Who Cares Who's On Board?

Can you remember the CB radio craze of the 80s? Every car sported a CB antenna. Every dashboard had a little black box with colored lights. This went on for a year or two. Then suddenly, within a few months, maybe within a few weeks, they all disappeared. I guessed everyone got tired of saying “10-4 good buddy.”

This was followed by the little orange diamond-shaped signs that hung in the car window. The first message was serious. It said, “Baby On Board.” I remember asking myself why I needed to know this. Was I being asked to drive even more carefully? Was the driver bragging that she had succeeded in procreating? I never knew. But when I saw the sign, I always looked for a baby. Most of the time there wasn’t one. Then came the attempts at humor, many of which were funny for 30 seconds. There was “Mother-in-law On Board” and “Ex-wife In Trunk.” The last one I remember seeing before these too disappeared was, “Who Cares Who’s On Board.” Who cares, indeed.

Next came the bumper stickers. Bumpers were plastered with them. Everyone felt they had something to say that everyone else needed to hear. I didn’t care though. I didn’t care if the driver loved New York, or was Polish, or hated war, or had visited Nantucket. I don’t know what happened to all the bumper stickers. Maybe the drivers picked them off. Maybe they just fell off. Maybe the cars all went to the junkyard. I don’t know.

Today you can hardly find a ball cap or a t-shirt that isn’t advertising something. Most of them say the equivalent of “Here’s what I like!” These too will find their way to the land fill.

Now, we have the Internet. And the Blog. Any one of us can go on at length about our likes and dislikes, and share our personal views with thousands. It has been said that the Internet is the most powerful technology for social change since the printing press. The printing press allowed the common man to learn to read. The Internet, though, allows the common man to publish. Twitter is today’s bumper sticker. Unfortunately, this stuff won’t decay and crumble. It is virtually immortal.

It is easy to see how the ability to read empowered the common man. It is said that, had the printing press not been invented, the American Revolution would never have taken place. It is more difficult to see the lasting esthetic value of “Baby On Board” or “Kiss Me I’m Polish.”

It is interesting to speculate about what would have happened if every individual in Elizabethan England had the power to publish. How many plays would we have to read before getting to Shakespeare? Would we ever find Shakespeare at all? For that matter, were there better playwrights than Shakespeare, who simply couldn’t get published?

Will ‘search engine optimization’ take the place of literary scholars? Will populist appeal replace artistic merit? Will the Oscar Meyer Bologna jingle become the new Carmina Burana? Generations to follow will know the answer to this, but we can’t. It’s too soon. I have decided not to add my voice to the din. Except this once.