NEWS: Needled News: Marisa DiMattia's Tattoo Revue

CULTURE: Needled News: Marisa DiMattia's Tattoo Revue

Sweet revenge topped the headlines in this week's tattoo news.

An inmate, sentenced to life for molesting and killing a 10-year-old girl named Katie, was forcibly tattooed in prison with the words "Katie's Revenge" scrawled across his forehead. Anthony Ray Stockelman drowned Katlyn "Katie" Collman in a creek 15 miles from her home in Crothersville, Indiana. Evidently, inmates don't take too kindly to that brand of criminal. He's now been placed in protective custody away from the rest of the prison population.

The Associated Press wrote about jailhouse justice:

The first image of the tattoo appeared on the blog, Lost in Lima Ohio, which focuses on news reports about crimes against children and women. The blog entry on the tattoo has caused some controversy itself as the author, Lilo, denounced the attack. She received the photo from two prison guards, who consequently were fired for "making unauthorized copies of an evidence photo."



While I understand the author's desire to keep Katie's memory positive, in this case, I find it difficult opposing vigilante tattooing.

However, my default form of justice is through the courts: taking the money of someone who has wronged you can hurt them more than just an ass kicking. John Huntington was feeling the same way when he filed suit against his former partner Cary Hart, owner of Hart & Huntington tattoo studio at the Palms Hotel and the local of the cringe-worthy Inked. According to Eye on Vegas, Huntington claims that he only received one payment from Hart since he sold 48% of his ownership in the studio in January 2005. The lawyers for Huntington claim that he could be owed over a half million dollars. I guess that's the price of losing one's self-respect to reality TV.

With tattooists flashing their cash in the media, politicians have wised up to how lucrative the business can be and have been looking to artists to supplement the tax coffers from which they can embezzle even more money. This Sunday in New Jersey, a breeding ground for government corruption, a new seven percent tax was imposed on "luxury services," which include tattoos. Anyone who has sat for a significant time under the needle would not deem it luxurious, but New Jersey legislators who are generally not tattoo savvy lumped the art form in with country clubs, limos and gyms.

Naturally, tattoo studios aren't happy about laws that could negatively affect their business. But with retribution on my mind, I figure there is an upside to the tax. Tattooists, particularly working together, could have more political power themselves by showing that they generate a great deal of tax revenue for the state. This power could be used to combat overly restrictive zoning and safety regulations, and for many artists facing idiot community boards, this kind of juice could very well be a luxury.

Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture.

Sorry to have to say that there's a great deal of muddled thinking here and at least one contradiction.

Tattooing is an elective process. It must ALWAYS be wrong to force it on anyone. You could have said that clearly and unambiguously. You didn't.

Politicians are fully entitled to discharge their responsibility to seek fiscal justice by identifying a non-essential activity and taxing it to fund other essential but potentially unaffordable services which some or many citizens may find beyond their means.*

Tattoos are undeniably "non-essential." So what's your beef?

Your country full of "rugged individualists" could do well to study some of the socially responsible European governments which understand what taxes are for and why people should (uncomplainingly) pay them.

Rant over.

*It's called socialism. It's rather good. You could do with some in the U.S.

we already have too much socialism here.

C'mon chum - you haven't got ANY!

(We haven't got all that much in the UK at present if it comes to that!)

no, I agree. I'd have no problem paying taxes if they went to better causes than paying for a security force for oil feilds.

But an easy way around the Tattoo tax is to charge $50 for a tattoo, then give a $350 tip.

I agree. Way too much corporate welfare in the US.

way too much welfare period.

Kind of off-topic, but I'm not really sure we should be making it even more expensive to go to the gym.

I mean, what with the obesity problem... and all. I think it should be very necessary to go the gym and I think health insurance companies should have a problem with the tax.

But yay for tattoo artists having a say in society.

P.S.
Many child molesters and/or sex offendors have a medical disease probably more legitimate than ADD so encouraging retaliation on people who need help shows an incredible lack of empathy. Just something to consider.

I find it a little hard to dredge up empathy for a murderer/rapist. Medical disease or not.

Being attracted to children is the disease, molesting, rapping, and or murdering them is not. it is a crime, they chose to commit. They should have gotten help BEFORE they became a baby rapper. Then I would have some empathy.

EDITED FOR SPELLING

I think it's really interesting how the act of forcibly tattooing that particular inmate brings up like 8,000 issues that are really important -- evident in the responses here. It is hard for me to dredge up feelings of outrage for the guy, considering what he's in there for. However, I despise prison culture and the way "justice" is meted out, and by whom -- people become like animals, property of the state, and good luck with that whole survival thing. We know who to bill for the funeral, thanks.

