At John Kerry's first Madison rally of the general election season, he had Lance Armstrong's arm-candy, Sheryl Crow, and Lance Armstrong's wrist-candy, those silly yellow bracelets, with him. Now, several months later, you can buy rubber bracelets in every color of the rainbow, with messages of "support" for any number of different causes.

Putting aside the question of whether Armstrong himself is worthy of the adulation he receives (he's not -- all right, not quite aside -- he got cancer, got better, and kept riding his bike; BFD!), these bracelets, like the "awareness" ribbon lapel pins that are their forebears, are a scrouge on a culture too lazy and dim-witted to endure discussion any more substantive than "LIVESTRONG" or "BELIEVE/ACHIEVE" or "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS," while at the same time too vain and self-involved to give any charity a single dollar without getting a trophy in return. I suppose it should go without saying that there are now tsunami relief bracelets available.

The terrible, right-wing mirror-image of the bracelets can be found on bumpers across the midwest. Perfect for the bigger-is-better culture we've become, those lapel ribbons have been blown up to half a foot tall so that "inspirational" or "patriotic" slogans can be written on them. These ribbon magnets are often sold with a vague promise that the proceeds go to the troops that have been impoverished and/or maimed by Donald Rumsfeld, but that may not be the case. Some of the ribbon owners opt for subtle Jesus references by placing the ribbon sideways on their car, to resemble a Jesus fish idol. Others prefer the painfully obvious route of buying a ribbon whose center hole is shaped like the cross on which they believe their favorite guy was nailed until dead. More often than not, these ribbons seem to be joined by a "W '04" oval or one of those ironically faded "These Color Don't Run" stickers.

These are the torch-carriers of our public discourse for 2004, along with not just a little bit of flipping-off directed at the ribbonites (I'll cop to that one). I tend to think the ribbons are worse than the bracelets, if only because I see so many more of them. You don't really notice the bracelets that easily, especially with everybody wearing winter coats now, but the ribbons are everywhere, all the time. Luckily, you can now make your own custom ribbons, if, for instance, you wanted to secretly replace a parking lot full of troop ribbons with ones that said "Jesus hates Iraq!" or something like that.