Results tagged “assholeoftheweek”

This week we salute the rampant stupidity of 18 year old Donta Cradock and 20 year old Ivan Rodriguez, two young men who obviously got their guidebooks on how to be an asshole at an early age. No strangers to law enforcement, Cradock and Rodriguez's combined 13 prior arrests stretch back to the tender age of 12. Wednesday night this lousy duo decided it would be a grand plan to steal a motorcyle at gunpoint. That fantastically idiodic idea ultimately cost 4 people in Feltonville their lives.

This Phillyist would like to know who thinks feeding children is bad. Who, precisely, would look at a group of kids coming to school without lunch, and believe that it is okay for them to remain hungry?

Harold Jackson and Brian Tierney. You win.

This week's award-winning terrible people hatched up a plan in Uniontown for babymaking far worse than what anyone could complain about Octomom. The couple, Shana Brown and Duane Calloway, were unable to have children on their own. Instead of considering one of the normal and upstanding options—adoption, fostering—they thought they could use Shana's thirteen year old daughter (apparently from back in the days when Brown could have children) as a baby incubator. First, they asked for her permission, saying she could marry Duane once she became pregnant (what a fabulous reward!), but after she turned them down, they decided to move forward with the plan anyway.

There are really few circumstances in which violent crime is justified. I mean, if you are Samuel L. Jackson and trying to avenge the assault against your young daughter, and know the racist jury will acquit the accused and clearly guilty man so you decide to take justice into your own hands... then, you get the A Time to Kill exception. Otherwise, you're probably just an asshole.

Part of the fallout in the switch from a feudal, agrarian economy to the modern (and currently extremely troubled one) was a fundamental change in the tax structure. Gone are the days of paying a local lord tribute for farming his lands in exchange for military might and the possible great honor of bearing his unwanted offspring through the rite of Prima Nocta (thanks Braveheart!). Enter the Industrial Revolution with electricity, mechanized production, trains, and other awesome stuff. The transition was a little creaky at first—disease, starvation, no sanitation, orphanariums…so taxes. Taxes to pay for sanitation, roads, schools, better orphanariums, telephone lines, internet connections, football stadiums, clean food and medicine. All things Philadelphia likes, and all things she’s currently having a little trouble paying for—in part because some people don’t want to pay their local taxes.

In the imaginary trip back to high school, we sometimes think back to the bathrooms. A snuck cigarette, the putrid salmon walls, the hiding from that jerk Kelly. Sure, the walls were ugly and the water was always absurdly arctic, but you were only a hall pass away from a few minutes of stolen respite.

Some of us at Phillyist think secret societies are silly. Whether this means denigrating the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, the Masons, or the Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo, we really can’t work up a National Treasure level of reverence for the conspiracy theorists. If the wealthy and important historical machers of our country liked to wear funny hats on the weekend in no-girls-allowed clubhouses, well that’s fine. And silly. But sometimes the members of these groups commit certain acts that push them over the precarious silly/asshole divide. Yale’s uber-secret Skull and Bones society may be guilty of diving over that ledge.

This week was difficult. The investment bankers who so gleefully induced the collapse of the free market economy balked at the idea of a $500,000 salary cap for executives if their company receives government bailout funds. Who will pay for the bi-yearly vacations? The $15,000 dresses? At this news, we looked in our hands for sympathy and found only extended middle fingers. SEPTA continued its storied incompetence by printing the New York skyline on our beer week passes (but then they fixed it). Vince Fumo is still a jerk. There were so many contenders for Asshole of the Week, but as they say in Highlander, there can be only one. With that in mind, we bring you this lady.

Some parents send their children off to school with apples, and others write lunch box notes professing love to their embarrassed progeny. Some send their precious monsters off with Lunchables, the food-like product that will outlive us all, laughing it up with the Twinkies and the cockroaches. But some parents apparently send their kids to school with drugs.

Okay, we're now a week into 2009. The holidays are officially over, and that means some people—whether rightfully or wrongfully, that can be debated—have had it with ponying up money to charity, at least for a few months. (After all, charities are the seventh pain of Christmas.) But there comes a point when post-holiday ambivalence crosses into hostility. And some people can take that hostility too far. Some people, like, this guy, whom we mentioned in yesterday's news. The unidentified man walked into an Exxon station in Phoenixville and proceeded to steal a jar that was being used to raise money in connection with Ride for Kids, a motorcyclist-based cause that supports the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. The jar had about $50 in it, and once this guy took it, he went out to his car, stashed it, and then went back into the store to make some purchases (allowing himself to be caught on the store's camera not once but twice, very smooth).

While it would be easy to call out the family who flipped because their local grocery store wouldn't customize a birthday cake for their son, Adolf Hitler Campbell, we've already had our fun with them this week.

It was just not a good week to be a lawyer with a drug problem. But then, we suppose, when is it? Criminal defense attorney D. Scott Perrine, who was arrested back in October for allegedly bringing cocaine into a prison facility, was ordered to prison—the very same prison, in fact, that he allegedly brought the cocaine into and was arrested at—after missing a hearing last week. We're pretty sure one of the first rules of being a criminal defense attorney is to avoid being a criminal defendant, but we could be wrong.

