than once by people who thought it was terribly, terribly clever. And so do I, but I think for different reasons. To liberals it is mordantly funny and speaks a high truth about Republicans. To me, it's more subversively funny. My daughter mentioned seeing this bumper sticker and I had a knee-slapping moment. I said "I've got to get one!" The bumper slogan? "Republicans for Voldemort". It's one of those things that, when I hear it coming from a liberal, I say (usually to myself), "You think it's funny because of what you think it says about me. I think it's funny because of what it says about you."

It reminds me of the time I was walking around our local summertime arts festival when I saw a balding, middle-aged guy who could have been a high school administrator, wearing a T-shirt that said "Lobotomize Republicans - It's the Law!". Now this guy was an adult, and not a pony-tailed man-child. He was walking around in public in a place where anybody in our small town could see him. I'm sure he felt that at an arts festival he was "among friends". But there were many others there, including his professional associates and mere acquaintances, who were not aware of the depth of his political thought, his passionate commitment to public health, and who were not familiar with his exhibitionist affliction. And of course, there were the slumming, stealth Republicans like myself roving about. So I walked up to this guy, nodded at his shirt, and smiling, said to him: "You Democrats. Always trying to level the playing field!" From his dumbstruck reaction, I got the impression that he was one of those people who has all his life needed to hear the three words that every man at some point needs to hear from his mother: "Oh, grow up!"

But back to Lord Voldemort. I think that slogan, though old (I've found that it was dreamed up for the '04 election), might serve as a kind of "Yankee-Doodle Dandy" for the Republicans. That classic bit of Americana was originally sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial "Yankees" with whom they served in the French and Indian War. But it was turned around by the Continental Army and used as an ironic badge of honor, particularly after the Americans had won a few battles. Now if only the Republicans would learn to carry the conservative flag with honor and march in better formation.