Vandalism Is Never Art

by Michael Reagan,

There was a partial victory for decorum and respect a few weeks ago. Casey Nocket, of San Diego, a vandal whose contribution to society is cheesy caricatures defacing national parks, pled guilty to defacing rock formations in seven national parks in the Western United States.

According to The Mercury News, “Over a 26­ day period in September and October 2014, Nocket vandalized Yosemite National Park, Death Valley National Park at the summit of Telescope Peak Canyon Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park and Colorado National Monument in Colorado, Canyonlands National Park on the Neck Spring Trail and Zion National Park in Utah, and Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.”

After the verdict, acting Eastern District U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert issued a statement that read, “The defendant’s defacement of multiple rock formations showed a lack of respect for the law and our shared national treasures.”

The story contained photos of a number of her “works.” Most of them consist of repetitions of her “Smoking Lady” signed “creepytings” marring “some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country, including on the beginning of the John Muir Trail in Yosemite.”

Nocket is one of those pathetic exhibitionists who so crave attention that she posted her vandalism on social media, which helped to catch her.

Intellectually insecure leftists call her a “graffiti artist” but Nocket is an artist like the lunatic who took a hammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta is an artist. What they do would be deservedly ignored by a world with more important things to do if they hadn’t damaged an existing masterpiece in the course of their “careers.”

The judge sentenced her to two years of probation, banishment from federal lands during the probationary period and 200 hours of community service with Lindsay Lohan. Whoops, Lindsay has gone straight. My mistake.

I would have preferred an open-ended, performance-based sentence.

Nocket used a combination of acrylic paint and Sharpie markers to deface the beauty of our national parks. The Mercury News reports, “Removing the drawings is not easy, with workers slowly scraping away each layer with low-pressure hot water and plastic kitchen spatulas, a National Parks spokesman had said in the past.”

I think it would have been more fitting if she’d been sentenced to working in each park until her damage was repaired and then move on to the next park.

Once the pitiful scrawls were no longer visible, she could go free.

That would make the punishment truly fit the crime.

More From Newsmax: