How do you write a book about a pop culture phenomenon that's seen but rarely noticed?  How do you convince publishing professionals that the phenomenon that you are passionate about should be a book that they should embrace?

Readers of this column know that I see vanity license plates as minimalist poetry in motion, as message platforms that empower motorists to tell stories, or promulgate phrases, in eight or fewer characters.  I have persuaded many reporters that the vanitizing phenomenon is a paradigm of the most important of our American values: freedom of expression.

Courts have held that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech applies to vanitized speech.  Some of the American motorists who have vanitized 9.3 million motor vehicles are so passionate about their vanity plates that they will sue DMVs to get or keep them, invoking the First Amendment, and many motorists win in court. 

When I started working on LCNS2ROM - LICENSE TO ROAM: VANITY LICENSE PLATES AND THE GR8 STORIES THEY TELL , I had no idea that the Constitution protects vanitized speech, and that so many disputes between motorists and DMVs over vanity plates have been litigated.

Here's an example: Arno Herwerth is a retired New York City police officer, who wants the politicians to explain why Osama bin Laden is still apparently alive, and why he hasn't been brought to justice.  So Arno got this NY vanity plate: GETOSAMA.  New York DMV officials, however, decided that Arno's vanitized message was offensive, and revoked his plate; Arno responded by suing – he has literally made a federal case out of a dispute over vanity plates. 

Arno is a combination of lover and fighter: he's a thoughtful, considerate man who loves animals -- he spays and neuters feral cats, and he's a vegetarian.  But Arno is fighting to get his message out, and his platform is his vanity plate.

Arno is a passionate vanitizer.  A vanitizer is a person who has "embellished a motor vehicle with vanity license plates."  Although I wasn't the first person to coin "vanitize," I have defined that neologism, and I am popularizing it.  Some of the reporters who have done stories about LCNS2ROM have used my favorite neologism in their stories, and it's a thrill to be changing perceptions by changing language. 

"Vanitize" is catching on.  On April 20th, Barry Woods, who writes the "Wood on Words" column (syndicated in newspapers across the country with a total circulation of 10 million) published a column about "ize" words, and quoted me on "vanitize."  (Mr. Woods's story can be found online at: http://go.rrstar.com/lifeandstyle/x1319855207.)

To paraphrase Shakespeare, "what's in a word?"  The answer is: words reflect our cultural attitudes.  Vanity plates reflect the best attributes of America: freedom, mobility, and opportunity. 

Besides, vanity plates are fun.  I am having a GR8 time meeting creative, irrepressible vanitizers from all over the United States.  Soon enough, I think I will have publishing professionals repeating the "vanitize" mantra.  Won't that be fun?

NTL NXT MNTH (Until Next Time),
~Stefan

© 2008 LCNS2ROM, INC.