The speeder in the monkey mask

The AP picks up on the story and goes into it in relative depth; it’s on the NYT site, though I didn’t see it in the paper.

The Republic says the guy with the mask, Dave VonTesmar, drives 30 miles to Sky Harbor Airport for work. Here’s a guy who wants his big north Phoenix house (which means he’s on the road an hour or more spewing car exhaust into the air, creating a problem the government has to deal with) and wants to drive on the roads the state builds for him to do so, but doesn’t want to follow the posted rules. And he calls it “a peaceful act of resistance.”

It’s actually “a douchey act of hypocrisy.”

If he doesn’t like the rules on the 51, he can take surface streets.

VanTesmar also calls the radar essentially a tax on speeders, which I think is a mot rather than an argument. (What is jail but a “tax on murderers”?) Why do so many Arizonans throw around all those defiant American tropes, but don’t follow basic rules in their own lives?

And calls the act “resistance,” to boot. Really, Dave? “Resistance”? Like, against apartheid?

Finally, what the state should be doing is cracking down on the other douchey folks who have their license plates covered with plastic to make the numbers hard to read. It’s in everybody’s interest to have cars readily identifiable.

By the way, the AP story called the guy VonTesmar; the Republic’s been calling him “Vontesmar.” I’m going with the AP.