Bear Hunting in Virginia!
The Bear is back! And now he's in the cross hairs of the mean old Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles for having a really gay license plate. I guess this is the sort of low-level, left-handed payback you get when you cross the very powerful Sen. Larry Craig.
For 200,000 miles and 11 years, David Phillips, an Arlington resident and onetime Craig boy toy , has been driving around his car with plates that read POOFTER. Funny, right? Well, according to The Washington Post , the Virginia DMV isn't laughing, and has now, inexplicably more than a decade after issuing the plates, is requesting them back. "You may have grown fond of your personalized plates," read a DMV letter to Phillips. But they are "socially, racially or ethnically offensive or disparaging. You must return them." So what if it took the Commonwealth of Virginia 11 years to realize the meaning of poofter . The Bear is keeping his tags! Oh, and BTW, before his POOFTER plates, he rolled with NANCBOY tags. I know! Good times.
The DMV claims it was a "citizen complaint that triggered the review because the state doesn't just randomly go back and reconsider plates that have been on the road for years. We definitely rely on residents to report any inappropriate message," said a DMV spokesperson.
Then, in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, she explained Arlington's policy on the gays: Be gay, sure, but not that gay.
A Vehicle for Self-Expression? Not on These Roads [WaPo]