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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 15, 2007 / 25 Adar, 5767

Deface the Nation

By Malcolm Fleschner


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | From a marketing standpoint, the best move ever made by the folks who enjoy defacing public property was to rebrand themselves as "graffiti artists." Generally speaking, it's often a tough sell persuading people that your fondness for wanton criminal activity is merely a creative outlet that everyone else should embrace. It's hard to imagine, for example, a compulsive car thief trying to pass himself off as a performance artist who just happens to work in the medium of "unauthorized vehicle relocation." Although I do like to imagine this guy being hauled off to jail, muttering to himself, "No one understands art anymore."


I think part of the reason we're willing to cut some slack to these spray-can-wielding Picassos is because we all understand the fundamental human impulse to vandalize. What were the original cave paintings, after all, if not a very primitive form of graffiti?


In fact, scholars now believe that many of these depictions represented an early attempt at written language. Researchers working in the caves outside Lascaux, France, recently achieved a breakthrough by identifying a series of these paintings as an ongoing dialogue between competing tribes. Even the scholars admit to being surprised when the pictures were translated as a series of lines that read, roughly, "Cro-Magnon Man sucks," followed by "No, Neanderthals suck," followed by "No, you suck," and so on. The final line in the sequence remains shrouded in mystery, but many experts assume that it probably reads, simply, "Zeppelin Rules."


The "artist" label seems all the more valid when you consider that some of the world's most memorable poetry originally appeared in graffiti form. I mean, let's face it, if you stopped the average joe on the street and asked him to quote a few lines of any poem by Yeats or Whitman, you'll likely receive little more than a blank stare in return. Frankly, you'll be lucky not to get punched in the nose.


By contrast, most of us have at least a passing familiarity with the work of that anonymous master of meter who first etched into a bathroom stall wall the epic poem of despair that begins, "Here I sit, broken hearted."


Of course, this urge to deface is strongest in the teen years, when kids, in a form of youthful rebellion, look to etch their name in every nearby schoolroom desk, gym locker, patch of wet pavement or, if no other open spaces are readily available, their forearms. Thankfully, most of us outgrow this juvenile obsession with plastering our own names everywhere, albeit with a few pitiable exceptions (see Trump, Donald).


School administrators are, of course, all too familiar with this behavior pattern. That's why back when I was in junior high, the first few days of the school year in each class were always dedicated to the important educational exercise of re-covering our schoolbooks with brown grocery bag paper. The hope was that if they could keep kids from defacing their books, the school could make it through another year with, for example, yellowing history texts that referred to war in Europe as "one of the looming problems of 1939."


This all changed when I went to a private high school where we had to buy all our books. Freed from any controls on our defacing impulses, my classmates and I set upon our purchases with gusto. One of the more popular in-class activities involved altering book titles to comic effect. I still recall with admiration how one of the more inspired students in my sophomore English class refashioned the cover of his copy of "The Grapes Of Wrath" so it looked like he was reading a book titled, "He Rapes Rats."


Of course, there were also academic benefits to being able to write in your schoolbooks. Since most of my books were handed down to me by my older sister, who was one grade ahead of me, I benefited from the voluminous notes she diligently scribbled in the margins of all her textbooks. Particularly helpful was her chemistry textbook, nearly every page of which were chock-full of insightful Chemistry-related comments like, "This class is sooooo boring," "Oh my god, I think I'm going to die of boredom," "Important science question: Could chemistry be any more boring?", as well as, of course, her observations on which of her classmates appeared to be habitual nose-pickers.


My sister's notes notwithstanding, I don't think I believed in an ingrained human urge to deface until I got to college and studied anthropology. Then one day in class, while thumbing through the pages of my used textbook, I got to the section on prehistoric man. There, as if to demonstrate incontrovertible evidence showing just how little has changed about human nature in thousands of years, was the proof, written in the margin by the previous owner:


"Cro-Magnon Man sucks."

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Malcolm Fleschner is a humor columnist for The DC Examiner. Let him know what you think by clicking here.


Previously:

03/08/07: More gifts? You shouldn't have
02/22/07: Relationships can be such a chore
12/05/06: Who's calling the shots?
11/09/06: I'm taking selling to a whole new level
10/27/06: Some skills are beyond repair
10/18/06: You can't tech it with you
10/04/06: Award to the wise
08/24/06: Phrased and Confused
08/09/06: We're Gonna Party Like it's $19.99
07/19/06: Just Singing in the Brain
05/24/06: Who says you can't go home again?
05/11/06: When nightly news stories go off script
04/26/06: Cents and sensibility: A thought for your pennies
03/16/06: The day the Muzak died
02/23/06: Checkbook diplomacy begins at home
02/15/06: Today's toys: Where learning means earning



© 2006, Malcolm Fleschner

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