A License To Be Killed

Our reckless, but so far wreckless, Lt. Governor’s referring to himself as “SC2” so he could avail himself of special treatment got me thinking about all the self-wallowing government employees who identify themselves by their license tags. It’s a practice that I find both puzzling and annoying. I remember when I first encountered one of these vehicles, I thought, “There’s a license with a one on it. It must be somebody important.” So, at the next light I inched closer to see who this VIP was: “State Board of Accountancy” it spelled out in uninteresting black letters. Big deal, I said out loud, embarrassed that I had even taken the time to bother to read it. Then, perhaps devoting too much time on this subject, I began to wonder why these kinds of tags even existed. I mean we expect to see special tags for the president, cabinet members, legislators, Supreme Court members, and individuals of that ilk, but I have to question that, even with public figures at that level; I don’t see a legitimate reason for these pompous plates. In fact, that’s what they should be called, “Pomposity Plates.” If your subterranean ego commands you to get these spurious symbols of superiority, then you’ll have to fill out the DMV form requesting pomposity plates, and specify that you want yours to read “State Board of Promotion of SUVs, cell phones, Golfing, Polo Clubs, and joggling boards,” or something equally ass-chafing, then hope that the 300-pound paranoid schizophrenic inmate who makes the tag and resolves to pull the limbs off the owner one day never catches up with you.

And furthermore, you people should be aware that neither I nor anyone else cares that you’re a member of the Massage and Body Therapy Board or the Office of the Confederate Relic Room and Museum (where you can see Arthur Ravenel on display, incidentally), and if you’re on the Minority Affairs Commission, you should have enough pride to keep that to yourself. Just because James Brown and the Reverend Jesse Jackson may have occasionally snapped the shackles of connubial sanctity, that doesn’t give someone enough ammunition to go after an entire race.

As I mentioned previously, these “Look at me, look at me!” labels serve no public function. Why do we average citizens have to know that the chairperson of the Committee to Select a State Fungus or the County Herpes Survivors Fund Society is driving by? I can actually see a need for us, the anonymously tagged element, to know when the Lt. Governor is approaching: We need time to get the hell out of the way as soon as possible. And out of the ashes of that incendiary remark, springs a real but unintended reason to issue these tags: It can serve as a means for the rest of us to keep track of what these self-aggrandizing dirt-bags are up to. That State Watermelon Seed Spitting Advisory Board Member tag may get you a few worshipful stares in Hampton County at the Hampton County Festival, but if you carom off a lamp post while admiring yourself in a store window, we the great unwashed, yet un-wooed, will know who you are. And if the Boiled Peanut Steering Committee Ranking Member thinks he can park in the fire zone outside Bi-Lo, he’ll have to explain why in a traffic court, because we’ve got his number.

I can say, with some sense of pride, and perhaps a touch of senile dementia, that I cannot even tell you what my license tag is and my anonymity is so profound that I am positive that no one else knows what it is either, including my wife and possibly even the DMV.

And what do these people do once they are forced to scuttle out of their orchidaceous shells of celebrity? How can a creature such as this survive as just another amorphous citizen-slug? Do they wear name tags? Not yet, but perhaps I’ve given them an idea, but that’s okay, because suddenly, I feel sorry for them. It must be a miserable existence to have to encase oneself in a pompously tagged vehicle in order to feel really good about oneself. So, just to show that my heart’s in the right place, I’m going to tell them not only how to exist sans their creepy plates, but actually thrive. Use your cell phone! Yes, that potentially aggravating little emblem of arrogance that has unfortunately been usurped by all those nasty little common people. But you can wrest the purloined symbol out of their grimy little hands and use it as God had intended. All you need to do as you walk through those motley crowds of less fortunates in the grocery store or mall is call one of your similarly tagged brethren (or sistren) on your phone and ask them to call you right back, then you simply answer loud enough for all to hear, “Shelby Archdale, Chairman of the Commission to Study the Aphrodisiacal Effect of She-Crab Soup, speaking.” Bingo! All heads will turn—well, most—and you’re once again on top of the world—or yours as you view it anyway.

I began this article imbued with the rage of an angry Everyman, intent upon laying siege to the supercilious oligarchy of public employees that operates under the delusion that we, not they, are the other’s servants, but once emptied of my latent bile of class envy, my deeply inculcated family values filled the void and enabled me to see that these people, no matter how heinous, were simply lost souls in need of my guidance and forgiveness, not my vilification. Wait a minute; we Liberals don’t have any values, much less the family kind. I think my void may have been filled with the gallons of Corona from our Cinco de Mayo party yesterday. You haughty assholes have been fortunate enough to benefit from the obviously misplaced advice of a Left-wing do-gooder. Go ahead and use my cell phone suggestion if your ego requires it, and don’t you worry about getting brain cancer; I’ve heard that the chances of getting it diminish proportionately with the decreasing size of one’s brain. Power to the Anonymites!