Lawn Art

In this time when our country is once again facing a great political debate and the wheels of democracy are spinning….mostly in reverse, let me take a moment to share what has disturbed me most this election year…..people who put campaign signs in their front yard. I mean, I just do not understand it.

Everywhere I look are perfectly manicured lawns- mowed, trimmed, and edged within an inch of their lives, and then right in the middle of the grass is a big ol’ piece of cardboard with some stranger’s name on it. I mean maybe….may-be, if your brother is running for town council or your sister is running for district court judge, then it might be okay for you to show your support with a small, tasteful display. But to trash up your front lawn with a poster-sized logo of a candidate with whom you have had nor will have any contact, based on information you have learned by watching a television program where grown-ass men call each other liars for an hour? I mean this is just utterly insane.

I liken putting a campaign sign in your front yard to flying the number of your favorite Nascar driver from your front porch—proof that you are both tacky and stupid. My personal beliefs are neither here nor there in this instance. You can vote red, blue or green for all I care because let me just tell you, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. Whatever the heck they’re doing up there in Washington, something’s broken and since I’m not about to fix it with my little blog, I’ll just let you in on a little secret. I have flown all over this country for the past few years and the one thing that remains the same in every state in this union, is that folks are gonna do what folks need to do for themselves and their families, and no neighbor’s lawn ornamentation is going to change that.

Do these people really think anyone cares who they’re voting for? Like if your sign and my sign match we can hang at the clubhouse pool, even though you let your dog crap on my lawn every morning? I imagine advertising your political beliefs means you want people to come over and talk politics, which immediately alerts all normal people that you are one of those super-intense-yet-incredibly-dull people for whom social gatherings are spent in the driveway earnestly discussing the most efficient route home.

But then I thought about it and realized that maybe I was being short-sighted, maybe my aversion to these signs was just laziness and maybe these heretofore vulgar neighbors were really shaping the social consciousness of the neighborhood. If that’s the case then I couldn’t possibly let another day go by without proclaiming my personal feelings to the world, so I went right out and bought a piece of lawn art that expresses everything I feel about election season….an adorable garden gnome, bending over with his bare ass in the air.