Lies

During my walk to work, I pass a number of newspaper vending machines. This is not, in itself, exceptional (the newspapers that is, I know hardly anyone who actually walks to work anymore). However, on the clear plastic door of nearly every one of these dispensers is written the word "LIES" in a child-like Sharpie scrawl. This is done with no apparent discrimination for the publication, be it New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today or Philadelphia Inquirer. Always the identical graffiti, repeated all over the city (although for the Washington Times the vandal(s) occasionally mix it up, e.g. "neo-nazi lies."). I've seen this same tag in New York and Seattle; for all I know it's a nationwide phenomenon. This mono-morphemic assault on the newspaper vending machines of Washington, DC appears to be just another commentary on the sad state of journalism, albeit without an opaque political or social ideology (can anarchy be an ideology?) As Nicholas Lemann recently reported in the New Yorker, ain't nobody down with the mainstream press. I guess the graffiti "artist" wasn't hip to a piece in the op-ed section.