When Whitney Calk
sought a personalized license plate from a Tennessee state agency to
tout her vegetarian ideals, she was annoyed when she was told no. Turns
out the letters ILVTOFU can be construed to mean more than enjoying bean
curd.
"When I see T-O-F-U, I see
tofu," says Calk, who requested the so-called vanity plate from the
Tennessee Department of Revenue last September.
"I can't control the way
anyone else interprets that," said Calk, 26, an animal rights activist
from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
The dilemma faced by
Tennessee authorities last year is not unusual, as officials at motor
vehicle agencies nationwide consider hundreds of thousands of
personalized plate requests each year. There are an estimated 9 million
personalized license plates in the United States.
The vast majority of the
requests are not objectionable, but thousands provide insight not only
into the boundaries of free speech but the amount of human ingenuity
expended to display seven and eight character insults, sexual references
and descriptions of bodily functions to other motorists.
The battle to keep highways
free of offensive phrases means state officials must track everything
from Internet slang to foreign languages to commands like 3MTA3, which
reveals its meaning when read backwards in a rear view mirror.
Virginia may be the capital
of vanity plate mischief. Personalized plates in the state cost just $10
more than regular license plates—compared with $40 in Texas and $94 in
Illinois. One million of the Virginia's 7.8 million vehicles have them.
In 2009 alone, the state
denied more than 700 plate requests including IHAV2P and IAMHIGH along
with 100 requests beginning with the letter ‘F' and myriad proposals
involving the number ‘69,' according to state documents.
Questionable formulations are so common that a 20-person
committee of motor vehicle staffers meets for an hour each month to
review suspicious applications. State guidelines ban deceptive plates
such as FBI or confusing configurations like O0O0O and NOTAG as well as
excretory, sexual, racial or drug references.
"It's the only time you get
to talk like that at DMV, that's for sure," said Department of Motor
Vehicles spokeswoman Melanie Stokes, who sits on the review panel. Less
offensive and more playful ideas, including EWOBAMA, IPUNCHU and
DMYANKI, have all been reviewed and rejected at the meetings.
SOMETIMES IT'S UPSIDE-DOWN
Some slip through. Pictures have been posted on the internet of
the Virginia-issued 370H55V — which has to be read upside-down to get
the full message.
In Maryland, a software
program checks requests against 4,331 banned license plate formulations,
a list that includes WILDPIG, TOILET and GAY. State prisoners who make
the plates also help out by identifying drug, gang or sexual references
that slip by the computer and the civil servants, said Philip Dacey, a
spokesman for the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration.
"A lot of these are gray
areas," said Dacey. "TOILET is on the list and if people want to
challenge it they can have a hearing."
That's what one motorist did after Maryland revoked his MIERDA
vanity plate following a complaint. Though the Spanish term would seem
to embody the state's ban on "scatological" references, an administrator
is currently considering the man's appeal that the license plate should
be interpreted as a non-vulgar reference to a form of fertilizer.
More recently Maryland
attempted to revoke a plate reading WTF, an abbreviation for a
three-word phrase beginning "what the ..." that is widely used in
Internet chat. The agency reversed course after an investigation
revealed that the plate predated the Internet, and was a reference to
the motorist's waterfront home.
In Florida, the state's motor
vehicle agency takes a permissive stance towards celebrations of
clothing optional bathing. O2B NUDE, BARE ALL and BE NAKED have all been
deemed acceptable by the director of the agency, who nonetheless spiked
4NICK8, CAT BUTT and COW PADY, according to records released by the
state.
Other states are less
permissive. Utah, which faced a lawsuit in the 1990s for issuing plates
with the term "Redskins" because it offended Native Americans, has
recently denied ‘IH8TBYU,' ‘MNKYBUM,' and ‘MYSHRAZ' for being
derogatory, vulgar, and an alcohol reference to a popular wine.
Massachusetts' vanity
application form now instructs motorists that the letters "I" "O" "Q"
and "U" can only be used "as part of a word that is clearly defined and
correctly spelled." California requires applicants to explain the
meaning of any request.
No comments:
Post a Comment