We at Phillyist have just a little bit of a thing for animals, especially doggies and kitties (as if you haven't noticed). On the flip side, we're not too big on sleazy politicians. Especially ones under indictment for corruption. We know there's that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, so you'll have to forgive us if we're not giving Vince Fumo the benefit of the doubt in his federal corruption trial. So combine our love of our four-legged friends with our distaste for corrupt power-abusers, and you get a no-brainer for this week's Asshole of the Week.

No matter what your political leanings, you have to appreciate the momentousness of Barack Obama being elected President, the first (half-) African-American to be selected as the Commander in Chief. (As an aside, we have to give major kudos to the President-elect for strongly considering adopting a shelter mutt as the dog to join the Obama family in the White House. Obviously, we hope he does go the shelter route.) So much for the Bradley effect, which so many on the left had feared and so many on the right had counted on.

Earlier, we mentioned that Mayor Nutter had a great quote about all the Phillies celebrations going on: "You can be joyous. You cannot be a jackass." We were at the parade earlier this afternoon, and there certainly were a whole lot of joyous people around, and not a lot of jackasses. It was refreshing, particularly after the absolute shitshow that was Wedensday night.

I’m disgusted to announce this week’s winners of Phillyist’s ‘Asshole of the Week’ award. It’s sad and unfortunate that we have to pass along the award to not only the perpetrator of the heinous act, but also to those who aided and abetted in basically freeing her.

First off, we'd like to congratulate former Asshole of the Week winner Jocelyn Kirsch, collected her official prize for all her Asshole-worthy (and illegal) activities—a 5-year prison sentence. Congratulations, Jocelyn! And now, onto this week's Asshole...

Hey kids, in case you haven't noticed, Powerball is up to $200 million bucks. That's pre-tax, of course, and only if you take the annuity payouts. Heck, even if you take the lump-sum, that's over $100 million before taxes, and you're still gonna clear in the mid-to-upper eight figures. Yahtzee!

. It's not like you didn't know what to expect when you walked in. The smokiness was just part of the deal.

This column came about because, back in January, we read Bill Maher's "Dickheads of the Year;" the next day, we'd read a story about a couple of wastes of human life who had viciously beaten, stoned and hanged a Pit Bull in North Philadelphia. We were disgusted and appalled, and the "Dickheads of the Year" column was still fresh in our minds, and dishonorees.

One of the most fun things about the quadrennial circuses that are the Democratic and Republican National Conventions is the protesters. They're frequently a rich source of both important social discourse and absolute hilarity. Pick a subject, any subject, and somewhere in America—especially at convention time—someone is protesting it. Someone out there is protesting kittens as you read this.

Unless you were living under a rock this week, you knew that the Democratic National Convention was being held in Denver. And all the hurrah built up to Barack Obama's acceptance of the party's nomination for Savior President of the United States. And while many Hillary Clinton supporters hadn't drunk the Obama Kool Aid before the convention, and there are still a fair number who are unconvinced, almost all have accepted, and come to terms with, the fact that Obama is the Democratic nominee for President. And then there's Montgomery County lawyer Philip J. Berg.

We at Phillyist are big fans of the Darwin Awards, and of those moronic individuals who remove themselves from the gene pool for the betterment of the human race. (Conversely, we have nothing but disdain for those undesirables who have put humanity towards Idiocracy by rapidly procreating rapidly and with reckless disregard for the future of mankind.) And we even have an appreciation for those would-be Darwin Award winners that we see day in and day out—usually pedestrians dodging in and out of traffic with flagrant disregard for crosswalks and common sense—because we're confident that they will eventually succeed in their mission of mortality.

By now, we're sure you've heard the tragic story of Danieal Kelly, the 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who was found dead in a West Philadelphia rowhome almost exactly two years ago. This week, nine people were indicted by a state grand jury in Kelly's death, including her parents and a number of social workers who were assigned to see to it that she was cared for.

story about him, and he'll likely be in contention for Asshole of the Year. (Thanks to Bill for writing up last week's column while this Phillyist was watching with dread as his sofa was lofted through a second-floor window by the guys from Old City Movers.) This week's dishonoree, while not quite as much a shoo-in as Genovese was last week, was pretty much a no-brainer as well.

Remember that advertising campaign that used to say that Philadelphia is more fun for tourists when they stay over? Unfortunately, a couple tourists from Missouri recently found out when Philadelphia isn’t so much fun. Namely when you get plowed over by a drunken South Philly douchebag when you are just trying to cross the street to see your hometown St. Louis Cardinals play the Phillies. One of the tourists, 53-year-old Cindy Grassi, died from her injuries, while the other poor soul, 36-year-old Sandra Wacker remains at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in critical condition with the most positive diagnosis stating that she could be paralyzed on one side of her body for the rest of her life.

It's bargain day here at Phillyist, so we're bringing you a two-for-the-price of one Asshole of the Week. (Actually, we missed last week, but this week's column gives us two Assholes, so we figure it evens out.)

Some topics just automatically lend themselves to generating Assholes of the Week, and this week, it's the topic of clergy abuse scandals that provides our dishonoree. Charles E. Bennison, the suspended Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia Pennsylvania, testified in his church tiral. Bennison is accused of helping to cover up abuse his brother, John, committed 35 years ago against a 14-year-old girl.

It was an amazingly asshole-free week in Philadelphia news. For a little while there, it was looking like we weren't even going to be able to find an Asshole of the Week. Fortunately, when all else seemed lost, a couple dumb criminals saved the day for us. Not that these two women were dumber than your average petty criminal, but the circumstances around their arrest are just too glorious to resist calling them out.