Graffiti Slurs

While driving home from work earlier this week, I noticed that someone had spray painted a message in a lovely shade of day-glo orange across four of the cement barriers along west bound I-40 at the Broadway interchange. Their message? "Brad Henry Baby Killer".

Now I'm assuming that this is a pro-life message that's aimed at Governor Brad Henry, but I'm a little confused, or perhaps more accurately, somewhat amused. Governor Henry is not exactly your most liberal of democrats. He actually tends to be quite conservative, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

So why am I confused and amused?

Well, first, unless Governor Henry, or another Brad Henry to whom the painter was referring, has actually murdered a child, then technically, this graffiti is libel.

Second, I'm curious to know about the painter's background. Frequently, radically pro-life individuals come from a stringent religious background and feel that they have a very definitive sense of right and wrong. Since they technically defaced state, or possibly federal, property with this message, then how can this graffiti be considered right? I can't quote a statute, but I'm about 100 percent certain that defacing this property is illegal, so I don't understand how someone could consider this action to be above board and appropriate. I would think that illegal actions would violate their sense of right and wrong.

Finally, and perhaps more than anything, I would like to know how in the hell someone managed to paint such a huge, long message along a major highway WITHOUT being noticed! I'm guessing that it was done at night, but you've got to know that it still took some time to paint. How did no one catch the painter/s? I see OHP troopers along that stretch of road all too frequently, so I'm still in awe that someone managed to paint such a huge message without being caught.

As a side note, I've looked for the message the past couple of days, but traffic has been pretty heavy when I've driven past, so I haven't seen it. I suspect, though, that the real reason that I haven't seen it is because it's been removed/painted over. If that's the case, then I'd like to thank this idiot graffiti artist to wasting some of MY taxes!