October 12, 2001

2:27 PM

Silly Protest Signsin this "war" of many serious casualties where we are tip-toeing through religious ideas and many political issues, i am shocked at the lameness of some of the protest signs, please post others weak signs here.
posted by tsarfan (52 comments total)

Wow!

That is just bejeezusly weird. It's like they got a hold of some Stone Cold Steve Austin Crossdressing Colorforms and just went to town.
posted by Kafkaesque at 2:34 PM on October 12, 2001

Damn. Osama is RIPPED. And it's interesting to see that making someone effeminate is the ultimate insult.
posted by ColdChef at 2:37 PM on October 12, 2001

"Show me the dollars!"

I love broken translation. It makes for such amusing commentary by foreign skeptics.
posted by Down10 at 2:39 PM on October 12, 2001

ColdChef: I think they intended to show Musharif as a whore for Bush.

Aside from that, I think these people probably would have been put to death for that sign in Afghanistan... and I see they havn't got 'fist-length' beards either...
posted by delmoi at 2:46 PM on October 12, 2001

Well, at least it's not one of those stupid Calvin stickers peeing on something.
posted by nickonomicon at 2:47 PM on October 12, 2001

Where's Bert?!?
posted by Outlawyr at 2:48 PM on October 12, 2001

There was one sign at a protest at UBC that I found rather amusing, if lame: "Smoke a joint, not Afghanistan!"

I chuckled, but this is not the way to convince people that pacifists OR Vancouverites aren't just a bunch of potheads.
posted by isomorphisms at 2:54 PM on October 12, 2001

Someone needs to get the oxygen flowing back to Osama's head...he's turning gray!

What's really disturbing about this is that I thought this kind of "sportification" of the current conflict was the exclusive domain of American redneck knuckleheads. Glad to see the stupidity is spread about a little.
posted by tpoh.org at 2:58 PM on October 12, 2001

Contrast this with a report in the London Metro newspaper, which reports US pilots as saying that bombing Afghanistan has been an "awesome" experience which made them feel "pretty darn good." The photo shows a missile attached to an F14 Tomcat on which a pilot has scrawled the message "HIGH JACK THIS, FAGS" (sic) in chalk.

The article also reports pilots explaining how they bring hamburgers, sandwiches and other snacks to help them relax during bombing missions: "I was eating Twizzlers when the 57mm started coming at me", says one pilot. We're in safe hands.
posted by skylar at 3:26 PM on October 12, 2001

don't trust anyone with a fuuny hat. Don't trust anyone with a beard. Don't trust anyone from a country the name of which ends with ---istan. Trust me on this.
posted by Postroad at 3:26 PM on October 12, 2001

The hat is a dead give-away, isn't it.
posted by poseur at 3:52 PM on October 12, 2001

Don't "Hat"
posted by Carol Anne at 3:59 PM on October 12, 2001

thats what happens when you dont let girls go to school
posted by tsarfan at 4:09 PM on October 12, 2001

Where's Bert?!?

It looks like Bert is not the only puppet siding with bin Laden.
posted by boaz at 4:18 PM on October 12, 2001

I lik the Muslims I've met.
posted by msacheson at 4:18 PM on October 12, 2001

wait a minute... this is a real picture? I saw it on FilePile and thought it was a remix. maybe we ought to get some of these guys on broadband, I'm sure they'd feel right at home there...
posted by lizardboy at 4:26 PM on October 12, 2001

protestors?! they must be liberals! quick, punch them in the face to show them the folly of their views
posted by kevspace at 4:35 PM on October 12, 2001

thats what happens when you dont let girls go to school

I winced and laughed at the same time and I think I sprained a muscle.
posted by ColdChef at 5:06 PM on October 12, 2001

Throwback that I am, I thought of a few Vietnam era protest slogans:

"War is not healthy for children and other living things" (well, duh!)

"Fighting to end war is like fucking to end love" (Never got to try that one out.)

