Bumper Stumper: Ribnets

Was a time there were only red ribbons. Remember watching the Oscars and seeing every star with a silk twist on their lapels, proclaiming their awareness of the AIDS epidemic and commitment to finding a cure? (Um, guys? Any day now.)

Now ribbons have reproduced like fruit flies. Pink for breast cancer. Multicolored for autism. For every social issue, there is a color-coordinated accessory. No longer content to pin them on our lapels, people now stick ribbon-shaped magnets on the backs of their cars--ribnets?--especially here in suburbia where if you wore a ribbon on your lapel, no one would see it, because you spend half your life in your car.

Yesterday, as I drove home through the driving rain, I followed a minivan with three ribnets. Having just marked the fourth(!) anniversary of the Iraq War on Monday, I was in no mood for jingoistic "Support Our Troops" rhetoric...and of course one of the ribnets said "Support Our Troops." So I turned my attention to the other two. What other pressing social issue was our Mom Bomb advocating? What other mushmouth sentiment had she taken the time to display for the world to see? Heart disease? Genocide in Darfur? The national deficit? I finally pulled close enough at a stoplight to see that they proclaimed an undying commitment to the cause of:

I [HEART] FOOTBALL.

This just proves to me that the ribnets are idiotic. Football is not a cause. (OK, maybe it is for some, and Seahawks football is definitely a cult, but it's not like people are DYING here.) The original purpose of the ribbons/ribnets was to commemorate, to at least IMPLY an actionable cause, to raise awareness, to get people talking and asking questions. Let me repeat: FOOTBALL IS NOT A CAUSE.

This conflation of the "I HEART" motif and the ribbon...sheer idiocy.