Interesting flap over a stupid license plate...

I happened by the TV room while my wife was fast forwarding through the commercials of one of her regular TV shows (she has way too many of them for my taste...).  In any case, she stopped just before the commercial block ended and caught the teaser for the evening news which was about a personalized Texas license plate which the state had decided, after 3 years of being used by its owner, was somehow offensive.

Here is the original plate.



The supposed offensive message that it supposedly contains can only be viewed when the plate is turned upside down and copious amounts of imagination are applied:



If you squint just right, you can imagine that it says "ASSHOLE" in "'leet speak" (AKA hacker speak).

The owner of the plate claims to not have known about this interpretation but that is not the part of the story that I find interesting.  The questions I want to ask are:

• why?
• why just now?

First, why is such a trivial story now being broadcast on cable TV at all?  This is "news" at it's very worst.  It is completely irrelevant to the watcher.  But not only did the news feature it prominently, it was also repeated by dozens of web sites.  One has to wonder why.  This is not even a human interest story, it is just stupid and a waste of everyone's time.

Second, why now?  Three years ago it was apparently irrelevant.  Two years ago it was also irrelevant.  Did the DMV do some kind of a search on its custom license plates looking for some kind of conservative check to make sure that liberal messaging was not embedded?  Why are they even wasting their time on such checks, observations, and "corrective actions"?

I have stated many times in these pages that the conservative wave is washing over the herd and that there is a real threat that it will go too far.  Too conservative is just as bad as too liberal folks just as too alkaline is as destructive as being too acidic.  So while I happily point out the positive aspects of the shift right, I am also aware that societal downside exists.  Perhaps this is early evidence of that.
 
Some people think I am paranoid.  Others think I am a conspiracy theorist.  I believe that I simply stand apart from the herd with reasonable observation and fact based conclusion deduction skills.  It's not to my credit - I didn't learn it that I know of.  It's just me.  And it's not always a boon while it has more than once been to my detriment.

And so I hope you will forgive me for also pointing out that the last three digits of the license plate are 55V and that V is Roman numeral 5.  As in 555.  Is this why this trivial "news" is being shoved in our faces?  Maybe it's just coincidence but then again you must know by now that I'm not a big believer in them.