Vanity license plates, reports author Stefan Lonce (LCNS2ROM: Vanity License Plates and the GR8 Stories They Tell), are often subject to regulations against offensive content.

Each state's rules are different, Lonce told Esquire magazine's Answer Fella blog, but fall within the same general guidelines: "Nothing obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic group, or patently offensive."

The Answer Fella dug a bit deeper, and received a list of 1,000 license-plate requests rejected by the state of Utah. They include:

• ARREOLA ("sex reference")
• BGBOOTY ("sex reference")
• BUCKNKD ("sex reference")
• CAMLTOE ("ethnic")
• DEZNUTZ ("vulgar")
• GIGGIDY ("sex reference" - somebody at the DMV watches "Family Guy")
• GOBUSH ("sex reference")
• HITMAN ("public welfare")
• JAILB8 ("sex reference")
• MANH8TR ("shows contempt")
• MMMBEER ("drug reference")
• SLCPUNK ("public welfare")
• UTSUX ("derogatory")

Labels: government

At the risk of riling up the FCC even more, what the %&$@ ?

The U.S. Supreme Court was given the chance to rule on the constitutionality of the FCC's authority to regulate profanity on the airwaves - a power that's constitutionally suspect - and instead (as reported here by the Associated Press), the high court punted.

On a 5-4 ruling, the court threw out a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York - which found in favor of a Fox Television-led challenge to the FCC policy of "fleeting expletives," the idea that one use of the F-bomb or the S-word was enough to get you fined, no matter what the usage.

The appeals court threw the case back to the FCC for a "reasoned analysis" of its tougher line on indecency. Instead, the FCC threw it to the Supreme Court - which promptly threw it back to the appelate level to decide on constitutional grounds.

Even Justice Clarence Thomas argued that past decisions in favor of the FCC policy "were unconvincing when they were issued, and the passage of time has only increased doubt regarding their continued validity." Still, he voted with the majority.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing one of the dissenting opinions, argued that context is key - and something missing from the FCC's draconian policy.

"As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows," said Stevens, an avid golfer, "it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement."

The problem is that the FCC's policy is arbitrary, and unfairly enforced - and who knows how long it will be before the Supreme Court gets another chance to clean up the bleeping mess.

Labels: government, politics

It's kind of cool to think that Robert Redford can get $50 million inserted into President Barack Obama's mighty stimulus package with just a phone call.

Redford's call last week to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, probably didn't do it alone - but it may have been a help in rescuing a $50 million appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts, according to The New York Times.

The House had approved the NEA money, but the Senate - giving in to Republican grandstanders who consider the arts as elitist leftie timewasters (and who voted against the stimulus anyway) - yanked the appropriation out of the bill. The conference committee that hammered out a final bill put it back in, after arts supporters in and out of Congress made the argument that the arts provide jobs and a boost to the economy.

Redford cited to Pelosi the example of the Sundance Film Festival, a cultural event that celebrates artists - and also pumps an estimated $60 million a year into Utah's economy. "Ticket takers or electricians or actors - all the people connected with the arts are at risk just like everybody else is,” Redford told the Times.

Labels: government, politics, Robert Redford

Here's an idea going nowhere - the sort of idea that only gets major news attention when, a) it's said by a supposedly important government official and, b) when it's a slow news day (like the weekend after Christmas):

Britain's culture secretary, Andy Burnham (that's him on the right), is floating the idea of launching an international ratings system for web sites - something similar to what is now done with movie and TV ratings - to keep offensive material away from children.

"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it," Burnham told The Daily Telegraph (and you know when a politician has to say an idea isn't against free speech, then it's against free speech). "It is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."

OK, here's the crux of what's wrong with Burnham's idea: Who decides what the ratings will be?

• Should web sites rate themselves, as American TV networks do (leading to the confusing alphabet soup of TV-G, TV-Y7 and so on)?
• Should an industry-selected group get the assignment, like the MPAA does with U.S. movies (and look at the double-standards and hypocrisy there)?
• Should the government do it? And how loud will the howls of "censorship!" be then?
• Should a system be based on complaints from viewers (think about the FCC's current system for complaints, hijacked by lobbying busybodies like the Parents Television Council)?
• Who would have the time or resources to monitor millions of web sites - especially the ones (most of them, really) whose content changes daily?

Once again, the only good solution is the simplest one: Parents watching out for their own children, so nobody else has to do the job.

Labels: government, internet

From Tuesday night's open house at the Governor's mansion:


That's Gov. Jon Huntsman and his wife Mary Kaye on the left, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert and his wife Jeanette on the right, and yours truly in the middle (and dressed a bit too casually for the occasion).

