This has to be one of the stupidest slogans I have EVER read.

i think this queasiness towards eloquence and political effectiveness is a symptom of a deeper undealt-with legacy in left politics since the 60s, which pretty much amounts to a terror of power (in the sense of potentia), a profound self-abnegating but unspoken panic at the thought that ANY attempt to effect change will just get us back to the disasters of stalinism blah blah

http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/stickers.html

Village Idiot Missing From Texas Town (pic of GWB, this scans better than JtN's)
(Gas mask) NOT A GOOD LOOK
(Pic of White House) CHANGE THIS REGIME INSTEAD
(Pic of GWB) SADDAMITE

mark l, mark c and mark k, obv

I agree somewhat with mark's argument that the left has a sort of self-defeating anxiety concerning certain kinds of expression, esp. among the intellectual circles. However, these bumper stickers et al. are devised by/for the younger (less wary) leftists, and I doubt they are consciously arsing up their slogans to make them less effective. I think the sloganeers in question probably just suck eggs at slogan-writing and have been allowed to do the job because their colleagues think it's more important to be polite and egalitarian about it rather than deal with the life-shattering confrontationalism that goes along with 'Reg, you suck at writing slogans, we're putting Gary in charge.'

on the other hand, a left which actually welcomed and valued people who knew how to express themselves swiftly, entertainingly and pithily would be surely be a BIGGER left

I'd like to point out that this is absolutely true and is why after my freshman year of college I decided to quit bothering with the 'American Left' and became a whatever-I-am-now. Leftists are ALWAYS, ALWAYS running out of time at debates and that's just ridiculous. Bad slogans are just the tip of the iceberg.

I care, but I certainly don't have the talent to come up with one of my own.

VOTE KING DUBYA AL-SAUD

RUMSFELD: if you're his friend, he'll depose you last

PUPPET MASTER 6: Age Of Cheney

PLANET DUBYA: Where 800 missiles mean peace

LET'S GO TO WAR, MY KID'S NOT A MARINE

US ARMY: AN OIL COMPANY OF ONE

the "our" in JtN's J. — which wd be much tougher (not to say truer) w/o it — seems to me to be exemplary in its pointlessness (like, if nepal bombed iraq this would not be terrorism?)

i had an argt at the sight and sound xmas party with my friend r, abt 8 mile (which i like and he hadn't seen, but disapproves of) and bowling for columbine (which he likes, and i haven't seen, and probbly disapprove of): anyway, it pretty much revolved round the fact that activists will expend enormous energy distancing themselves from someone like eminem — who plainly has a fantastic gift with words, and at least arguably a gift for condensing difficult, complicated ideas into powerful, popular forms — distancing themselves, and then pouring scorn on exactly those gifts, as worth even having

my friend wz arguing that michael moore can be excused his more patronising and lamer tropes, bcz these are the only things which well get through to the ppl he wants to reach — and i wz saying, i think this is a self-fulfilling circle of refusal to engage with what's actually turning off the ppl he wants to reach

(and i'll acknowledge here that MM has of course been the MASSIVE CHART SUCCESS of such crossover outreach for the left, and that this needn't be about eminem's good and bad points specifically — after all, pop culture is groaning ppl able to turn a brilliant phrase, design a great poster, catch the eye and the mind — but if he's nothing else, he's proof that being unapologetic abt being hateful/hatable isn't something a smart propagandist shd totally tremble or sniff at)

A privatised everything means you have to do what the boss tells you whether it's right or not; your rights as a citizen may be enshrined on a piece of paper in the Smithsonian but in a world where the buck stops with CEOs not NGOs, where we're made to feel constantly insecure by the *very* secure, asserting those rights is tantamount to troublemaking. I feel that Bush thinks Americans and their allies are there as cannon fodder to further his interests and those of his friends, and that he must be disabused of his fanciful notions.

Someone once said that liberals in America act like nerdy teenagers who don't want to do anything to piss off the grownups. I agree with that and think a bit of plain speaking/answering back to conservative, establishment types is necessary before we can't answer back at all.

(OK, so the last two are a bit subtle, probably more suitable for posters in halls of residence, but I think I've thrown down the gauntlet to that 'sublime poetry' of 1968.)

(it is certainly better than anything proposed A-Y so far)

Jerry has a point abt Tom's slogans but its of course miles better.

Are all the bad slogans a sign that the left's args are flawed or not as good/persuasive as they could be?

