Tweet
While driving north on US 301 this weekend, I was shocked and delighted to see this in the middle of Lawtey, a small town in a very conservative part of Florida:
I wasn’t able to stop and take a picture, but I did note that the sign said it was sponsored by Doug Stein, MD. The other side of the billboard, facing south-bound traffic, was a standard advertisement for Dr. Stein’s vasectomy practice. After a bit of searching this morning, I was able to locate an email contact form for Dr. Stein. I wrote, thanking him for putting up the sign and asking if he could provide a photo and a few sentences describing why he chose to put it up.
Dr. Stein responded this evening, and it turns out that he has converted seven of his billboards across Florida to the "No McSame" message. Here is a portion of his response:
As strongly as I believe that prevention of unintended pregnancies is a worthwhile undertaking for a number of social and environmental reasons beyond the scope of this e-mail, I feel even more strongly that for the past 8 years, my country has followed a course (domestic and foreign) that is very different from what I believe would be a better course for the US and for the world. McCain stresses his differences, but, compared with other candidates, I think his sameness, on many issues that affect both our personal lives and our international relations, overshadows those differences. And I don’t think that more of the same will be good for my country or the other countries and species with whom we share the planet. Thus the decision to convert the billboards.
In addition to the photo of the billboard in Lawtey, Dr. Stein also included a more distant view of one on I-4 in Plant City:
This is a particularly useful location, as noted recently by the Guardian:
The key to winning in Florida is a 132-mile stretch of busy road known as Interstate 4, or I-4. The road cuts across the heart of the state, stretching from Tampa Bay to Daytona Beach. It is both the literal and metaphorical middle ground of Florida politics. It bridges the gap between the Republican core of northern Florida, which is very much a part of the conservative Deep South, and the large Democrat-leaning cities of the south-east, such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
This so-called ‘I-4 corridor’ is home to most of Florida’s independent voters and is some of the hardest contested political turf in the whole of America.
Many thanks to Dr. Stein for sharing his message with Florida and for taking the time to respond to my inquiry.
12 Comments
Dr. Stein seems to be taking freewayblogging to the next level. Love it.
Good followup detective work, Jim. Thanks for sharing.
A shout out and a thank you to Dr. Stein if he happens to read this!
You’re right, Audrey, I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll give the freeway blogger a link to this so they can enjoy the photos.
Kitt, Dr. Stein made my day twice. First, by putting up the billboard and then by being so gracious and helpful in his response to my email. My only regret is that it’s about ten years too late for me use his services (and mine was done by a resident who had far too much trouble!).
Ouch. ;o)
Great post! Nice of the good Doctor to respond!
Oh the irony! A vasectomy doctor taking the knife to McCain’s campaign, bwahahaaha!
Just Say No to McSame!
Great post Jim!!! Thank you Dr. Stein!!!
Thanks for the post, and bravo on the headline!
Great post — thanks for sharing it!
Great share and great headline. Let the good doctor know we love him.
CNN is talking about the nasty racist commentS ar Sarah’s speech today. Also reporters are becoming targets of the neo-cons. To these reporters welcome to our angry dirty hippy world.
Wow, JimWhite. What a remarkable person he must be. Talk about putting your money and your reputation on the line… (!). If this isn’t integrity, I don’t know what would be.
Thanks for this very remarkable story.
Frank33, as someone who spent part of my childhood in Germany, and later took as much Modern European history as I could, I really find this deeply distressing and unnerving.
Mobs don’t come out of nowhere. They have to have someone tell them that it’s okay to be violent.
You would not believe some of the photos of a place where my (American) parents lived in one period of my childhood — not a building left in a bombed-out region of the town, and hundreds of years of history, art, and culture ‘up in smoke’.
These people are recklessly playing with fire, and they need to have a stern dash of cool water from someone they respect — whether it’s Clint Eastwood, or Mel Gibson, or Richard Land (Southern Baptists) or whoever they respect — talk them down a bit.
For Sarah Palin to be so incendiary is more evidence of how genuinely unfit she is for office, but it does seem like the press is a bit late catching on. She’s going after anyone who challenges her view of the world, and that includes the press.
Christy Hardin Smith’s most recent post links to a recent Frameshop post by Feldman, and you’d probably find it extremely valuable and interesting.