Fresh on the heels of Wisconsin’s Harley-Davidson branded license plates, the Keystone State is set to make Harley-Davidson the official motorcycle of Pennsylvania. An honor already bestowed by Wisconsin this past February, Pennsylvania also has a bill in the state’s House of Representatives that would give special status to the Bar & Shield.
Sponsored by Representative William Kortz (D-Allegheny County), the Pennsylvania law would pay homage to the “thousands of Harley-Davidson enthusiasts [who] have trekked to York to witness firsthand the living legacy of Harley-Davidson USA.” The bill continues on with some feel-good patriotic sentiment, saying that “the Harley-Davidson motorcycle is a true-blue American iron horse manufactured in Pennsylvania by American workers using American steel.”
It probably helps that Rep. Kortz comes from the steel industry, but we doubt that the bill wasn’t in-part coaxed to life by a certain two-wheeled manufacturer. We’ll just renew our argument that the blurring of the lines between State and advertisement is worrisome, but perhaps not as much as the fact that Harley-Davidson still thinks it can sell motorcycles with the same red, white, and blue rhetoric.
I’m not sure if that bothers me more as an American, or as a former resident of Pennsylvania. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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