Sweet (heart) Home Alabama

OK, I'm admittedly a bit slow on this item, but the newly designed state tags have started showing up on cars and I realized I missed the entire deign approval process (which happened last October!). That's especially annoying since I called the Tourism folks (who handle the job for some reason) last Summer to check on the process. The reason for my interest? I wanted to find out how Republican cowboy-boot wearing Governor Bob Riley would handle the "Heart of Dixie" design quandary. A 1951 law requires that Alabama car tags "shall also have imprinted thereon a conventionalized representation of a heart and the words "Heart of Dixie." As early as 1999 there was an effort by Representative Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery) to revoke that requirement. "Dixie means the Confederacy, and the Confederacy represents slavery and racism towards black people," Holmes said. "The Confederacy fought hard to keep our forefathers in slavery." The bill failed.

Democrat Don Siegelman was criticised when the design developed by his administration replaced the words HOD from on top with "Stars Fell on" and made the "Heart of Dixie" logo so tiny you couldn't see it without a close-up inspection. A mini-industry started selling decals to cover up the "Stars Fell" with the words "Heart of Dixie". The Riley Administration has gone even further. The "Heart of Dixie" logo is so faint it's even less visible than the tiny red Siegelman version. [Hint: look in the top right corner]...and the words "Stars Fell" have been replaced by "Sweet Home". Yet somehow the Siegelman critics have been silent about Riley's minimalism.

[Related but only slightly so: a story this morning from Auburn about a councilman removing confederate flags from graves...we do take our symbols seriously, don't we?]

[Also related, a little more so: Gail Collins column in the NY Times about state mottos.]