The Bonfire of all Vanity Plates — Georgia inconsistent in approving special tags

dogsbollocks

A slew of insults. Anatomical descriptions that would launch an auditorium of middle school boys into howls of laughter. A cornucopia of illegal drugs. Invitations of a highly personal nature.

The state has rejected thousands of vanity license plates with such themes to protect the public from offensive language.

Most are too vulgar to print. Some are just silly: BIGBRA, ER0TIKA, F0XIE1.

But buried amid that list of licentiousness are religious, philosophical and political expressions the state also has deemed unsuitable to appear on motor vehicles. G0DROKS, G0DWH0, ILUVGUNS, GAYPWR and FEMM have been nixed by State Department of Revenue employees, who have wide latitude and only vague statutory guidance in deciding what speech gets squashed.

Yet G0D4EVR, GUNLUV, GAYGAY and FEMFTAL got their nod.

The state’s inconsistent decisions raise questions about whether personal agendas are tainting the process. And restricting speech in such an arbitrary fashion may put Georgia at risk of the kind of constitutional challenge other states have already fought and lost.

To pass legal muster, government restrictions on free speech must be precise, said Cynthia Counts, an Atlanta lawyer who specializes in freedom of speech issues. Allowing S0SEXY1 while banning MSSEXI shows Georgia is not precise.

“That’s going to be what hurts them the most,” Counts said. “To limit speech the government has to show a compelling interest. How in the world are they achieving any purpose if they’re deciding it arbitrarily?”

Well, then, how about a vanity tag that refer, literally to dog testicles? Apparently it passes muster.

Or maybe it slipped through because no one cause the reference.

“The dog’s bollocks” is a British phrase that literally means, “the dog’s testicles.” That’s what it denotes.

The connotation of the phrase is that the object to which it refers is the best or outstanding.

I think the idea of dog’s bollocks meaning high quality is a corruption of its true meaning which I understand is “outstanding in a vulgar sense” ie something is unavoidably noticeable like the dog’s bollocks.

I first heard this in a BBC documentary about the Parachute Regiment about 10 years ago. The drill sergeant was adressing the new recruits and advised that once they had had their ultra-short haircut, if they left the barracks and went down into town, “You will stand out like the dog’s bollocks” and possibly be a target for locals wanting a fight.