ooooooklahoma, and the wind

Some, most, or all of you may not know this (because I rarely think about it), but I have some roots in the state of Oklahoma. My maternal grandparents were from there, though they moved to California and raised my mother in Napa Valley.

Now I don't know much about Oklahoma. I've never been there, I've never met many of its citizens. But I do know that they've just created one of the most asinine goddamned things I've ever seen with my eyeballs, and it's this license plate:



First of all, the design is flat-out ridiculous with the faux-desert camo (hey! this Global War is going to be fought entirely in the desert, right?) and the incredibly shoddy clip-art eagle and inaccurate Twin Towers. Twin Towers, huh? Shouldn't that possibly be an image of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building? Must they appropriate a horrible event that happened in my city for their jingoistic idiocy? Maybe terrorism by white Christian people doesn't count in the Global War On A Tactic.

Which brings me to my second, more obvious point of ire: advertising the "Global War on Terror" with a license plate. What the hell is trying to be accomplished here? Do the trucks and SUVs of Oklahoma not already sport enough tacky, magnetic, Chinese-made ribbons "supporting" our troops? Are the faded US flag stickers proclaiming that These Colors Don't Run not making their owners feel sufficiently patriotic? Too embarrassed by their old War on Drugs plates?

Dear Oklahoma Tax Commission,
I realize you decided you could stand to make several bucks off of the fraction of your population that must constantly advertise their support of American imperial aggression, but not everything that can be done necessarily should be done. If these plates MUST exist, can we also get a plate featuring portraits of the major players in the Bush administration with the legend CRIMINALS printed below? It seems only fair.

Yours in slack-jawed horror,
QXZ