Joshua Tree National Park is another rock climbing / bouldering site, a vast version of Stoney Point. I went scrambling over the boulders with my father on New Year's Day weekend 1965-66 when I was 7. From today's LA Times, a perfect illustration of my posts (first and second) a couple of days ago about graffiti, littering, and racial shaming:
Historic Joshua Tree sites blighted by city's ills
Vandals are using social media to get others to join in. Rattlesnake Canyon and Barker Dam are temporarily closed.
By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times
JOSHUA TREE — Along the saw-toothed ridge of Rattlesnake Canyon, crude graffiti invades the crevices that offered shade to nomadic Indians trekking across the Mojave hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.
"Skunk,'' "oatmeal cookie" and "punx" are scribbled in black spray paint on giant, earth-crushing boulders where ancient petroglyphs may have been etched by the Serrano and Chemehuevi.
The damage goes far beyond a few lovey-dovey teenagers carving their initials into picnic tables. Vandalism in Rattlesnake Canyon and at Barker Dam, two of Joshua Tree National Park's most popular hiking spots, has been so pervasive that both sites have been closed to the public.
The graffiti in Rattlesnake Canyon, which meanders for a mile through the northern edge of Joshua Tree's Wonderland of Rocks, started with just a few markings but quickly became rampant. Vandals bragged of their handiwork on social media sites such as Facebook, attracting their like-minded friends to the same spot, paint in hand, park service officials said.
In all, 17 areas of the canyon have been defaced by graffiti, including several historic Native American cultural spots.
... Park service law enforcement agents are investigating the vandalism at both sites, Pilcher said, adding that anyone convicted of defacing a national park could be sentenced to six months in jail and fined up to $5,000. The penalty could be much stiffer for those convicted of vandalizing a historic Native American site, he said. ...
For local Native American tribes, the defacing of historic sites at Joshua Tree just adds to the cultural losses they have suffered since Spanish missionaries first arrived in the 1700s.
The spring-fed Oasis of Mara, near the park's north entrance, was a popular resting spot for several tribal clans as they journeyed across the desert toward the coast, and Native American rock drawings are scattered across the vast 800,000-acre park.
"That whole area was Serrano territory," said Jacob Coin, spokesman for the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians in Highland. "It's a disappointment not just for Native people, but for all of the state."
You can see what the L.A. Times reporter is trying to do: play the racial guilt card -- so successfully played in the 1971 "Crying Indian" anti-littering PSA -- to get Latinos to stop painting their stupid graffiti on beautiful cliffs. I'm all for it, but what a triple bankshot we're stuck with attempting to pull off in 2013! How many of these teenage idiots ever saw that ancient American TV spot? How many of these mestizos care about some myth made up by Burson Marsteller in New York about indio environmentalism?
What they would care about is being called out as Mexican vandals. These are some of the same folks who drive drunkenly around the Rose Bowl honking their horns for three or four hours after every Mexican national soccer team victory over the American team. They are proud of being Mexican and might even feel a little ashamed of the shame they are bringing on Mexicans with their bad habits ... if anybody were ever to mention it. But of course to mention how Mexicans mess up the American environment like this would be Racist Hate. To even notice this is evil and to prove that you didn't notice it, you have to want to import millions more Mexicans.
ReplyDeleteBut, hey, our intelligentsia-cognoscenti Patrons of the Arts just love graffiti - so having more millions of Mexicans coming here to scrawl and spray moere graffiti is a Good Thing!
Here you go: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/graffiti-exhibition-sets-attendance-records-at-museum-of-contemporary-art-in-los-angeles/
And try this one on for size: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_vandalism.html
Our elites. The disease our country suffers and us citizens are made to suffer comes from the top down.
I've noticed something about Mexicans lately....
ReplyDelete- When arguing with you they invert reality BIGTIME
"White people just stand by the road and beg for handouts! My people WORK! Whites don't work ever!"
"White women are all obese and walk around with sodas in their hand" (in my city the white women are all in stretch pants coming out of Zumba...)
Just over and over...and it's like uh....sure there are fat white people...but there's no such thing as a skinny Mexican where I live...and the woman who made the above comment was in fact quite obese.