1. Saddam is an evil dictator who must be overthrown
2. Saddam is a proliferator who must be disarmed
3. Saddam is a threat to peace who must be stopped
4. Saddam is a murderer who ought to die

However, if the pro-war gang ever felt the need to pursue a counter-argument to the anti-warsters, I think they should have a logo of a Jesus fish eating Saddam.

Irony in slogans is used more as a method to make the opposition seem dumb, I think, and thus shorten the argument.
It's cynical, not necessarily alienated. (Seinfeld is alienated - George Carlin is cynical). There is a thin line between making ironic ha-stupid arguments and treating the issue as pointless. I think you can make a very strong case using irony and often make it with fewer words than you would have to use if you were being completely 'sincere'.

" " 'Fite!' " "

Initially I read this as 'Jesus fisting Saddam.'

You can have the title, Momus. I've just found myself arguing for PoMo with Mark S and The Pinefox a few times lately, and I wanted to make the point that I'm not one of its more broad opponents.

This just makes me think of Rush Limbaugh.

FUCK HOLLYWOOD
BOMBS OVER BAGHDAD
STOP SMIRKING FRANCE - YOU'RE NEXT
LET'S GET THIS OVER WITH
WHY ASK WHY?
HEY - REMEMBER THE NINETIES?

a political argument isn't some pristine complex machine somewhere which you keep polished and never allow anyone to see in case it gets damaged

the situation changes* = it was a good argument
the situation is the same = it was a bad argument

*not entirely to yr detriment

STOP SMIRKING FRANCE - YOU'RE NEXT is good though, as is I WEAR GORE BLIMEY TROUSERS.

There were some really bad slogans on the placards at the Capital Hill demo. One said SMOKE MORE POT or something - it was like they had been provided by a rushed prop man for a bad film set in the 60s.

I dislike "creative sloganeering" in some ways becuz the more clever it gets the less you can possibly mean it.

plain and straight is def more likely on the whole to fit the format plus clarity of word likely winds into general clarity of political intent and approach (all good)

BUT "beneath the paving stones, the beach" is a tremendously vivid hard-poetic phrase, i think => a call to (specific) action as well as a grebt coded summary of why

"act locally think globally" is on the other hand somewhat arsey (how the hell else can you act?)

i ph34r i am very modernist-futurist (haha KomFut) and unreconstructo-punk abt this

mark where did you score this? I should totally have it blown up on a poster and hang it by the conference table in the large boardroom where we come up with mission statements.

I went off the interweb yesterday after my last post on this thread. anyway...we can all kind of agree that a good slogan, that breaks down a complex idea, is something worth making. In the quote above martin, you separate the slogan from the arg but they are linked together.

Maybe the args produced lack that something, that x factor. I'm not prepared to believe that the ppl making these awful slogans simply lack the imagination to do so.

I am on the anti-war side BTW.

go to work on an egg!!

COL POT

this one doesn't work quite as well:

BLAIR ROUGE

but taken together they could do the trick.

BOMB BHAGDAD.

"Terrierist" might be even better, given one notorious Dubya gaffe.

I was just having some fun, mark s. I actually like that quite a bit.

BOMBING FOR PEACE IS LIKE FUCKING FOR VIRGINITY

HOW DID OUR OIL GET UNDER THEIR SAND?

http://da5id.home.attbi.com/warprotest.jpg

We've been having a peace vigil that went weekly about 7, 8 months ago. I saw a sign the other day I liked--"Blind Faith in Bad Leadership is Not Patriotism"...

ignoring other issues, when folks are driving by slogans are all you can get out.

war-mongers slogans here are simple:
bomb saddam
support our troops
remember 9-11
repeated ad nauseum and with the apparent conviction that the more flags you have the more patriotic you are.

I should add we stand side by side w/ 'em (though they are late comers).

gotta run.

(some of these spotted in london, others taken from washington dc march)

also spotted:
BLIAR

Liston To The People (funny mainly because I took ten minutes trying to work it out before I realise it really was a typo)
and
NOT AGAINST WAR PER SE, BUT AGAINST ILL-CONCIEVED WESTERN AGGRESSIONISM FOR DUBIOUS AIMS, AND CERTAINLY NOT WITHOUT A SECOND UN RESOLUTION.

(I wonder if anyone we know had "Drop Names Not Bombs")

And the part at the speeches where Harold Pinter...waited...to speak...his next...sentence...for ages was pretty classic.

Our students decided to offer my students union as a free dosshouse for Manchester and other students (100 odd) - causing me no end of logistical nightmares and arguing with the college (who came through rather well). Still, I was gambling my licence on it.