If Nick Johnson is indeed guilty of cutting the head off that Christian Petersen statue, he is a vile, black-hearted punk who should be made to crawl around the ISU campus on his knees with the head in a bag tied around his neck and a sign nailed to his back that reads “HATE ME!” while all of Iowa State throws bits of bratwurst and gyro meat at him from the Dog Wagon. What the hell is wrong with a guy that cuts the head off of a statue? And not just any statue, a Christian Petersen statue, every one of which is a dearly beloved symbol of what makes Iowa State unique? And then he brags about it to his buddies? I don’t know about you, but this guy might well be a few cans shy of a six-pack. Back in the day, when deviants commited crimes of this nature, they were at least educated and thoughtful enough to keep it to themselves. You don’t do something this despicable and tell people on the assumption they will think you are cool. What would they say? “Oh, dude, you did not. No way. You cut the head off that statue? Oh man, you are so cool, you can marry my sister any day. “In fact, I’d hook you up with my mother just so you’d be my new step daddy if you would promise to go into an alcoholic rage at least once a week and beat us all senseless, you cool, hip, irreverant stud you!” I painted the cannon in my high school courtyard pink and didn’t tell anybody about it until now, and THAT was a tradition going back some 40 years, and they painted it black before anyone even got to school. There are a lot of crimes I can overlook, I’m a leftie, it’s what we do. Economic pressures can easily push a man to steal, smuggle drugs or vote for a Republican. But cutting the head off a statue? And the statue of a child to boot, what the hell is that? The only possible excuse a man could have to deface a statue is if Christopher Walken or some other whackjob was holding his daughter hostage and threatened to kill her if he didn’t do it. But since Johnny Depp hasn’t been to Iowa State since Veishea ’91, that isn’t very likely. The kind of man who commits a heinous act of vandalism against a cherished work of art is no better than a dirty hun. What gets me is this guy told the cops he had been thinking about this for the last year. This is the best a guy could come up with? This isn’t exactly a “Dirty Dozen” mission, the statue wasn’t guarded by elite Nazi forces. MacKay Hall isn’t exactly “The Guns of Navarone,” but I’m gonna take a wild guess and say Nick Johnson isn’t exactly Gregory Peck. I will even go one step further and guess, he isn’t even Irene Pappas. There is nothing so pitiful as the kind of human animal that sees art and feels the need to destroy it. Art is the one thing, whether it’s writing, sculpture or music, that brings us closer to God. To hate art is to hate life. To defile the artist’s work is to defile everything that is pure and good about humanity. What kind of message could a guy possibly be trying to send when he breaks the head off a statue? That he’s tough. No, that can’t be it. That nothing is sacred? Well, maybe, but that’s kind of a dull point. That no one is safe from the swift boot of insanity? Hmm, could be. The only good thing that can possibly come out of this act is that everyone on campus can and should be equally offended. We should all feel equally violated. We should all feel the same outrage. We should all be crying out for the harshest possible penalty to be levelled against this bastard if for no other reason than to convince ourselves that something matters in this world besides how many games we win, how many donations we can collect and how much beer we can swill.