Sure there are white vets who stand by the road, but the majority of welfare babies are...Mexican.
It's very strange. I can't figure out if this is a Tactic They've Decided Upon when Putting Down the Gringo...Or...
If they really believe in this inverted world of their racial superiority. Where are Hispanics on the self-esteem index? I think they must have higher irrational self-esteem then blacks from what I've experienced.
Another comment "Hispanics have the strongest culture, they must spread out because they are so strong and beautiful!"
It's very strange. There's absolutely no ability to look at their own culture and see flaws and certainly no desire to improve on said flaws.
Extreme Pride in Mere Existence.
Speaking on the topic of Mexicans, I was surprised to learn that they backed Hillary Clinton in the '08 primary by 2-1 margins. In California alone, a very liberal state after all, she got 75% of the Mexican vote. (Counting all hispanics, not just Mexicans, she got 70%).
ReplyDeleteCuriously, almost 30% of the Mexican voters in the primary, when asked if race played a part in how they voted, admitted that yes, it did. Only 12% of whites admitted the same.
2008 was not a terrible long time ago. Since the GOP will be wiped out from here on out to eternity, basically, due to a hostile media and hostile demographics, the only thing worth watching is democratic primaries.
The black population will not budge as a % of the population. How will Asians and Hispanics vote?
Well, we're very likely to get a white president in 2016 and possibly in many years after that. It will be the GOP, shellshocked after 2012, that will go with Indians, Whites-In-All-But-Name(Rubio), and blacks(the GOP loves black candidates more than anything, something clever blacks like Ben Carson understand).
Yet the Dem lineup for 2016 is lily-white. Cuomo, Clinton, possibly Sandberg, Martin O’Malley. The only diversity candidate with a good shot that I see as likely is Cory Booker, who's even whiter than Obama is on the inside. He also loves getting his nails done at late in the night.
But any candidates who are black are likely to be blocked by hispanics. I haven't found data on Asians but it seems likely that they backed Clinton in '08 too. If Sandberg goes up in '16, they will likely be split between her and Clinton.
The nation may be run much like New York City. A white minority, wealthier than everyone else save a much smaller Asian minority. But a political landscape largely dominated by centrist white politicians who enact policies to keep the wealthier, white/asian population happy, all while paying lip-service to the black/brown underclass and attacking the phantom menace of white conversatives as the root of all evil to deflect the anger the underclass feel over their situation and asking why their lot just doesn't improve with their white liberal overlords. Mustn't let them.
""Skunk,'' "oatmeal cookie" and "punx" are scribbled in black spray paint on giant, earth-crushing boulders where ancient petroglyphs may have been etched by the Serrano and Chemehuevi. "
ReplyDeleteThis part is funny.
So living descendants of southwestern Indians are scrawling graffiti over ancient graffiti done by southwestern Indians.
Gotcha.
But Steve there is no proof that these south western Indians were northern southwestern Indians.
ReplyDelete"Speaking on the topic of Mexicans, I was surprised to learn that they backed Hillary Clinton in the '08 primary by 2-1..."
ReplyDeleteYeah, and unfortunately the woman who has accomplished nothing is running for POTUS, already has a gazillion in the bank and the media in her back pocket for the run.
We should be disgusted with ourselves for not taking to the streets. Actually, I AM disgusted with us, the working men and women who obey the laws of our country and get stomped on by the elites and the feral and the foreigners who have the gall to tell us they can't be called "aliens" or "illegals" or whatever.
I'm disgusted with us because we're people of words, not action. We should be surrounding the corporate towers of all the major news media, but we haven't and we won't, yet that IS what would be effective--not allow them to enter their "place of work."
Victor Davis Hanson has mentioned in his writings many times of the Mexican littering problem in his neck of the woods, the rural Central Valley of CA. Trash, trash, trash strewn everywhere.
ReplyDeleteLetters should be sent to the CHP and local police agencies demanding that they do more to stop drunk driving before and after major sporting events. It wouldn't be the end of the world if they had a sobriety checkpoint now and then around Dogers games and international soccer matches.