"Girls say yes to guys who say no" (This could have been pretty successful, unforturnately the girl in the poster was Joan Baez)

Personally, I'll take the current anti-war movement seriously after I see the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston "Bed-In".
posted by groundhog at 5:08 PM on October 12, 2001

I lik the Muslims I've met.
they enjoy that, do they?
posted by quonsar at 5:14 PM on October 12, 2001

"We Wilcht Until Crush The USA Jui"
posted by tpoh.org at 6:18 PM on October 12, 2001

"A Historical Lesson To American Monkies[sic]"
posted by tpoh.org at 6:33 PM on October 12, 2001

President Bush, you are a fairly well-drawn red dog with an attractive collar.
posted by tpoh.org at 6:34 PM on October 12, 2001

"America Do Not. Mistke To Atiack Afghanistan"
posted by tpoh.org at 6:40 PM on October 12, 2001

imagine english not being their first language!
posted by asok at 6:49 PM on October 12, 2001

am I wrong that calling someone a dog is a huge insult in at least some arabic cultures? I remember a brouhaha at the coffee shop I used to frequent in seattle. certain people would fill their glasses with water and let their dogs have a drink; the cafe ended up buying a dog dish for this purpose, after some of the middle-eastern-born regulars complained. it was disgusting for them to imagine drinking out of a glass that a dog may have used.

(forgive me -- and please correct me -- if this is untrue. that's the story as I was told it.)

as for those making fun of the english on these signs: I look forward to seeing your anti-Osama signs complete with slogans rendered in perfect arabic.
posted by rebeccablood at 6:57 PM on October 12, 2001

am I wrong that calling someone a dog is a huge insult in at least some arabic cultures? I remember a brouhaha at the coffee shop I used to frequent in seattle. certain people would fill their glasses with water and let their dogs have a drink; the cafe ended up buying a dog dish for this purpose, after some of the middle-eastern-born regulars complained. it was disgusting for them to imagine drinking out of a glass that a dog may have used.

(forgive me -- and please correct me -- if this is untrue. that's the story as I was told it.)

as for those making fun of the english on these signs: I look forward to seeing your anti-Osama signs complete with slogans rendered in perfect arabic.
posted by rebeccablood at 6:58 PM on October 12, 2001

Okay, okay. I apologize for making light of their poorly-worded expressions of hatred for my country and desire to see more of our people murdered and landmarks destroyed. I'll try to be more sensitive in the future.
</sarcasm>

May I be excused now?
posted by tpoh.org at 8:00 PM on October 12, 2001

How would you know if it was perfect or not? Besides, words would not be necessary for me to convey my feelings about Mr. Butt Lozenge.
posted by groundhog at 8:10 PM on October 12, 2001

Of course, Americans make some pretty stupid signs, too. This young (topless) lady was one of the peace demonstrators in Seattle a few days ago. (She also doesn't know what a real police state would be like. She'd have been in the slammer in a moment dressed like that in a real police state, and probably raped three times by guards before morning.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:41 PM on October 12, 2001

"Fighting to end war is like fucking to end love"

I thought it was "Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity". Which makes somewhat more sense, and also makes me laugh. It's one of my favorite protest mottoes of days gone by, regardless of its likely limited use in convincing anyone of anything.

But I'm one of those pesky libs with reservations about bombings of civilians so I'm stupid and deserve to be raped by jail guards too, don't mind me ;>
posted by Sapphireblue at 8:53 PM on October 12, 2001

1,2,3,4, we don't want a racist war!

I guess in all their protesting they forgot to learn the facts. This war has absolutely nothing to do with race. From our standpoint its about terrorism, and from the taliban/al queda's it's a religious holy war. You'd think people who were able to get accepted into Dartmouth etc. would be able to tell the differences between race, nationality, religion, policy, terrorism, etc etc. The only connection to racism is from lunatics who attacked "arab looking people" in the days following the attacks. The war itself, (while people certainly can argue it's intentions, justifications, whatever from now till doomsday) clearly has nothing to do with race.
posted by rabbit at 8:56 PM on October 12, 2001

as for those making fun of the english on these signs: I look forward to seeing your anti-Osama signs complete with slogans rendered in perfect arabic.

WTF? What exactly are you defending? These people --with the broken english -- are supporting/defending OSAMA FUCKIN' BIN LADEN!!!! You do remember who he is, don't you? You want us to make anti-Osama signs in perfect arabic to counter this?
posted by Rastafari at 9:25 PM on October 12, 2001

now i know where consumer electronics manuals are written.
posted by quonsar at 9:33 PM on October 12, 2001

You want us to make anti-Osama signs in perfect arabic to counter this?

