Wrote the California Department of Motor Vehicles, quoted in "Family that owns Tesla Cybertruck with ‘LOLOCT7’ plate says its meaning was misconstrued" (Washington Times).
The family that owns the cybertruck says the DMV did not contact it before issuing the highly insulting apology. It's "a large Filipino family" using the Tagalog word for grandfather — "Lolo" — along with "CT" for cybertruck and 7 for the number of grandchildren.
The DMV reacted to on-line discussion that assumed the vanity plate represented laughing about the October 7th massacre.
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Of course it didn't occur to anyone to ask what the meaning was before going straight to outrage mode? Lolo is how all of our kids know their grandpa on my Pinay wife's side of the family.
I've applied for vanity plates in NV. You must explain what your shorthand means as part of the process. Does Cali not do that?
In other news, record stores are pulling Public Enemy's "911 Is a Joke," claiming it makes light of terrorism.
Because of course anybody who claims to be triggered has a right to demand immediate action for their perceived discomfort, no matter who paid for it originally and for an entirely different reason.
Bring back the village stocks.
The small minority that closely follow the news, and the even smaller minority that obsess the middle east, forget that the vast majority of Americans don't know and don't care about the Middle east. And that includes Israel. Further, even people who do follow the news, don't have October 7th burned into my memory. If you'd asked me yesterday, what day did HAMAS attack, I'd have said "October something 2023".
September 11th, June 6th, December 7th - those are special days of rememberance. October 7th - nope.
I've never applied for vanity plates. I think it's a rather childish display. I have always said a political opinion that fits on a bumper sticker isn't worth discussing. That goes double for vanity plates. So by what right does the DMV of any state think it is entitled to monitor the free speech of citizens who seek to encode some triviality in seven alphanumerics? Any message that brief is open to interpretation.
So what if LOLOCT7 does refer to the Hamas attack? Those moronic Muslims who attacked thought they were waging the final Final Solution. They were so proud, so arrogantly victorious. Now they are mostly dead or limbless lumps with tubes down their throats and up their butts. And their families are homeless and starving. Fuck Yeah! LOL! How'd that October 7th work out for ya?
CA has about a billion more urgent matters needing attention before vanity licence plates.
September 11th, June 6th, December 7th - those are special days of rememberance.
And they should be for every American.
If it looks like a Nazi license plate, maybe go for something else? LOLO 7, for instance.
June 6th? It's the anniversary of D-Day, but it's also Atheists Pride Day, so there's that.
LOL. That goes right up there with the "EAT THE" on the "KIDS FIRST" plate we had here in VA. It got recalled, because, someone insinuated it had a sexual connotation.
Meanwhile, there is a driver who has "POON" and "TANG" on two separate cars.
"LOL OCT7" could be interpreted two ways. One, supportive of Israel. Then there is the other.
Couldn't hey jut put a space between the "O" and the "C"? I see that all the time here.
Free speech, ya'll. Wonderful that we have that, right?
Right?
I've never applied for vanity plates. I think it's a rather childish display.
Depends. We drive a Genesis and get several comments on the ABACAB plates.
The entire "Fear of a Black Planet" album would be treated as KKK/Nazi propaganda if the content was flipped to "Fear of a White Planet."
If I wasn't so cheap, I'd get a vanity plate that reads VANTPL8.
Feel free to claim it for your own.
"Couldn't hey jut put a space between the "O" and the "C"?"
Maybe not, California allows a maximum of 7 characters.
They issued them, why are they complaining
Lots of Love... only on Oct 7? Is that the complaint? At least it's a perennial sentiment. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Dig My Vibe... can you dig it?
We've been primed to assume the worst in our fellow Americans. Wasn't always this way. Forty years ago state innocently issued the plate 6UL DV8 and it took six months before anyone noticed.
Shock and blah, blah, blah... blah.
It would be very interesting to make a civil rights case out of this nth example of petty California DMV tyranny. If Harmeet Dhillon reads the Althouse blog, this is for her:
Please write to this unidentified person, and advise him not to surrender that plate. Assure him the incoming DoJ has his back in this fundamental case. Dhillon has made her reputation by being the gadfly on California's big red fascist ass. What a way to start grinding away at that pile of totalitarian bullshit.
Licence plates exist for two reasons:
(1) To extract money from the citizen.
(2) To extract more money from the citizen and to establish a unique identification for a motor vehicle. Sorta. Kinda.
Therefore, the only legitimate interest the State has is whether the expected money is paid, and the alphanumeric string doesn't duplicate another alphanumeric string lawfully registered. If the owner of that Tesla truck is current on the fees California demands for the priveledge of driving it on the public thoroughfares and there isn't another 2024 LOLOCT7 California plate registered before his, then that should settle the matter. The DMV will just have to live with its outrage unfulfilled like everyone else in a free society.
Jim at said...
“We drive a Genesis and get several comments on the ABACAB plates.”
Do they stop and stare and think you’re to blame? There’s a hole in there somewhere.
Jim writes, "Depends. We drive a Genesis and get several comments on the ABACAB plates."
Perhaps those comments aren't as interesting as those sparked by your plate if it read ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗ.
We were in North Myrtle Beach during February. At a stop light the pickup in front of us had a very succinct plate. A whole sentence. GO HOME
Forgot to say we are from Upstate New York and eventually did, go home that is.
