Asshole of the Week

What a week for the morally bankrupt—get out your human hamster balls—the jerkface warning this week is in red alert. We're less shining city on a hill and more festering, partially drained swamp sinkholed between two slime-pollutant-intoxicated rivers.

On the cruelty to animals front, we have Sticky, the poor North Philly kitty who was duct-taped unto a mummy-suit like prison and left to die. The PSPCA has doubled the reward from one to two-thousand dollars to anyone who can identify the perp. The truly self-flagellating might want to check out Animal Cops: Philadelphia this weekend to see what other monsters lurk in our homes and alleys. We animal-loving Phillyists keep waiting to see all the Vick inspired scrutiny lead to better education and stronger convictions.

Because we love people too, we're sickened when other people don't. Duane Crump purposefully ran over a pregnant mother of two on Saturday; first barreling over the 22-year-old Kamilah El-Amin and one of her friends, and then backing up to roll over them again. El-Amin died on Tuesday. Meanwhile, police had pursued and captured Crump, and he was charged and released on bail. Now that he's facing murder charges, he's slipped away. So, attacking a woman on purpose (and her friend without compunction), backing up to do it again, running away, getting caught, and running away again. We don't know what cracked code of behavior this fellow follows, but it isn't one we want to recognize as human. Even if we are so exquisitely cruel to one another every week—there are so many columns to write.

And moving on to the stupidly corrupt, ex-city employee Brenda Wilkins pled guilty today to a crime which was the antithesis to her career. In her capacity as a real estate specialist with the Philadelphia Housing Development, she forwarded her daughter a list of vacant homes that were set to be rehabbed and flipped into city housing, and helped her daughter choose one to live in. Then she sold it to her for $1. And got caught, and now faces the maximum possible sentence—which, in our crumbling economy where so many are scrambling to stay housed—is absolutely just.