Labels: government, Jon Huntsman

Before last night, I had only set foot in the old Kearns Mansion - the official residence of Utah's governor - once, and that was in the midst of the house's restoration after the 1993 Christmas tree fire that gutted the Grand Hall and nearly destroyed the dome over the three-story staircase.

Last night, Gov. Jon Huntsman - in a holiday tradition going back longer than my tenure in Utah - opened up the mansion for invited guests, including pretty much every reporter in the state. (There's an old joke, unfortunately true, about how they call it a free press because we always show up for the free food.)

Seeing the mansion dolled up in its Christmas finery was a treat, though. I counted four Christmas trees on the first floor alone, with the biggest one (pictured) in the Grand Hall - decorated with badges from police and fire departments from across Utah, as well as a Utah Highway Patrolman's hat, a dalmatian plush toy and other symbols of first responders.

The mansion staff conducts free public tours - but there's only one left before Christmas, on Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. The mansion is at 603 E. South Temple, Salt Lake City.

Labels: government, Jon Huntsman

Oh, goody - more free publicity for Utah, courtesy of our own Chris Buttars.

The state senator from West Jordan was named "Worst Person in the World" Tuesday by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on his "Countdown" show, for his idea to introduce a resolution in the Utah Legislature encouraging retailers to say "Merry Christmas" instead of the more generic "Happy Holidays."

Here's the video:



Now, even discounting the fact that Olbermann is attacking Buttars in part because the senator is playing into the "War on Christmas" horse-manure championed by Olbermann's arch-nemesis Bill O'Reilly, the "World's Worst" honor still doesn't make Buttars - or Utah - look good.

Labels: government, politics, religion

Utah State Sen. Chris Buttars is at it again, this time catching up to that old right-wing conspiracy theory, "The War on Christmas."

Buttars (R-The Paleolithic Era) is sponsoring a resolution in the Utah Legislature to encourage retailers to stop saying "Happy Holidays" or other generic secular phrases - and instead say "Merry Christmas."

"I'm sick of the Christmas wars - we're a Christian nation and ought to use the word," Buttars (pictured here, doing his impression of Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life") told the Tribune's Cathy McKitrick.

Right-wing blowhards, Bill O'Reilly chief among them, have been trumping up the so-called "War on Christmas" for a few years now. They see isolated incidents of political correctness run amok (fights over public religious displays, stores putting up generic "holiday" slogans, etc.) as a concentrated effort to drive religion - specifically the Christian religion - from the public square.

It's all bullpucky, as Salon's Michelle Goldberg wrote in this 2005 article. Besides showing how the "War on Christmas" is nothing new (the whack-job John Birch Society talked about it in the '50s, and Henry Ford railed against it in his anti-Semitic screeds in the '20s), Goldberg dissected the current mania to declare war on "The War on Christmas":

In fact, there is no war on Christmas. What there is, rather, is a burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas, assembled out of old reactionary tropes, urban legends, exaggerated anecdotes and increasingly organized hostility to the American Civil Liberties Union. It's a myth that can be self-fulfilling, as school board members and local politicians believe the false conservative claim that they can't celebrate Christmas without getting sued by the ACLU and thus jettison beloved traditions, enraging citizens and perpetuating a potent culture-war meme. This in turn furthers the myth of an anti-Christmas conspiracy.

If nothing else, Buttars' proposal again proves that Utah is late picking up on everything - even "The War on Christmas."

Labels: government, politics, religion

You can't skateboard in most public places in Salt Lake City, except for a few designated skateparks. Now it turns out you can't do it in your own backyard.

A provision buried in a Salt Lake Valley Health District noise-pollution ordinance passed in August expressly forbids backyard skate ramps:

4.5.21. Sporting Ramps. No person shall build or use nor shall any person cause, allow, or permit anyone to build or allow anyone to use any skateboard, roller blade, bicycle, or snowboard ramp or half-pipe or similar configuration within 800 feet of a dwelling, except within facilities that have been designated for such use by a government entity.

Utah skateboarders are incensed enough that some have started an online petition to overturn this ban.

As the site's creator (who explains his own plight of installing a $3,000 backyard ramp, only to be told it was illegal) points out, "anyone who has ever used a backyard skate ramp knows that it that it would be an impossible argument to say that a Mini-ramp produces any more noise than a backyard swing set, trampoline, swimming pool, basket ball hoop, or a family backyard gathering for a nice summer evening barbeque."

News of the backyard skatepark ban has reached the national action-sports network, which led to an item on ESPN's web site.

UPDATE: That didn't take long. According to this story in Wednesday's Tribune by Derek P. Jensen, the SLVHD is considering a suspension of the skate-ramp ban, after receiving hundreds of complaining e-mails. Fight the power, 'boarders!

Labels: government, skateboarding