The Nova Scotia Registry of Motor Vehicles was adamant. The license plate reading “GRABHER” was deemed “misogynistic and promoting violence against women.” It was a surprise to Lorne Grabher who simply wanted a license plate with his family’s name.
Notably, Grabher has had the plate for 25 years after getting the plate as a birthday gift,. The name is German and the plate was used for decades. Then there was a complaint and a former decision that his family’s name was discriminatory and barred by the government from plates.
The spokesman from the Department of Transportation, Brian Taylor. It said:
“A complaint was received outlining how some individuals interpret [the name] as misogynistic and promoting violence against women. . . . With no way to denote that it is a family name on the plate, the department determined it was in the public’s best interest to remove it from circulation.”
The government has a long list of words banned as offensive. They include such words as “Gringo,” “God4U2,” and “Hootch.” However, this establishes a family’s name offensive despite the clearly non-offensive basis for plate.
Notably, the family believes that the action was taken due to President Donald Trump’s reference to grabbing women in the infamous video that surfaced during the campaign.
What do you think should be done?
Remember Dave Assman of Letterman fame.He too was a Canuck.
This name sounds French. Is Canada anti French?
Well it’s one of their official languages! lol
Assuming the name is as German as it looks,it could be translated, literally, as “lord of the graveyard” (Herr of the Graves … or maybe, Lord of the Engravers?). So the guy’s family founder worked at a cemetery back in the old country (or was head of the engravers guild at some point?). So What! Vanity plates are a $$ scam by the government; if Mr Grabher isn’t allowed one (with his 25 year provenance), on such a flimsy contrivance, maybe the Province should revoke ALL the vanities?
If it was spelled “Gravher” probably even the whiner wouldn’t even have noticed. If the authorities remain recalcitranat, maybe Mr Grabher has grounds to sue Mr Trump?
Well you really can’t expect NS DMV workers to be multilingual! (they even speak English funny!)
Does anyone remember the Seinfeld episode about the plates with A$$MAN on them?
Who is Seinfeld? Was he the guy the SS strung up by his feet on a light pole in Rotterdam when he disagreed with Hitler? The Dutch were hung up about it. They cut down the light pole after Seinfeld was removed. Ich moctra ein pole fur ein nacht.
Yes! Of course Kramer was involved. Seinfeld made fun of PC and that was a couple decades ago. Seinfeld regularly speaks out against PC.
I wonder what wording appears on the plates of Seinfeld’s fleet of 100+ Porsches? lol
NNNEWMAN
I’d guess Seinfeld’s 100+ Porsche plates reflect something like OCD1, OCD2, OCD3 . . . OCD100+.
Seriously,”Assman” is actually not that uncommon of a surname.
Steve, “What if” does not apply in this instance. Come on. You are reasonable. This was flat ass wrong. Reinstate the plate and give him free renewal for a decade for the injustice.
Exactly. This is the word police run amok. The DMV should reinstate the plate. Then Mr. Grabher and his family should make sure to wear pink ‘pussy hats’ when driving. This will surely cause some cognitive dissonance to wacked out feminists and SJWs who sit next to them at red lights.
Nothing about an epic healthcare failure by the president in this column? I had thought it was important.
Which President are you referring to?
Yesterday was a colossal failure on the part of Trump and Paul Ryan. The silver lining for Trump is that if the unpopular TRUMPCARE had passed his poll ratings would have continued to slide. OBAMACARE will remain the law of the land until congress gets the courage to pass single payer. The public wants single payer and should continue to protest for healthcare for all.
Dem troll strikes w/ an unrelated and dissembling comment.
Not one of your trolls?
Frannie P – our trolls are tame and under a bridge.
No way baby!!! We Out and About.
Not hanging out with your crowd though….
Unless we’re gunnin for ya’s 😉
Chip Kelly – nice to see you out and about again. 🙂
Thank you, Mr. Schulte.
I actually respect you. You don’t hide behind titles and status and propaganda like JT, you say what you actually mean, and what you want others to understand.
I agree. Paul is one of my favorites on this blog. Keep on truckin’ Paul.
I agree with Anon.
This place is more like a lounge with inside jokes than it is a forum for robust discussion of policy with others of differing or like-minded viewpoints. Y’all mostly agree on everything, the inside jokes and side conversations are the bulk of the commentary. The rest is pretty much JT puffing his chest out… it’s really funny.
To associate this site with civil liberties would be a categorical error…
Y’all mostly agree on everything,
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Obamacare is old news.
So are the 20 million over ten years that this orangutan is going to strip of health-care benefits.
