Fudge Your Crappy Town

Is there any free speech when you get a speeding ticket in Liberty?

I told my dad “Fudge you” just once. I was fifteen or sixteen and he was being a real butthole. Saying some crap about the clothes I was wearing. My jeans were too fricking big or something, I don’t know. Style, huh? Anyway, I was standing there with my big fricking jeans literally hanging off my backside, when dad starts in on me. Saying all his crap about my big fricking jeans. So I say it. I just up and say it. “Fudge you.” Life, as it has from time to time since that fateful moment, paused. And not slightly, but for, like, ten fricking minutes. Time just stood freaking still and the moments to come just waited there, I guess. Waiting to freaking happen cause time had stood still and all. Well, when time started up again, I hightailed it back to my room as my dad just stood there silently. Not a freaking word to be said, I guess. I must have sat in my room for two hours, until my mom came home and retrieved me from my self-imposed exile. “Cheese and rice, what did you say to your father? He’s sore as heck over something you said.” I told her and she blushed and I blushed and she told me I ought to apologize. She told me to pull up my pants, too. On account of my butt showing.

There are moments in life that just scream for curse words. For sailors, those moments take up their entire lives! For the rest of us, we must pick our moments carefully. One Connecticut man recently cussed a fudging blue streak all over his speeding ticket, earning the ire of the small town that issued the citation.

And now it’s not just a huge freaking deal, but also a possible crapstorm of constitutional proportions…

Our story begins with a speeding ticket that a man named Willian Barboza received in the sleepy burg of Liberty, New York, in May of 2012. Upset over his ticket and the fact that his name doesn’t end with the letter it should, but rather with the letter directly adjacent to the letter it should, Barboza mailed his ticket back with payment… and profanity:

Last year, Willian Barboza was caught speeding in the Village of Liberty in upstate New York, but he ended up arrested after he mailed in his fine with a note reading, “Fuck your shitty town, bitches.” Now the case is developing into a First Amendment lawsuit.

The Capitol Confidential reports that the 22-year-old was ticketed back in May 2012, and Barboza pleaded guilty, mailing in his fine with a note. Barboza crossed out the town’s name ‘Liberty’ and wrote in ‘Tyranny’ instead, then cussed out the people who ticketed him.

Fudge your crappy town, biscuits.

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Well, I don’t have to tell you what the town of Liberty did next. They darn near threw the book at poor Barboza, rejecting his payment, making him haul his tuchus into court, and then (and then!) having him arrested for something called aggravated harassment. The judge, channeling Bill Cosby circa Raw, is said to have remarked, “Yoouuu cannot say filth flarn filth flarn filth in front of people!”

While Barboza was released after a few hours and while the charge against him was eventually thrown out, the foulmouthed degenerate has decided to raise all sorts of holy heck against the previously placid hamlet of Liberty. Predictably, the NYCLU has gotten involved. They’ve filed a lawsuit seeking damages on account of all the baloney Barboza had to put up with and they also seek to get rid of the law that was used to briefly detain Barboza. It reads, in part:

The statute of “aggravated harassment” states that it is a misdemeanor to act “with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm” someone “anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, be telegraph, or by mail, or by transmitting or delivering any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.”

Aggravated harassment sounds a lot like disturbing the peace. Buncha bullcrap.

Listen, I’ve got no truck with all the gross crap Barboza spewed on his ticket. Like the best rapper of all-time, the Fresh Prince, once said, “I think I can beat Mike Tyson.” He also said a bunch of junk about cursing, but I don’t remember it. Anyway, don’t curse! It’s that simple. Like, the English language has given us soooooo many words to express ourselves.

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Just yesterday, in fact, I learned what flâneur meant. Pardon my french.

Man Arrested Over Reply To Speeding Ticket: ‘Fuck Your Shitty Town’ [Jalopnik]
NYCLU sues after creative speeding ticket response results in arrest [Capitol Confidential]