In my endless driving around Austin I frequently find myself in the swanky Hyde Park neighborhood with its tree-lined streets, gratuitous 'traffic calming devices', plentiful McMansions, and population of leftist urban yuppies. I have to admit that I used to live there, until I realized that we could sell our house for ridiculously more than we paid for it and move to a larger house in the country.
Hyde Park is a neighborhood of contradictions. It's home to one of the largest and wealthiest Baptist churches in the nation, surrounded by a neighborhood of college professors, musicians, Internet entrepreneurs, and militant humanists who oppose the Baptist social and political agenda almost as much as they oppose the church's desire to expand its real estate holdings and blight the neighborhood with new construction. The neighborhood is known for its hippie attitude, arts and crafts bungalows, and beautiful trees, yet it's packed with millionaires who are cutting down trees to expand their historic homes, while still paying lip service to the progressive ideology of their compatriots.
This is the neighborhood where people driving Priuses with an Escalade hidden in their garage either live or wish they lived. I've written before about their penchant for confusing bumper stickers, and now it seems that the same muddled mentality has spilled over into their exquisitely xeriscaped yards in the form of earnest but nonsensical yard signs.
These signs are usually provided in exchange for a donation by left-leaning activist groups who are pushing a particular local or national agenda, and find fertile ground to plant their seeds in Hyde Park. The most recent crop of signs to spring up in Hyde Park is provided by the all-outrage-all-the-time umbrella activist group Third Coast Activist. In blood red letters on a white background they declare "FOR PEACE NOW Bring the Troops Home."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dr Dreadful
I'm confused, Dave. Your blurb for this article suggests that you're going to be talking about your skepticism on the effectiveness of political yard signs.
But really the piece is about your taking issue with one sign in particular.
2 - Dr Dreadful
Although had you actually written an article about yard signs I would probably have agreed with you - particularly your correlating it to things like bumper stickers and (I would add) election posters.
Such things are pointless inasmuch as they don't advance the democratic process. They're not even effective advertising. You don't walk past a house during an election campaign, glance up at the window and say to yourself, "Ah, I was going to vote for Candidate A, but now, having seen this poster, I think I should vote for Candidate B." Similarly, it's not really feasible to get out of your car in traffic, walk to the vehicle in front of you, ask the driver to roll down the window and say, "Excuse me, but I disagree with the sentiment on your bumper sticker because..." Not unless you want to start a global road rage war, anyway.
All such stickers and signs really are is a modern form of tribal marking - something to let everyone know which group you belong to.
3 - Lumpy
I haven't seen this particular sign, but in my area there are a number of equally poorly reasoned ones mostly against the war, which is kind of ironic considering how close we are to the pentagon and how many military and pentagon employees live around here. I can only assume the goal of the signs is to piss off most of their neighbors.
4 - Dr Dreadful
Er, Lumpy...
(1) From your description you're in or near DC, which is the most heavily Democratic-leaning city in the nation;
(2) Most of the signs probably belong to military and Pentagon employees.
5 - Lumpy
Yes, Dr., I live in northern virginia. The area where I am has a politically diverse population. It"s nothing like DC. And I do know many of my neighbors. Some work in Langley, some at the pentagon and some in DC. Trust me it's not the first two groups who have anti-war signs on their lawns. It wouldn't be prudent and from what I can tell they support the war if not necessarily being totally on board with the administration.
6 - Clavos
I don't know about Pentagon employees, Dr. D, but the military (at least the career soldiers, anyway) tends more to Republican than Dem.
7 - Dave Nalle
I'm confused, Dave. Your blurb for this article suggests that you're going to be talking about your skepticism on the effectiveness of political yard signs.
You might want to read that blurb again. The skepticism in it is directed not at the effectiveness of yard signs as advertising, but at their effectiveness as means of expressing an intelligent opinion.
And as far as my objection to the specific sign mentioned, it's really only an example of a genre of poorly conceived signs.
Dave
8 - RJ
Yard signs are politically powerful weapons, however, in local races where name recognition is the main factor.
9 - Dr Dreadful
the military (at least the career soldiers, anyway) tends more to Republican than Dem.
I wonder if it's because - until recent times, at least - it has tended to be Democratic presidents who got America into wars and Republicans who got you out of them.
That may change...
10 - RJ
No, it's because Republicans support killing our enemies and building up the military and increasing their pay, and Democrats loath the military and demand retreat and defeat and slash military spending to pay for socialist domestic programs.
