Nevada's Rejected License Plate

Maine has lobsters, and Nevada has mushroom clouds. It doesn't take the department of motor vehicles (DMV) to make these things true, but nothing implies that they are — or creates profitable souvenir items — like a state-approved specialty license plate. This summer, while the rest of the country was worried about things like terrorism, West Nile Virus, and child abductions, the state of Nevada found itself embroiled in a good old-fashioned collectibles controversy. (Of course, another, related debate was going on at the same time.)

The story starts last March, when the Nevada legislature authorized the DMV to issue a plate commemorating the history of atomic testing in Nevada. The controversial design that resulted featured a cartoonish image of an atomic blast (the Department of Energy wanted a more realistic picture, but you can't please everybody), along with Einstein's relativity equation, set against a vibrant, sunset-toned background. In June, the Nevada DMV and Gov. Kenny Guinn decided against it, saying that its chilling associations might upset people for thousands of miles. Having once poisoned its own citizens, the state did not want to offend them.

The plate, intended to raise money for the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation's Atomic Testing History Institute, a Smithsonian-affiliated museum and records center scheduled to open in April 2003, was designed by a real estate agent, who won $500 for his creativity. By the time of its intended release this summer, it had been rejected, accepted, and rejected again; hundreds of Nevadans had applied for it, and nearly as many had written letters to the editor condemning it.

"Some things just maybe should not be remembered," Nevada Assemblyman David Humke said at the time. Nevada DMV Director Ginny Lewis, who told the Test Site Historical Foundation to come up with a different design, stated flatly that "any reference on a license plate to weapons of mass destruction is inappropriate." But rejecting the mushroom-cloud design because it was "inappropriate" just papers over how appropriate a symbol of Nevada it really is.

Nevada isn't the first state to drive down this road. As any well-traveled motorist can surmise, dozens of plates are now available in Nevada alone, and across the country thousands of specialty plates have raised millions of dollars for a spectrum of causes. Nevada first hit the specialty-plate jackpot in 1998, with the release of the Lake Tahoe model. In a few short years, according to the DMV, Tahoe plate sales raised well over $1 million to keep the lake clean and naturally healthy. But the brief, frenetic history of American specialty license-plate manufacture has been fraught with incendiary slogans and variously interpretable symbols, and dozens of provincial controversies have erupted.

Maine's lobster plate, angry inlanders charged, was wrongly chosen by culturally ignorant coastal carpetbaggers. Thousands of Texans protested "The Friendship State," and one gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Ann Richards, called it "too wimpy." Maryland and South Carolina both issued and later recalled plates featuring the Confederate flag. And in Florida, though most citizens could support saving the manatees or remembering the Challenger, many simply could not get behind "Choose Life" plates, unless forced to do so by slow-moving traffic. If the more dramatic troubles have waned and drivers have become jaded, perhaps a nuclear blast will get their attention.

Atmospheric tests, as they are called, are actually quite relevant to Nevada's cultural history, if such a thing exists. Before Vegas was Vegas, the Nevada Test Site, established by Harry Truman in 1950, was the state's largest employer. Tens of thousands worked there over the years, and the tests themselves became social events. The Clark County seal was designed around a mushroom cloud, beauty queens wore mushroom-cloud costumes, countless pop culture artifacts were labeled "atomic," and the atmosphere was thoroughly tested.

JoAnne Thomas, the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation's office manager, personally witnessed such tests. "They were beautiful," she recalled in an interview. "Later we learned that they weren't as beautiful as we thought they were."

What nutcase proposed to commemorate this sordid history on a license plate? A woman, it turns out, who understands better than most the complex relationship between the state of Nevada and the atomic bomb, Nevada State Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus. Titus recently delivered a paper, "The Mushroom Cloud as Political Kitsch," at UNLV, where she also teaches a course in nuclear politics. Her book, "Bombs in the Backyard", about the impact of nuclear testing on Nevada's people and landscape, was re-released last year with a new epilogue about the state's rapidly changing demographics and attitudes.

In the final decade of the 20th century, she points out, Nevada's population grew by 66 percent, more than that of any other state. They think about mushroom clouds, testing grounds, and the history they entail with amusement, when they think about it all. "Now it's, like, nostalgic, which I think is dangerous," Titus says.

Titus did not want to create kitsch, but to fight against it. She neither advocates a return to above-ground nuclear weapons testing, nor endorses the plan to bury a national nuclear waste dump in one of Nevada's mountains. Her intention, she says, was "to familiarize people with a simple symbol of American prowess," and remind them of the Silver State's history as a Cold War battlefield. She should have known that the mushroom cloud is so powerful a symbol — of so many things — that it's futile to try to control how people interpret it. Make it too cartoonish (as they did) and it becomes kitsch, make it too realistic and it becomes — well, gruesome.

The plate debate is something to think about on the long drive from one dusty, sage-scented Nevada town to another, or from the middle of nowhere to the western end of nowhere, and back. The rejected plate might be quite appropriate, but not necessarily for the reasons Titus and its defenders think. As Athena incorporates slain Medusa's repulsive head into her armor and identity, so Nevada continues the fight to reconcile her uglier, villainous self for the sake or appearance of progress. That the state does not deny its sins, and depends on selling them to outsiders, shouldn't suggest that it can look at itself in the mirror. Maybe Vegas stays open so late because people there have trouble sleeping. Maybe a mushroom-cloud memorial would be a kind of self-punishment.

— Jonathan Kiefer (jekiefer@hotmail.com)