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I s A supt KIS
NARY POPPINS IS A JUNKIE
Syndicated columnist Norton Mock
ridge started a wall-watching trend
through a recent column on graffity,
the one-line scrawlings found on bill
boards, washroom walls, and fences.
Some on the notable ones range from
"Hugh Hefner is a Virgin" to "Take
LSD and See."
Graffiti, which have usually rank
ed below limericks, have gained a new
respectability in intellectual and
even medical circles. Edward Albee
now admits that a line in a Greenwich
Village lavatory inspired the title
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and
two UCLA professors feel that grafitti
may suggest a message of human w k
nature.
The latter, psychiatrist
Harvey Lomas and his associate
Gershen Weatman, presented their
report, a result of five months
of scouring the Los Angeles area, 4.
at a meeting of the American Psych
iatric Association. They concluded i
that people write graffiti to prove
themselves, insult, excite, or to
communicate opinion or humor.
Graffiti run'a wide range.
During the furor incited by Yale
University's pronouncement that
the Vikings discovered North
America, (for its Quotation of
the Day), the New York Times chose,
a graffito from an Italian district
in Boston: "Leif Ericson is a Fink."
Same sophisticated ones appear
on the walls of the men's room in
Harvard's Lamont Library: *War
is Good Business--Invest Your Sons,"
"Reality is a Crutch;" and "God '4
Isn't Dead--He Just Doesntt Want
To Get Involved.*
Mockridge found *God is Dead—
.lTietzche.ll Underneath that someone'"
had scrawled "!Nietzche is Dead--God.!
Public personalities also draw
their share. -lAT.:Edgar BOover
sleeps with a Night-Light;"' "Ad
Hoc Committee to Draft George
Hamilton"'; "StaMp Out Bert Parks"
and "Ronald Reagan Eats Peanut
Butter."
However we found one that we
considered to be the best in the
elevator of a University Park
Dormitory. "Oral Roberts is a
Contraceptive."