Poor Richard's Scorecard

Imagine What the Lower Merion School District Would Have Done if Blake Robbins Had Been Eating M&Ms

The most startling information to emerge from the well-publicized lawsuit filed by a Lower Merion family this week against the township school district is not that:

• School officials are alleged to have remotely activated a laptop webcam to spy on a student. (School officials are charter members of the Don't You Guys Have Anything Better to Do? Club.)
• Parents reacted to a perceived slight by filing a suit in federal court. (It's Lower Merion, the Official Home of Helicopter Parents.)
  
• County and federal law enforcement are investigating. (Grandstanding DAs and feds sniffing around a sensational story? Who'd have thought?)
• The story has gone global. (The only thing missing is sex, which would have sent the news interplanetary.)

No, the most surprising facet of the story is this:

In Philly's Northern 'Burbs, a Low-Level Thief Wrestles With His Past--and His Present

Ray is a loser, a derelict, a guy in and out of trouble with the law since high school. He makes his living by posing as a DEA agent and boosting drugs and money from small-time dealers. When Ray and his partner, Manny, knock over a dealer more connected than they thought, and with unexpectedly violent results, these low-level crooks find themselves pursued by ruthless killers who want their scratch back. Local writer Dennis Tafoya's debut novel, Dope Thief, is a quick-moving work saturated with foreboding as it tracks Ray and Manny's efforts to stay a step ahead of the bad guys--well, the badder guys. But what elevates Dope Thief from the realm of mere genre fiction is Tafoya's exploration of character and his achingly true rendering of Ray's increasing dissatisfaction with his fractured life.

I See ... Declining Relevance

The Inky plants a big, wet kiss on a local scammer

One thousand six hundred forty-one words.

That's how long it took David Hiltbrand to tell the story of up-and-coming Bucks County "psychic" Joseph Tittel in today's Inquirer.

That God all of the stories that need covering in Philadelphia have already been published. Now the Inky can concentrate on rooting out corruption in the paranormal industry.

Wait a minute, what? It wasn't an expose of a professional thief who preys on the emotionally needy by offering banal generalities that they cling to like life preservers in dangerous waters? It was a flattering, cheery, completely uncritical profile?

Sigh. | PRS

Excessive Exclamation Points? Sounds Like a Racist Note.

The hatin' is deplorable, but Aaron McKie hardly resembles the ideal neighbor

Residents in Gladwyne are shocked -- shocked! -- that one of their neighbors in the lily-white Main Line enclave might not be overly pleased about the impending move to the 'hood by former 76er Aaron McKie. As the Inquirer's Kathy Bocella reports today, in the wake of McKie's arrest last week on gun charges, this flyer recently showed up in people's mailboxes:

Attention please, read if you care about your neighborhood!!! How can we prevent Aaron McKie from moving into our safe and peaceful neighborhood. His house is almost complete on Youngsford Road. Let's prevent another Iverson from moving in!

There is, of course, the unmistakable whiff of racism in the overheated copy, which means there is, of course, near-unanimous decrying of the flyer among those whom Bocella interviewed. However, the not insignificant matter of McKie's anger-management issues must be accounted for:

McKie is accused of trying to buy two guns despite being under a protection-from-abuse order filed on behalf of former girlfriend Kianna Williams, who alleged he threw her to the ground and threatened to kill her in September.

The order bars gun purchases. Authorities said that when filling out forms to buy the pistols in a Montgomery County gun shop April 8, McKie checked a box stating he was not under a restraining order. ...

In 2001, McKie was under another protection-from-abuse order after Williams, the mother of his daughter, alleged he punched her and dislocated her jaw.

Iverson, by most accounts, was a peaceful neighbor, and most of those cited in the Inky today speak well of McKie's charitable efforts. That said, I wouldn't be baking welcome cookies the day McKie moved in next to me; people who have violent tendencies and like to purchase firearms aren't high on my Christmas card list. I mean, if Mr. Rogers liked to pick off squirrels with a Glock, I wouldn't want him in the neighborhood. Mr. McFeely might feel differently, of course. | PRS