So, Mr. Steve… And there you have it in a nutshell. Is the goal better insurance, Or, as you give lead to, is the goal a ‘free’ government health care benefit? That is the question boiled down. You believe the latter? So who pays for this benefit?
surimike: Premised on single-payer healthcare being affordable through the huge tax revenue of our federal government, the Department of Defense budget might be a starting place. Further, Trump’s $54B in additional spending might cover a few of those 20 million soon to be uninsured. Don’t you think?
Healthcare should not be controlled by private insurers, despite the potential loss of their jobs.
So where do we draw the line? What if someone changes his or her name to “Die Kike” and then applies for a license plate adorned with this new name?
Without some sense of conformity from government, we get a candidate for the most powerful job in the world who spits out bile such as “blood coming out of her wherever.”
Grow up.
He didn’t change his name and he’s had the plate for decades. His name is not obscene unless you’re determined to see it that way.
Unfortunately Steve, the sense of conformity from government is exactly why we got the current POTUS.
Clinton =’d Conformity, beyond.
Roscoe: Clinton was corrupted. That’s not conformity by government. Do you want your pre-adolescent children to see XXX movies during afternoon cartoon time? I think it’s appropriate government regulation that prevents this.
When did you lose the ability to control what your children do without the government’s “help”?
When you forgot to not use your kids as a punching bag and when you forgot to pay child support and expected everyone else to pay for it when the kids’ mom sought child support.
“So where do we draw the line?”
How about family names know to have been used in an ethnic group for generations.
It seems to me that if you respect diversity you have to respect known family names – regardless of how offensive they may seem to your ear.
If someone complains the correct answer is simple: that is their name, it is hateful to disparage them and their name because you don’t like the sound.
bfm – family names can be a problem. My hometown had a AAU swim meet every year and for several years the Titty sisters were participants. This would not have been a problem except that all racers were announced over the loudspeaker system, which could be heard for about 6 blocks from the pool. I can still remember as a teenager “Would Mary Ann Titty get ready for 100 meter butterfly.” blasting down the middle of Main Street. You can imagine the reaction of all the boys to this announcement. 🙂
” My hometown had a AAU swim meet every year and for several years the Titty sisters were participants.”
Somehow I missed that ethnic group and their family names.
Clearly, your HS days were far more interesting than my own.
bfm – just one week each summer. 😉
Was that a corruption of some French word? lol
xenonman – I have no idea where the name came from. The meet was a regional and in all the years I never met either of the sisters. Just snickered at their name being announced. 😉
BFM: “How about family names know to have been used in an ethnic group for generations . . .”
This seems reasonable to me, but “Buttplumer” should be prohibited. It’d cause an accident.
The name “Buttplumer” on a plate will not cause an accident. Reckless driving will.
Just change the name to “Buttplug” ! lol
There’s probably someone of Dutch ancestry somewhere who has the surname “Diekike”! lol
Steve, your “government conformity” is my non-conformity. It works both ways. So, be careful what you want to allow government to impose; something you don’t like could be imposed right back on you. And, I might not be around to blow up the railroad tracks when that government you love so much conforms you right into a box car …
There’s a difference between government conformity to a certain standard and private parties being held to that standard.
Off topic. PBS. The Public Broadcasting System has a new show out. The Great War. PBS wants you to believe that somehow America came of age and then lead the world into a better era. BS and the show should be castigated. The Great War was also termed The War To End War or The War To End All Wars. That statement too is attributed to the racist from Virginia (yeah Governor of New Jersey too) who segregated the armed forces and directly killed many Americans.
The result of WWI was WWII and The Holocaust. Old Woodrow is responsible for that too.
Jack Ruby, thanks for the heads up.
I’m currently reading ” Creating Freedom” by Raoul Martinez and there is a lot of info he dumps about WWI propaganda.
Google the Creel Commission and the Committee of Public Information.
“The War to make the World Safe for Democracy” did a supreme job of making the world “Safe for Hitler” !
It did nothing of the kind. Hitler was a consequence of a perfect storm of problems which did not follow ineluctably from the War, much less from American participation in the War. Most salient was the mishandling (by the Reichstag and the Bruning ministry) of the financial crisis which erupted after 1929. The senescence of Pres. von Hindenburg was another contributor. The scheming of Franz von Papen was another. You flip one of several contingent decisions and Hitler’s held off until his electoral base evaporates .
dds – the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression brought us Hitler.
When will sanity return to our decaying culture.
Whenever the planet finally gets the last word, and decides that “homo sapiens” are too much of a burden on it!
Kids in school are teased relentlessly about their names. They know when their name has an ugly twist. It wasn’t an innocent license plate name request. It was a rude and insulting request.
I don’t see how requesting the family name on a vanity plate can be rude and insulting.
It is, however, deeply insulting to suggest there is something wrong with requesting to use the family name – especially when the vanity plate has been in use approximately 20 years.
