The rough and tumble of bumper stickers

Last month, on the interstate highway between Gold Creek and Drummond, transporting a fellow Montanan to Seattle to attend to her daughter’s dying, I changed a flat right front tire on my car. The new Michelin had a quarter-inch slit in its sidewall.

I kidded with a passing trucker, friendly enough to stop, even after he said he’d not have taken the trouble had he seen the “Obama 2008” bumper sticker I got with the car, bought used two years ago. But when we stopped to buy a replacement tire in Missoula, another customer kept staring over my shoulder at the bumper sticker, saying “you can’t be serious.” He aggressively stuck his face into mine as I walked past into the tire store.

I’m not a bumper sticker kind of person, so maybe this happens all the time, but I don’t like it. I’ve resisted bullying in school, on the job, and in the military. Bullying creates the atmospherics for a small clique to do any outrageous thing they please to or about someone, without being challenged by the cowed.

Obama lost in Montana, after fielding 80 paid staffers; there’s now one, and our folksy Gov. Schweitzer tells us our president has no chance in his state. Obama stickers are hard to get; there’s none at Montana’s state Democratic headquarters. Who says bullying doesn’t work? Yet, I’m pushing back, with a double-stickered “Obamobile.”

John B. Driscoll, of Helena, is a former Public Service Commissioner and former Democratic legislator, including a term as speaker of the Montana House.