New York State DMV: "Dislike is Offensive."

The Times Metro Section features a piece about a Brooklyn man whose request for a personalized license plate reading "DUMPBUSH" was rejected.

After reading what New York Motor Vehicles says is its policy on political plates, one wonders what their take would be on more affirmative 8-letter messages like "SADAMRKS", "IM4OSAMA", or "JEEHAADD".

click below to read the Times article.

DUMPBUSH? Don't Try It on a Plate
By DAN BARRY

Published: March 27, 2004

THE phrase that came to his mind was evocative, to the point, and in perfect conformity with the eight-figure character as allowed by the Custom Plate Unit of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. His muse had surely blessed him, he thought; it seemed that he had achieved a kind of license plate haiku.

He typed in his phrase, sent it to the department's online service, and imagined the day when he would join the ranks of anonymous poets whose license plate musings linger in the thoughts of readers for a moment or for an hour, depending on traffic flow and exhaust fumes. Early indications were that Noah Lamy was indeed about to become a man of letters. The Department of Motor Vehicles sent him a registration card and a sticker bearing his chosen phrase, which suggested that residents of the state correctional facility in Auburn would soon be imprinting his poetry upon two rectangles of cheap metal.

Once the plates arrived in the mail, he would fasten them to the bumpers of his 1987 Toyota 4Runner, and forever after would be a published author in one of the most narrowly defined genres in all of literature, a genre in which so much - from pride in one's grandchildren to pride in one's Lexus - must be said with so little.

Alas, in mid-January, he received a Dear Noah rejection letter. "The Custom Plate which you requested - DUMPBUSH - cannot be issued at this time for the reason(s) indicated below,'' the letter said. The reason: "Others may view the plate as obscene or offensive.''

Mr. Lamy, a compact man of 53, does not work in politics. Rather, he works in construction. With his longish hair in a ponytail, and a pipe clamped in his teeth, he comes off as a kind of erudite everyman. Nobody's fool.

He is a registered Democrat, but only because he wants to vote in the primaries that usually serve as the general elections in this Democrat-heavy city. "I don't participate in organizing in any way, and I'm not involved in any group,'' he said. "I basically regard myself as more of a malcontent than an activist.''

He said that he always votes in major elections, but he cannot remember the last time that he voted for a candidate, rather than against one. "When I turn on CNN and see Congress, I see a bunch of guys in suits,'' he said. "And there's no more difference politically than in the difference of their suits.''

He is not pro-Kerry, so much as he is anti-Bush. Nor is he a knee-jerk liberal; for example, he said, he supported the military strikes in Afghanistan after Sept. 11. But successive decisions by the current administration, coupled with his late-night Internet reading of a broad spectrum of periodicals, have led him to one conclusion. As the would-be poet once said: DUMPBUSH.

Mr. Lamy e-mailed the Custom Plates Unit to inquire further. Was there good reason for this rejection? Or was Noah Lamy this generation's James Joyce, his censored phrase this generation's "Ulysses,'' only shorter? He needed to know.

THE Custom Plates Unit has 16 employees, most of them veteran decoders and defenders of proper roadway decorum. All day long, they scrutinize letter-and-number combinations of eight or less to ensure that some Niskayuna knucklehead's license plate does not suggest that your mother wears Army boots.

If a custom-plate specialist feels uneasy about a submission, a committee of specialists will gather to decipher its true meaning, and to advise, aye or nay. "Once in a while, one will get through,'' Joseph Picchi, the department's spokesman, said, referring to inappropriate license plates. "That's why you have to be very careful.''

It turns out that proposed phrases of a political nature are held to a slightly different standard: generally speaking, they should be positive, upbeat - nice. "We don't censor plates for political content or if they're politically related,'' Mr. Picchi said. "We do if they're politically offensive. If they said HATE somebody.''

In other words, DUMPBUSH or DUMPDEMS are negative, and therefore unacceptable. But YES2BUSH, or IM4KERRY, might be allowed, since they would conform to an Up With People view of Thruway motoring.

After work the other day, a dust-covered Mr. Lamy sat in a Carroll Gardens coffee shop and considered the Orwellian dynamics of his chosen literary discipline. He rejected the thought of applying for an IM4KERRY license plate because, he said, "I'm not pro-Kerry.'' Besides, the phrase falls short of poetry.

The construction worker finished his coffee and drove away in his battered Toyota. The "Impeach Bush'' bumper sticker on his back bumper will just have to do.

Posted by Palabris at March 30, 2004 09:07 PM