If you cannot respect someone’s family name you ought to at least be quiet.
I suspect there are many neighborhoods in which telling some that their family name is rude and insulting will result in a very clear and very serious lesson on what constitutes rude and insulting behavior.
You ought to pay attention – you might learn something.
Mr. Grabher really should litigate the issue!
You’re being sarcastic, right? Please say yes. The guy received the plate as a birthday gift 25 years ago. He’s not a kid. I think your projection of motives says more about you than you might want to reveal.
I’m so tired of this nonsense, think I will go visit my daughter in South Korea for a month. They only have little Kim to worry about.
The entire world has to be wary of that little midget who runs N. Korea.
It would be almost impossible to get a “Kim” vanity plate in South Korea, since there are so many “Kim’s” there! lol
Hahahahahaha! 🤣
What I think should be done is that institutions of all kinds should quit truckling to the world’s crybullies, who will shut up and stew in their own juices if they’re told firmly to go hang. Of course, institutional managers will not do anything sensible regarding these problems. .
Truckling indeed.
Thanks for the new word.
I learn a lot when I visit here.
The Left is filled with idiots.
Feminism is cancer
The Left is filled with idiots.
And cancer is the cure.
Tell em to keep smoking..
And time will work for sure.
My name is Arnold Switzer..
I live in old LA.
I’m the biggest caboose in the aborignine roost.
And I am here to stay.
OH CAN A DAH!
Jack Ruby – they do have a more singable anthem than we do. Ours requires a register and 1/5 and only practiced professionals, usually, can hit all the notes.
Jack Mehoff got his name plate revoked in Canada.
So he moved his family to Arizona. He said London Bridge had fallen down.
He said that if you substantiate a rumor then the British sense of humor gets dry as the Texas sand.
But that folks down there in the south never open their mouths. Because they always think their Mehoff relatives are jackolanterns. So they go home to their armadillas. Good country music and all that. And I know why.
Jack Ruby – I am not sure if I missed a geographical step here, but there are no armadillos in Arizona that are native-born (to my knowledge) and London Bridge (in Arizona) is disappointing and the shops have closed, but it has not fallen down.
London Homesick Blues by David Alan Coe:
Well when you’re down on your luck and you ain’t got a buck in London you’re a goner
Even London Bridge has fallen down and moved to Arizona
Now I know why and I’ll substantiate the rumor that the English sense of humor
Is drier than the Texas sand
You can put up your dukes or you can bet your boots but I’m leavin’ as fast as I can
I want to go home with the armadillo good country music from Amarillo and Abilene
The friendliest people and the prettiest women you’ve ever seen
Well it’s cold over here Lord I swear I wish they’d turn the heat on
And where in the world is that English girl I promised I would meet on the third floor
And of the whole damn lot the only friend I got is a smoke and a cheal guitar
My mind keeps rollin’ and my heart keeps yearnin’ to be home in Texas bar
I want to go home with the armadillo…
Well I decided that I’d get my cowboy hat and go down to Marble Arch Station
Cause when a Texas fancies he’ll take his chances
Chances will be taken that’s for sure
And them Limey eyes they were eyin’ the prize some people call manly footwear
And they said you’re from down south and when you open your mouth
Son you always seem to put yout foor there
I want to go home with Armadilla…
I want to go home with Armadilla…
Jack Ruby – clearly the author of the song knows little about the flora and fauna of Arizona. 🙂
And God bless JJW.
Don’t tell them about the plate I saw at DMV, vicinity of Quince Orchard Blvd, in Montgomery county MD: IMAHO.
I can see their problem. However, since he has had the plate for 25 years he should be grandfathered.
The correct response to the complainer should have been, “Lady, that’s a surname, and he’s had the plate for 25 years.” There was no problem.
There is a problem actually. Leftism has gone crazy
This is just another example of “someone complained, therefore all reason goes out the window.”
Reinstate the plate. For twenty five years nobody minded, now it is a crisis. A nation of millions and one person becomes offended at the slightest of issue. Yet that is enough to enact policy change.
Complaints such as this are best left ignored.
If my own experience of the world (especially workplaces) is representative, about 3% of humanity falls into the category marked ‘aggressive griper’. You cannot please these people. You just tell them to buzz off and let them smolder, and if you don’t do that, you just get more trouble from them.
So true. And somehow the “aggressive gripers” seem to congregate in HOAs or regulatory agencies.
What do I think? Stay out of Canada. Don’t buy Canadian products.move our business interests and ties to Mexico. That’s about it
What about the plates belonging to Dan Druff and Ben Gay?
The same fate as those of Ben Dover, Seymour Butts, and Harry A. Ness ! lol