News in my car

A faith based bumpersticker: “Proud Catholic” What drives people to attempt to produce political messages on the back of their car? The message has to be generally directed at everyone by its nature, so what about everyone in general (beyond the walls of a car) requires you to be identified as a Catholic, Democrat, Republican, Spurs fan or generally angry person through a bumper sticker? The vagueness and brevity make them irrelevant but also demonstrate their real purpose: an attempt to reassure the driver of themselves by using the bubble walls of a car to define the ‘in’ of their world with the ‘out’ to be reformed, yelled at or otherwise.

An ‘audio-postcard:’ on NPR about dyes in Afghanistan. The transformation of news into narrative and self contained capsules of information that produce intensities of emotion- this one giving comfort in the unstoppable continuity of tradition in a war racked country- the feeling that the human spirit makes it above and through, and the war will turn out for the best.

Sodium: similarly on NPR. News from a medical convention addressing sodium/salt consumption in America. Generally produced two comments on a political imaginary that actually gives very little ground to creativity. First, “people just want to eat sodium, they like the taste” from a representative of restaurants/food sellers. Second, “maybe we can get policymakers to act on this…” from a member of the medical association. Both of these find real politics somewhere else, moving with glacially unstoppable ways, where the only chance to impact politics is with convincing someone else to do something, rather than altering your own practices.

Duncan