Once again it looks like Alabama’s going to be the laughing stock of the country.

Here we are where it seems every third vehicle is “wearing” a pair of TruckNutz, and at the same time some idiot in Montgomery bans a wine bottle bearing a beautiful classic piece of art on its label because it’s deemed obscene. No wonder people occasionally look at our beautiful state and think we’re more than a bit “backwoodsy.”

That’s right, I’m talking about the recent decision by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to ban bottles of Cycles Gladiator wine, as well as the decision by just about every redneck in the state to affix plastic model testicles to the trailer hitch of his truck. Stick with me here, somehow these things are related.

If you’re not in the know, or haven’t had the pleasure of seeing them whilst driving about, TruckNutz (and their two-wheeled cousins BikerBallz) are a means of putting dangling male sex organs on the back of one’s truck. I’m not really sure what the reason behind doing this is, although I have a feeling Dr. Freud would pin this one on overcompensation. What we do know for certain is anyone behind a be-nutted truck gets roughly the same view as one would while walking behind a male Great Dane. It ain’t pretty.

But it also ain’t illegal.

Yes, citizens can travel the highways and byways of this great state proudly sporting their plastic testes and flaunting them for any granny, little girl or eunuch to see while running to the store for glitter to put on angels’ wings for the school Christmas play. And it’s all perfectly legal in the eyes of our society because the U.S. and state constitutions guarantee us the right to both be offended and to be offensive.

It’s part of that free speech thing we all like so much when it helps us out. We’re not too fond of it when it means some goofball gets to make his Ford F-150 look like it’s the centerfold in July’s issue of “Playgirl,” but most of us get how this freedom of speech thing works. Except, apparently, the head of the ABC Board. The numbnutz at the ABC decided arbitrarily — after they’d previously allowed it, mind you — to suddenly ban the sale of Cycles Gladiator wine because it featured reproductions of an art poster from the 1890s where a naked nymph (not nympho!) was riding a bicycle through a starry sky. Lagniappe first broke this story for you a couple of weeks ago as part of our coverage of the ongoing and increasingly strange things the ABC and its 79-year-old chief, Emory Folmar, are doing to make everyone wonder if they’ve lost it.

In this case, Folmar and company banned art as obscene that is routinely sold in furniture and art stores as decoration for people’s homes. The original, by an unknown artist, would sell for more than $50,000 and is widely considered on par with the lithographs of famed Parisian artist Toulouse-Lautrec. In other words, most folks with any culture or couth, and even those who have TruckNutz but also want something cool for the wall, recognize this painting as being real “art.”

That’s why the folks at the wine company grabbed the image for their bottle and named the wine Cycles Gladiator. They thought it was beautiful. They also frequently put the image on T-shirts they sell and give away at the bike races they sponsor. As the company president told me, the image is a huge hit in every state in the union — except Alabama.

The fact is now the Folmar and the ABC have banned the bottles and the image, the Cycles Gladiator folks are probably going to use it to sell more wine. They are going to play up the “banned in Bama” image and use it to their advantage. Who can blame them? So what if the Cycles Gladiator drinkers in 49 other states feel superior to we Philistines in the Heart of Dixie? It’ll help them sell more grape juice and perpetuate the image of Alabamians as troglodytes who drink moonshine and put nutz on their trucks. (OK, maybe I just lost my point.)

Truthfully it seems Folmar and the ABC are nothing more than an embarrassment to the state. I had occasion to speak with Folmar a few weeks ago and was shocked at his level of truculence. When he wasn’t screaming at me that I wasn’t “the gol-dang FBI, boy!” he was hanging up the phone. It was certainly one of the more memorable interviews in my 20 years of journalism.

These days when Folmar isn’t scanning wine bottles for dirty art, he also seems to be engaged in some questionable efforts to shift ABC stores away from their longtime landlords and give them to people of his choosing. For instance, he recently awarded a store on Dauphin Island Parkway to a guy who already has four others in Mobile County and has bought considerable property from his dead brother’s former company, Folmar and Associates. I don’t know if that’s why Emory chooses this guy so often for new stores, but it makes me scratch my head.

And if that wasn’t enough, Folmar then pulled the month-to-month lease on the existing store, even though the contract on the new one hadn’t even been signed by the governor and the location is still a weed-strewn lot across from an elementary school. There is no logical reason he’d close a store making money, except vengeance on the owner for speaking out. Either that or all the bottles in the store had naked ladies on them.

On top of all that, Folmar’s been catching a little hell lately for an audit that found some screwy accounting at the ABC Board. Seems like Emory’s just as willful with his money handling as he is with his stores and wine bottles.

Far be it for me to tell Gov. Riley what to do, but it might be time for him to take a swig of strong wine, strap on a pair of TruckNutz and clear out the leadership at the ABC before Folmar makes us a bigger laughing stock than he already has.