11 - Dr Dreadful
RJ
When make sweeping assertion, please to back up with fact.
12 - Dave Nalle
Dr.D, despite the gunghoness of it, RJ did stick to basic, verifiable assertions. There;s plenty to fault the GOP for, but he didn't go those directions.
Dave
13 - Dave Nalle
Yard signs are politically powerful weapons, however, in local races where name recognition is the main factor.
I noticed that in a recent local election. People seemed to actually be paying attention to the yard signs in our local mayoral election. But then when the votes were counted, the three candidates (one white, one black, one hispanic) split the votes along lines almost identical to the racial breakdown of the voters, which I found somewhat troubling.
Dave
14 - Lumpy
Seems to me that yard signs like this are less about issues and more about exclusion or offending your neighbors. Kind of like burning a cross on their lawns. In this case it's like saying 'republicans get out' of the neighborhood.
15 - MCH
"...and Democrats loath the military and demand retreat and defeat..."
The Republicans have had their share of those who "loath the military," considering all the conservative chickenhawks who dodged the draft during Vietnam:
Dick Cheney
John Ashcroft
Newt Gingrich
Paul Wolfowitz
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Dick Armey
Tom DeLay
Phil Gramm
Ken Starr
Bill O'Reilly
(to name a few...)
16 - MBD
Let's not forget pres-wannabe Rudy...
After receiving several deferments as a student, Giuliani applied for an occupational deferment as a law clerk, but his application was rejected. Giuliani appealed their decision, and asked the federal judge he was clerking for to petition the draft board for him. Which the judge did.
Having judges as friends is always a good idea.
"9-11 hero" Rudy's excuse for evading service in Vietnam was for "strategic and tactical” reasons.
Similiar to chickenhawk Cheney.
17 - Dave Nalle
How about you keep your pathetic, self-serving and irrelevant bullshit to a more appropriate thread, three-initial guys?
MCH, as far as I'm concerned you failed your duty to the country by not avoiding and/or protesting the draft and taking the easy way out by joining and taking a non-combat tour. Any rational person with balls would have stayed out of the military during the Vietnam war.
BTW, only two of the democrats running for president served in the military and both were in non-combat positions. Kucinich actually got a deferment because he was serving in public office, a draft-dodge which LBJ had the decency not to use when he was a congressman.
In a time when the vast majority of the population has no military experience and had no obligation to serve or took a legal and legitimate alternative route, it's ridiculous to cosider military service an essential qualification for anything.
Dave
18 - MBD
"In a time when the vast majority of the population has no military experience and had no obligation to serve or took a legal and legitimate alternative route, it's ridiculous to cosider military service an essential qualification for anything."
The problem with this bullshit is that millions of Americans obeyed the draft law to serve and entered the military long before it became obvious the Vietnam War was lost.
Only two Senators voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Did the chickenhawks of both parties actually agree with those two senators or is that now just more shit from birds of the same feather?
19 - Dave Nalle
Sorry I even responded. You want to discuss Vietnam, go write an article about it, MBD. Make sure to pack as much of your bigoted bullshit as possible into it.
Dave
20 - MBD
Very profound response!
Is that the best you can do?
The obvious answer is yes.
21 - STM
The only yard sign I ever want to see (unless it's on my house):
"FOR SALE, beautiful California bungalow, plenty of original features, lovingly cared for, quarter-acre-plus level block, four bedrooms, ensuite, walk-in wardrobes, polished wood floors, large pool, manicured gardens, garage plus covered carport, close to shops, trains, buses, freeways, top schools, CBD, harbour and beaches - and $300,000 under market price thanks to the generosity of the owners, who have decided that screwing people to get the highest dollar amount isn't everything in life."
That, I'd like to see.
22 - Dr Dreadful
Sold!
23 - STM
With bells on, and to the man in the black 'at!
24 - Dave Nalle
Planning on coming back to the promised land, Stan?
Dave
25 - STM
Nah, I just love the style of California bungalows. They are getting a bit long in the tooth now, but worked perfectly transferred here, because of the similarities in climate between California and the eastern states of Australia. That one is one I looked at a few months back. The houses are designed to be extremely cool in summer and only need ceiling fans to move the air around. Mild winters are no problem: a simple gas heater will do the job.
I will give you buggers this: you are good at designing stuff that actually works.