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Time of the signs

By G.D. Maxwell "Turning anarchy into chaos.

By G.D. Maxwell

"Turning anarchy into chaos."

What do you think? Kind of catchy, isn’t it?

I think if I was running for political office – and don’t panic, I’m not – I might adopt something like that as my trademark... my soundbite... the slogan I’d plaster all over my signs if I sold out to the hypocrisy of conventional wisdom that says you have to pollute the roadside with signs bearing no more critical information than your name, "vote for me" and some vacuous tag line if you want to get elected.

The signs are sprouting like skunk cabbage in the spring and the politikin’ is afoot now that the candidates can actually file their commitment papers. As expected, Krispi has joined the race for mayor, making me rethink my complaint about not enough women running. And at least one more colourful if Quixotic hopeful has reached for his featherduster and pinned his hopes on representing a constituency that is both a majority of potential voters and, woefully, doesn’t vote.

While politics is very serious business, I think it’s important all of us – candidates particularly – not lose sight of the inherent humour in our triennial exercise in hope over reason. It is, in fact, to this end politicians erect signs. Political signs, and especially political slogans, are the comic relief of political campaigns. I know, or at least I think, they’re not supposed to be. But it generally works out that way. How can it not?

Using a genre that, at its best, is no more than an annoying reminder of how our collective good intentions can go so far astray in only three years, campaign signs serve the useful function of reminding us just how effective Whistler’s sign bylaw is at keeping visual pollution along Highway 99 limited to the amazingly diverse stuff that gets tossed out of car windows and blown out of pickup beds.

Other than that? Ponder for a moment the purpose behind political signs. Can’t think of one? Okay then, consider the proposition that without clusters of signs fighting for eyespace at every intersection in town maybe only half the eligible voters would know an election’s imminent and vote on voting day. The fact only about half do vote either suggests signs don’t do this job particularly well or explains some of the truly weird manoeuvres you regularly see selectively blind drivers perform with frightening regularity.

Alright then, maybe signs sway you to vote – assuming you were so inclined to begin with – for a particular candidate. If it were as simple an equation as Signs = Votes it would go a long way to explaining why we’re exposed to so many for the same person. But I’m pretty certain the Max Principle, I’ll spare you the details, disproved that theorem a few elections back.

So if they don’t make us more likely to vote and their overwhelming numbers don’t sway us to vote for anyone in particular, we’re pretty much left with that ever-important slogan as the real power behind political signs.

If you’re new to town, as so many of you are at this time of year, you might wonder how come local political hopefuls would be so shortsighted as to rely on the power of a mere slogan when they could couple it with the additional power of a thoughtful photo of themselves looking statespersonlike. The whole photo thing fell victim to the Ted Principle a few elections back.

As I recall – and forgive my imperfect memory – Whistler had, a very, very long time ago, a guy named Ted Nebbeling as its mayor... no relation to the current guy named Ted Nebbeling who’s running for mayor this time. Oh no, wait a minute, it was that Ted Nebbeling. How soon we forget.

Anyway, the guy, Ted, who was mayor at the time was one of those love-him-and-hate-him kind of guys; you know the type. Being every ready, and having a not insubstantial war chest to bankroll his re-election bid, Ted bought some nice, big signs with a catchy slogan everyone’s forgotten by now – I think it might have been something like ‘Now’s the Time’ – and really, really big pictures of his face on them. It was a bold political move. It was also single-handedly responsible for, as the store’s manager said at the time, the most amazing sales volume of spray paint Home Hardware has ever experienced. I still have a few cans tucked away myself.

To make a long story short, Ted had to wear a false mustache, glasses and a goatee for the remainder of the campaign in order for people to recognize him. It was either that or get new signs and there simply wasn’t time to print up new ones before the election.

But I digress.

If the power of campaign signs can be distilled to the slogan printed upon them, I can hardly imagine the pressure that puts on candidates. What would you choose, faced with the make or break decision of reducing your lust for unbridled power to a few important words? How would you describe yourself in a sentence fragment? When you think about it, the task is way more daunting than coming up with that catchy Personals ad that didn’t work nearly as well as you thought it would and ended so badly with temporary restraining orders flying like snow between you and that so-called discrete swinger.

Long before I came up with "Turning Anarchy into Chaos", a phrase I thought might actually be too high a goal for the next administration, I pondered and dismissed a dozen other almost as good possibilities in my quest to feel the candidates’ pain. These included: "I feel your pain"; "Your concerns are my concerns"; "Chasing the sympathy vote"; "Unemployable but not unelectable"; "Not Now; Not Ever"; "Dog is my Co-Pilot"; Carnivorous but conflicted"; "Never sold a condo but lived in one"; "Where’s Maui?" and the close runner-up, "Live the dream".

I noodled with the idea of whether or not I could get away with using something that played on people’s general disinterest and short-term political memory loss by employing the two-edged "Re-elect Me" on a sign. I imagine I could but I’m not certain even the incumbents are completely comfortable using re-elect on their signs this time around.

So as we ramp up for another chapter of Civics In Action, as the signs begin to multiply and spread from the key intersections to fill up any old hydro pole along the highway, as the ads in the papers proliferate – thank you, all – and the all-candidates meetings loom on the horizon, stop for just a moment and reflect on what a gut-wrenching process it must have been for the candidates to come up with whatever you read on their signs. Applaud their boldness, laugh at their humour, and never, ever forget they embody someone’s highest dreams and ambitions.

Then grab yer can of spray paint and get busy.