Eugene Volokh has a long and excellent series of posts on license plates and the First Amendment. The lastest is "FCANCER" https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/14/excluding-fcancer-personalized-license-plate-violates-first-amendment/
I once saw a car (very coincidentally, driven by a Filipina, in California) with the license plate LNCHNGR. I'm pretty sure they intended it to mean 'lane changer', but it looked really bad.
Oct 7... Laugh Out Loud.
Murder, rape-rape, rape, torture-torture, and abduction in the pursuit of social justice is an ethical virtue, a joy.
The sacrifice of women and children as human shields for terrorists, weapons depots, traps, and leverage, are necessary to realize social progress with benefits.
Hamasidols will never change.
My ex, when she filed for divorce, hid my car that she had bought for me. It was titled in her name but bought during the marriage. As part of the divorce settlement, she had to turn in back over to me. I went to the FL DMV and requested a vanity plate (which I got) which read NOMOKAT. The female clerk asked me what it meant. I told her my ex-wife's name was Kathi and it meant "No More Kathi". She was not amused. I gave no fucks.
You're wrong on this one.
A long time ago, I got my wife "CHI 1" as a surprise plate for her car in Iowa. She's from Chicago - get it? Years later, when she got a new car, and because she had liked the first one so much I thought pretty hard about how to follow it up, So again, behind the scene, I want to the Iowa DMV to get her a now one. I asked this time for "2 CHI". Get it? That one was rejected.Guess why? The initial reviewer thought it was too close to "tushy", I went slightly Karen and asked if I could appeal that call. the clerk was polite enough to call in her suppervisor and being as light and as gentle as I could, I got her to give it the Okay. She did say that if it got complaints, they could recall it. that never happened, and my wife drove that plate for about 5 years. True story.
A local lady applied for the vanity plate HOOKER and unsurprisingly was denied. She appealed; her justification was that her husband ran the Hooker Chemical plant here in Tacoma. True story! The sad denouement for y'all is I can't remember if her appeal succeeded or not.
A very pleasant but extremely loquacious and evangelical house painter I hired several years ago had the license plate "JESUS." If I were working at the DMV I would have given it to him just to get him to stop talking.
I wondered how the plate was even available, given the size of the Puerto Rican community in this area.
It makes me wonder if the half-Black, half-Japanese guy who bombs Pearl Bailey every December 7th is still around and what he was doing last week.
Over reach by the DMV, maybe. But I would not want a sizable number of people to conclude I thought the October 7 massacre was funny on MY vehicle.
Saw a vanity plate in TN: FJB _ 46 (the space between being filled with the coiled snake from the Gadsden Flag. I wonder how it passed muster.
Last time I went to the DMV for license replacement on my spouse's car, they wanted to give me one with "666" as the numbers. When I objected, the DMV worker sighed, said "That makes it every single person today," and gave me a "677." Had it been my own car, I would not have cared, but I didn/t think going home with the Mark of the Beast on my wife's car was a good idea.
I don't think a libertarian 'anything goes' rule (lack of rule?) for vanity plates will work. Can you really not think of any combination of 7 letters and numbers that you wouldn't mind explaining to a child in the back seat?
I've read that inappropriate letters and numbers are generally excluded from the non-vanity sequences, so Virginia, which uses 3 letters plus 4 numbers, would never give you FUK 4729 or ASS 5923. I'm surprised mikee's state didn't think to exclude 666.
Some inappropriate vanity plates do slip through. Years ago I think it was Herb Caen that said he saw a young woman driving a Honda Prelude with California plates reading MYLUDE3, and explained that the Prelude 3 was the cadillac of vibrators, and that the DMV would surely have refused the plates if they'd realized that. My sister-in-law once found herself driving in front of a car with 3M TA3 Maryland plates. What's inappropriate about that? She was viewing the numbers in her rear-view mirror. I imagine the driver told the DMV he was a technical assistant 3rd class at the Triple M corporation if they asked why he needed that particular combination.
Even random plates can send the wrong message. My Virginia plates are WVA + 4-digit number. A couple of times, car repair places have thought I had West Virginia plates when I just have Virginia plates with a West Virginia abbreviation.
That reminds me of Arrested Development, where Tobias Funke got a plate advertising his Method One program: A NU START
Ugh, some people are looking for something to be offended about. I couldn't figure out what on earth could be offensive about it. It clearly said Lolo to me, though I didn't know that meant. Even if someone saw it the other way, they should have considered that it could mean something else.
I hope the family gets a big apology.
I also don't see why the DMV has to police the vanity plates. Someone wants to put something offensive on it, now I know what kind of person they are and so do the police. If it means I have to have a conversation with my kids, then so be it. Unfortunately they do have tolearn the reality of the world.
No they either decline to issue without explanation or make weird assumptions after the fact and recall the plates.
I'm actually surprised anyone in Sacramento is offended or responding to offense taken for the plates. Most progressives are all in on the Jew hating.
They time out here in FLA and you get new ones every 15 years.
This license plate story is a good example of the speed of social media today. When I saw a tweet of the license plate, I thought I would be the one to get the plate revoked. Fortunately, I googled it and two LA TV stations were already covering it with the fact that California MVD would revoke the plate. All in 24 hours. Things move fast now. And the story had an innocent explanation. It didn't mean what most people took it to mean.
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