ReplyDeleteRisto
Clearly an updated, 21st century Public Service Announcement is needed to fight the littering (writ large) issue, and it should follow the same formula used in the 70’s PSA. So an oldish male from the ethic group that used to dominate the area should be propelled around on his iconic means of transport regarding the litter and visual pollution caused by the newly dominant ethnic group. So yes, a middle-aged white guy on a golf cart should be shown in various locals: public parks, barrios, downtown, etc., where trash, pit-bulls, graffiti, and tattooed gangsters predominate. At the end as the camera zooms in on the famous tear hesitantly rolling down his cheek, the old guy is suddenly shoved off his cart, golf hat flying, and in the closing scene some vibrant teenagers are seen with their arms pumping, joyously cruising the cart into the sunset at the end of their litter-strewn barrio street.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's any triple bankshot. The writers probably are incapable of (a) thinking about Mexicans as vandals or (b) thinking about Mexicans at all, except in the context of 'immigration reform'. So their mind's eye image will be freckle-faced, tow-haired white teens from a '70s surf movie doing the vandalism.
ReplyDelete"It's very strange. I can't figure out if this is a Tactic They've Decided Upon when Putting Down the Gringo...Or..."
ReplyDeletechutzpah, now if they only had the verbal IQ to make the point more elaborately. or statistics.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteTexas studied Hispanic/Latino littering habits in 2002 http://www.dontmesswithtexas.org/research/2002-Hispanic-Litter-Survey_Fact-Sheet.php
What is amazing is that the study is impossible to find now. What can only find references to the study.
"How many of these mestizos care about some myth made up by Burson Marsteller in New York about indio environmentalism?"
ReplyDeleteI had the pleasure of working very closely with a man who was 1/4 North American Indian. He would slap his thigh and hoot with laughter when he recalled that commercial. According to him, the Indians never gave the least thought to "the environment". They shot deer out of season--bucks, does and fawns alike. Respected no limits on crab or fish, season or quotas. And so-called "Indian Burial Grounds" didn't and don't exist. They buried them where they dropped. Think about it. Why would a migrating people drag a dead body around with them, especially when they looked at all of the outdoors as their home? It's all about tribal politics, land and resource grabs.
Steve, this may not just be Messicans. I mean, I'm sure there are Messicans in the tagging group here, but a lot of that graffiti seems more associated with desert trash stoner culture, so they would be the kind of Messicans who hang out with whites and listen to rock and get stoned. "Oatmeal cookie" is a kind of marijuana. And Mexican gangs just don't use "punx" in their tagging.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's pretty stupid of the Times to show pictures of all the names carved into Barker Dam: that tagging has been there for decades, and no one really cares. It's just a freakin cement dam built in the early 20th century.
"Skunk,'' "oatmeal cookie" and "punx"
ReplyDeleteThese don't sound Mexican. Are you sure that Mexicans are doing this? Or have you in fact succumbed to the racism that your opponents always expect of you? I.e. if something bad happens, then it goes without saying that NAMs are at fault.
It was a pretty neat bit of public relations to have the "crying Indian" commercial spread the idea that environmentalism was a sacred Native American value and was thus to be respected. In reality they had little to do with it. They never had any industrial capacity to produce anything that could become modern day litter. They seem to have been just as careless as anyone else in overfishing or depleting resources once they had the capability to do so. White environmentalists had to use Iron Eyes Cody (actually an Italian) to front for the movement. More convincing that way, one supposes.
ReplyDeleteThe tagging in the San Gabriels and San Bernardinos is all done by Mexicans and Mexican gangs, and it has a certain style to it. This tagging doesn't fit that style. Like someone else said, that doesn't mean it's not Mexicans--one of the names tagged on the rocks is Spanish. It just means that it's probably a mix of Mexican and white stoners.
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering if Latinos have any cultural history of graffiti or not. For example, did their ancestors, the Aztecs and Mayans, paint or scratch the rocks and buildings where they lived? Or was this a latent thing that was awoken by the invention of the spray paint can?
ReplyDeleteTo Chicago said:
ReplyDeleteAlso there simply were not enough Indians to produce much litter. Hollywood movies aside, (and we all know who runs Hollywood and what their agenda is), most of the USA was wide open unoccupied land until whites arrived. This is even more true of Canada and Australia.
You are so racist that I'm shocked! Shame on you!
ReplyDelete