Sorry, I am often on a soapbox about prison and prison sentences... don't know why I even care... but somehow it seems really disgusting to me when I look at the statistics and see who's getting locked up, for what, and for how long. I don't see a whole lot of justice in this culturally bi-polar world we live in here. I think a retarded amount of money is spent locking people up, and if even a sliver of that went to something revolutionary like, oh, amazing state funded day care, what would that do for us? It would make a whole lot more possible for single moms, who make up over half of US heads of household.

Food for thought.

Sorry that dude got marked, but he'll probably be dead soon anyway.

where the hell did you get that statistic? i call bullshit. sounds like you made that one up.

On the record...I denounce vigilante justice.

Off the record...I won't lose any sleep over that vermin getting forcibly tattooed.

Great, now my band Katies Revenge needs a new name. So annoying.

So you caught me on my soapbox, big deal. Look here for the facts. The exact statistic is "One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood." I'm going to hazard a wild guess and say that the moms are mostly taking care of the kids. Wild guess.

But my point was not necessarily that moms are the only people taking care of their kids... Families of any description should be able to get reliable, safe, government funded day care so they can go out and work. Whether it's grandma who's raising the kids, or dad, or whoever. I think THAT's worth the money.

Heh. I hate when that happens.

why should they?

Unfortunately, the quickness to judge these kind of acts only perpetuates them. If you had these kinds of urges, being attracted to children, would you tell anyone about them? Now imagine yourself in a weaker person.

Many people should get help. But a lot just bottle it up inside themselves until they can't take it anymore. They spend all this time telling themselves they are a freak to society and that they need to be normal and shut out the urges like everyone else does by trying to lead a normal life.

Then they snap and molest and kill a 10 year old and make the last 24 hours of her life a living hell.

Calling them names or encouraging retaliation or ridicule, or lacking an open mind about something you could never understand, like I said, will only perpetuate heinous acts.

heh. this could get good.

don't get me wrong, i get what you're saying, and it makes sense. what i'm saying is that why should other people pay for your kids' day care? i'm not the one who got you into that 'situation.' you're(not you specifically mtl) the one who went out and had kid(s), they're your problem, not mine. the father should contribute his share.

I don't know much in the ways of the bureaucracy, but I know two things about life:

a) People will always be making babies that they can't take care of by themselves, in the nuclear family way.

b) Kids don't ask to be born into this fucked up world, the least we can do is give their "families" the opportunity to work outside the home, or to go to school, without having to just leave the kids at home, alone, watching tv all day, eating microwaved junk food. Or with any babysitter who'll take them, especially if the parent works nights or weird shifts.

I personally don't mind paying half of my income to taxes, provided I get something useful and productive out of it: an education, health care and full benefits (which includes my teeth and my eyes, which I personally value), and safe daycare. People have less children, earn more money, and have a better quality of life than we do here... but then again, they're officially "less Christian" than us too.

Providing daycare for everyone in the country who needs it would dramatically change this place. But see, the difference between you and me (conservative) is that I wouldn't mind taking care of someone else's kids, because it needs to be done. If you can honestly tell me that you would not help a kid who needed your help, on any level, then fuck'em. But I seriously doubt that you would ever turn a kid away if they came knocking on your door, so why not extend that moral principle to the way you divy out the tax dollars? You can't tell me you didn't watch tonnes of kids around you (maybe even you? I know I sure did) get into shit because either the parents didn't care, couldn't care (addicts - that's another issue), or just weren't there at all.

But thanks for listening anyway.

First, I didn't say it clearly and unambiguously precisley because I'm on the fence here. No, I don't feel like I need to defend child rapists and murderers who get forcibly tattooed, and yet I do know that generally forcible tattooing is wrong. It's called a personal grey area. Not everyone is like G.W. Bush and see things as "You're with us or against us."

And yes, politicians can tax non-essential activity. But what I clearly stated here in the article is that the politicians in New Jersey happen to be some of the most corrupt and not all taxes are used for social services but for things like ... hookers.

Tattoos are NOT "undeniably" unnessential. But that's an entirely different debate on tattoos as compulsion or "addiction."

People should "uncomplainingly" pay taxes? Hell, if a government who spends trillions on undeniably unessential wars is taking my money, yes, I will complain.

Oh, and by the way -- I'm a "rugged individualist" who pays taxes in both the US and Belgium (in fact 50% in Belgian socialist taxes) and I can see faults in both systems.

I also practice European Institution Law and find that no European government system is perfect to not complain at all.

i can'rt believe you said that. do you REALLY believe you can trust the government to provide that? hell, why not give it all to the government and they'll provide everything to everyone. the problem with that is that there's no incentive to work hard, get an education, and be productive. (or reproductive).