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Controversial Billboard Message Now On Bumper Stickers

September 11, 2012 10:37 PM



DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) – A North Texas billboard that garnered national attention for its election message, is expanding from the side of local highway, to highways across the nation. It’s moved off the board to bumper stickers, and even t-shirts, after reports about the ad spread across the internet.

“There was a guy called from Tennessee, one from San Diego, one from Oklahoma,” said Tom Schad, the Gainesville man who originally paid for the ad along I-35.

The sign, inspired by an email, shows two camouflaged, armed men, and references the Navy Seals removal of a threat to America. It then tells viewers to remove another threat in November.

“I’m amazed,” Schad said. “It started out there was no reaction. Then all a sudden it evidently got on Facebook. It got on the Internet. Then it was everywhere. It went viral.”

Retired Marine Roger Herman has now taken the idea and made it his own, printing up one thousand bumper stickers. Tuesday night he said his initial order was already spoken for and he had several hundred new emails to answer. Schad himself, started making a few t-shirts for friends.

The attention has not come without criticism. Some of the initial complaints focused on people interpreting the ad as advocating violence against the President. One woman in Connecticut sent him an email saying she supported the message with the addition of the word “vote.” Herman added that element to his stickers just to ward off any similar criticism.

Others unhappy with the ad said the President deserved credit himself for removing a threat to America. Schad agrees, but didn’t agree with the way the President accepted that credit.

“He needs to understand its ‘we’, a team effort,” he said. “He didn’t pull the trigger those seals pulled the trigger.”

Shad said he has no regrets about the ad. It will remain up on I-35 through the November election.