Morning thoughts on the subject of graffiti...

I'm reading the Wikipedia article on the Alexamenos graffito — the "blasphemous graffito" — because we'd been talking about graffiti.

That's a rubbing of something that was scratched into a plaster wall in Rome, long enough ago to be possibly the earliest depiction of Jesus. The exact date is unknown, but it's circa 200.

The image seems to show a young man worshipping a crucified, donkey-headed figure. The Greek inscription approximately translates to "Alexamenos worships [his] god," indicating that the graffito was apparently meant to mock a Christian named Alexameno....
At the time, pagans derided Christians for worshipping a man who had been crucified. The donkey's head and crucifixion would both have been considered insulting depictions by contemporary Roman society. Crucifixion continued to be used as an execution method for the worst criminals until its abolition by the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, and the impact of seeing a figure on a cross is comparable to the impact today of portraying a man with a hangman's noose around his neck or seated in an electric chair. Already Paul the Apostle wrote that "Christ crucified [was] foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Corinthians 1:23).

It seems to have been commonly believed at the time that Christians practiced onolatry (donkey-worship). That was based on the misconception that Jews worshipped a god in the form of a donkey, a claim made by Apion (30-20 BC – c. AD 45-48)... Tertullian, writing in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, reports that Christians, along with Jews, were accused of worshipping such a deity. He also mentions an apostate Jew who carried around Carthage a caricature of a Christian with ass's ears and hooves, labeled Deus Christianorum ὀνοκοίτης ("The God of the Christians conceived of an ass.")....

Now, what was this discussion of graffiti? It arose from a headline in the NYT, "2 People Charged With Hate Crime After Black Lives Matter Mural Is Vandalized." The "mural" is painted block letters on the horizontal surface of the street. I think "mural" implies a wall. But, I quipped, these days up is down and horizontal is vertical.

The etymology of "mural" goes back to the classical Latin "mūrālis," which is a plant growing on walls, and the oldest meaning of the English word "mural" is a plant attached to a wall! That's news to me. The OED quotes "Now is the best time for pruning young Murals" — from 1699. Using "mural" for "A painting executed directly on to a wall or ceiling as part of a scheme of decoration" only goes back to 1908.

Is "graffiti" a better term for the painting on the street? The etymology of "graffiti" is the Italian word "graffito" (plural, "graffiti") and that means a scratching.

But the thing the NYT called a "mural" is big painted block letters. And isn't "graffiti" something illicit? I think the government officially or tacitly approved of the original "BLACK LIVES MATTER" writing. If one group paints a message and another group paints it out, isn't that just a back and forth conversation between private citizens, writing and rewriting on a public space, a speech forum?

For the government to leave the first message-conveyers alone and to charge the second message-conveyers with hate speech is definitely and strongly to take sides. That's viewpoint discrimination in the extreme — but if the first message was government speech, then government can choose its message, and viewpoint discrimination in the extreme is perfectly fine, and all we can do is talk about what we think of the government's saying that.

Here in Madison, we had some people stapling "We Support Our Madison Police" signs on top of the Black Lives Matter murals/graffiti on the plywood over the windows of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Could the sign-staplers be charged with a hate crime for appropriating the same physical space that the Black Lives Matter spray-painters had used?