Kentucky's got a new plate...

It may have been friendly, but it was a bit too happy for me and everyone else. I'm talking about the license plate of many Kentucky passenger vehicles. For those of you who don't know or remember, the state of Kentucky adopted a new slogan and license plate design a couple of years ago.

The slogan was Kentucky: "It's that friendly" and the license plate had a nice little green field in the foreground with the sun coming up behind it. The only problem with this plate involved the smiley face that was placed on the sun. It was really bad.

People just didn't want to have that goofy smiley face on their vehicles. Luckily, I drive a truck so I didn't have to purchase a specialty plate with a flower or a bird on it. I just got a white plate with blue lettering. But I'll tell you right now, I was not going to have that smiling bolted to the back bumper of my 4x4. It simply wasn't going to happen.

I personally believe that if the smiley face had been left off of the plate, the designers and everyone who signed off on that chuck of tin would have been able to show their faces in public.

Now we have a new slogan that is "Unbridled Spirit". The new plate is pretty simple as well. Nothing like the last couple of them, but simplicity is bliss.

The comparison that Piccu came up with when we found out about the new slogan and plate was an incident in an episode of Seinfeld.

The episode was the one involving Elaine's boyfriend, Lloyd Braun, who was working for a mayoral candidate for New York City. Well, Elaine came up with an idea that all of the people of New York should wear name tags so that everyone would be more friendly. Needless to say, it was a fiasco and not only did it lose the election for Braun's candidate, but it also help begin the short journey that ended with Braun's institutionalization. (Side note: that's a huge word.)

So Kentucky's former license plate is the Seinfeld equivalent to the name tag fiasco. And getting rid of Mr. Smiley Face may get Ernie Fletcher re-elected if he doesn't clean up the government so much that he sweeps himself out of office.