Supporting Our Troops Is The New AIDS
By Sam Bakken in News on Nov 29, 2004 9:24PM
If you used the nation's freeways this past holiday weekend to get to or from turkey parties, it's likely you saw at least one yellow ribbon magnet (or the red, white and blue or camouflage versions) on the back of a Lexus or SUV. We hadn't seen any in Chicago (or at least enough notice them). Upon our first sighting we began foaming at the mouth and asking how these idiots could possibly think that paying a travel plaza on I-90 $4.00 for a magnet that won't ruin the finish on their car was "support". How could our Midwest brethren allow some company to hijack patriotism to make a buck?
It's easy to say you support something and something quite different to actually support it. It seems to us that if you really want to support the troops you need to get yourself an M-16 and a ticket to Iraq or that other place where we're fighting a war. What is it again? Uhm...well...it's one of the "-stan"s.
We're sure some people are calling-in hits on us this second, so here—(though it's essentially worthless to say) We support the troops. We don't want people to get killed. But we'd feel guilty putting something on our car that said in small print, "Remove weekly for cleaning." You can't remove a soldier's mind each week and scrub away dead friends, detached limbs, grown men screaming in pain or any other horrors.
Anyway, we did a bit of online research and found out that many groups order the magnets in bulk then sell them for fundraising purposes. There are a number of groups throughout Illinois sending care packages to soldiers and many of them sell these ribbons to pay for postage and other expenses.
So, we guess, more power to 'em and keep up the good work. Let's just try to remember that war isn't a football game (and vote accordingly) and that displaying one of these ribbons should mean more than putting a Chicago Bears sticker on your bumper does. People are dying right this second in Iraq and that one "-stan" as we affix magnets to our cars or read/write snarky comments on blogs and perform other comparably petty tasks.