Let's Pause to Imagine a Truck Nutz Supreme Court Case
Jury trial will determine whether woman's car decoration violates standards of decency
Truck Nutz are an inexplicably popular (just kidding: totally predictably popular) bit of automobile decor that have graced the bumpers of many American cars, trucks, and scooters for several years. The brightly-colored rubber scrotum replica was swinging from the back of 65-year-old Virginia Tice's Dodge pickup truck when a police officer pulled her over on a steamy July afternoon near her home in Bonneau, South Carolina, the Smoking Gun reports. The cop gave her a $445 ticket for having an "obscene bumper sticker"--banned under a law forbidding displays community standards would find "patently offensive" depitctions of “sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body."
Free speech hero Tice will go to court in late August, where it will presumably be determined whether Truck Nutz violate Bonneau's community standards of decency. Wonkette has been covering the Truck Nutz issue for years, from the attempts of the censorious police chief of Edgefield, South Carolina, to ban the ornaments, to the brave Rascal rider who attached a bronze pair to his scooter with pride. With this latest assault on South Carolinians' freedom of expression, Wonkette's Kirsten Boyd Johnston says, "We might as well be living under Stalin." We say: This case has "First Amendment landmark" written all over it. Every American--including grandmas--has the right to express herself, even if that humble expression costs a mere $15.00 plus shipping. We eagerly await the Supreme Court's grappling with Truck Nutz.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.