That's not really such a bad idea. At least it would show that you took the time to get to know them before you took action.
posted by ColdChef at 10:15 PM on October 12, 2001

1,2,3,4, we don't want a racist war!

See, now I'm tempted to just pick a war with say... England, then see what fantastically witty chant they could come up with. :)

Perhaps something about Queens With Really Icky Teeth.
posted by owillis at 10:29 PM on October 12, 2001

lay off the queen mum, there, boy-o.
posted by rebeccablood at 10:39 PM on October 12, 2001

owillis: That's a bad case of regina dentata if I ever saw one.
posted by allaboutgeorge at 10:58 PM on October 12, 2001

Hey, what's with all the photos of Bin Laden? I thought photographs were graven images!
posted by aaron at 11:40 PM on October 12, 2001

You'd think that people would have had enough of silly protest signs. But I look around me and I see it isn't so.

Oh, no.
posted by aaron at 11:44 PM on October 12, 2001

"Fighting to end war is like fucking to end love"

I thought it was "Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity".

And I always thought it was "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. - Frank Zappa"
posted by shinybeast at 1:59 AM on October 13, 2001

These people --with the broken english -- are supporting/defending OSAMA FUCKIN' BIN LADEN!!!!

but look at them, especially at her. she isn't dressed like the women in afghanistan. i am sure she enjoys having a lot more freedom now in pakistan than under a repressive government like the taleban. what the pictures reveal to me ist that bush's speeches are less effective in pakistan (and other muslim countries) than the pro-bin-laden propaganda.
posted by arf at 2:02 AM on October 13, 2001

Also known as Engrish
posted by stbalbach at 6:20 AM on October 13, 2001

Perhaps something about Queens With Really Icky Teeth.

She's 101 you know, and still got her own anus.
posted by Summer at 7:11 AM on October 13, 2001

She's 101 you know, and still got her own anus

Aw, c'mon - the family is beyond loaded, the least they could do is get Grandma a new set of teeth...
posted by owillis at 8:31 AM on October 13, 2001

"Don't trust anyone from a country the name of which ends with ---istan"

I just knew there was something shady about mum and dad.
posted by Saima at 9:59 AM on October 13, 2001

Well, at least it's not one of those stupid Calvin stickers peeing on something.

Here in New Hampshire, we have Calvin peeing on both (the name) "Osama bin Laden" and the concept of "Terrorism" (just the word-- it would be decidedly hard to represent well in an image if you had a full frontal lobe, harder still if your only method of displaying distaste was to have an old comic page character piss on something. Why don't we have Garfield spraying these concepts?)

As for Osama the Wrestler (who, I'm sure, Vince McMahon has already tried to contact-- and you thought the Iron Sheik was hated), wasn't wrestling the ultimate expression of manhood at one point (I seem to remember someone wrestling the Angel Gabriel in the Bible-- ah, Catholic School: that finally came in useful. Almost).
posted by yerfatma at 10:13 AM on October 13, 2001

I'm sure Muslims around the world are proud of this. What an idiot.
posted by catatonic at 12:20 PM on October 13, 2001

Why don't we have Garfield spraying these concepts?

What the world really needs is a sticker of Triumph pooping on various concepts.
posted by kindall at 12:54 PM on October 13, 2001

Isn't there a difference between objecting to bombing Afghanistan and supporting the WTC attack? Seems to me they're different things, yet several posts above assume they're the same

I could imagine someone objecting to killing people in either situation, without them exploding in a puff of contradictory logic.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:32 PM on October 13, 2001

steven, that photo (which you got from this article) was *not* taken at a peace protest. Instead, it was taken at a Reclaim the Streets event a few months ago. Leave it to The Stranger to muck things up.
posted by gluechunk at 5:02 PM on October 13, 2001

rebeccablood: I'm pretty sure you're right about calling someone a dog being really insulting. In Indonesia the only island where people have pet dogs is Bali, since the major religion there is Hindu, at least, according to my highschool Indonesian teacher.
posted by eoz at 6:36 PM on October 13, 2001