Beyond voicing your License Plate opinions through your votes, you can now let the world hear your thoughts in words by emailing us at allthingsnit@gmail.com. Below is our first reader submission, an open letter to Hawaii voters (from the Round of 16, specifically) from a West Virginian:
Dear Hawaii voters,
You have selected incorrectly, made a grave mistake. Even if you voted according to your preference, your preference is mistaken, and thus who you are as a person should be questioned. Below I’ll provide three unassailable arguments as to why West Virginia’s license plate, and the state it represents, is superior to Hawaii’s.
Hawaii’s license plate really only consists of a rainbow and the phrase “Aloha State”. Let’s focus on the rainbow. It’s cheap and lazy, like picking one of the prefabricated prompts in one of your required philosophy classes that your instructor secretly hopes no one is desperate enough to pick, and the last time I checked rainbows exist everywhere in the lower 48 as well as Alaska. West Virginia feels no need for such cute trivialities, it instead frames a crisp white background with old gold and blue accents, making sure that “West Virginia” shines in gold among a beautiful blue background, and referencing the state’s official colors derived from its badas* state seal. This is unarguably better than a three-color rainbow.
Further, saying it’s the “Aloha State” is like saying it’s the Hello or Goodbye state, with the linguistic and cultural twist of course. Trust me, many states could have done the same, the “Howdy State” or the “Sup State” could have just as easily been claimed by Texas and California respectively. And don’t forget, Hawaii has many other official nicknames, such as “Paradise of the Pacific”. West Virginia feels no need to flex its one and only official nickname “The Mountain State” on fellow foreign travelers of the road, a kind gesture to jealous states like Colorado and Utah. Instead West Virginia issues a description of itself that has never been so simple yet so true, “Wild, Wonderful”. Exclusive, true, and tasteful, none of which the text on Hawaii license plates can boast.
And finally, let’s not forget why we are having this License Plate Bracket challenge in the first place. West Virginia did their part more than anyone else in trying to preserve the epidemiological order of the world so that the best and most important basketball tournament of the year, the NIT, could go on. It’s no surprise a state with an objectively better license plate than Hawaii did that for us.
-Matthew Phillips
Charleston, West Virginia
