AND SO, for the second time in a week, I've heard from a Baltimore resident so distraught with crime that bags are being packed for departure.
The first was from a disgruntled e-mailer who had his car stolen and then endured some messy red tape in dealing with city officials. The second was from my daughter, a car-theft victim for the second time since she, my son-in-law and three grandchildren moved from Dunwoodie, Ga., where it was not stolen once.
The e-mailer, my daughter and son-in-law have had it with Baltimore. They're ready to go. Please note that the crime driving them to the suburbs (or, heaven forfend, in the case of my daughter and grandchildren, to another state again) is not the homicide numbers Mayor Martin O'Malley has put so much effort into reducing. Murder isn't the only crime in this city that makes folks flee for the burbs.
Car theft, while not as heinous, is infuriating and downright annoying. My daughter's Dodge Caravan was stolen Saturday in broad daylight. The officer who found the car said five others on the same street were stolen the same day.
It disrupted my entire weekend. I missed the Grambling-Southern game Saturday. The next day, I missed the Atlanta Falcons' Michael Vick provide more excitement in four or five plays than the Baltimore Ravens' offense has in hundreds of plays the past three seasons.
I don't have much patience with a thieving reprobate who would disrupt an entire weekend of football. Not to mention inflict monetary damage in the process. Car theft is not only despicable, it's costly, too. I don't approve of the frontier practice of hanging a guy for horse stealing. But I can sure as heck understand it.
A Northwest District officer found my daughter's car the next day ditched in an alley not more than two blocks from her home. An axle had been busted. Transmission fluid flowed liberally from beneath the vehicle. The thieves had gratuitously smashed out the rear window. Repairs will run in the hundreds of dollars, if my daughter and son-in-law are lucky.
Such incidents keep Baltimore's car insurance rates sky-high, which prompts the fiscally conservative (and that's just about everybody, even liberals, when their own money is concerned) to head for suburban digs where the car thefts aren't as frequent and the insurance rates even lower.
I was digesting all this Monday when I learned that Wendell Rawlings, the son of a respected state legislator and brother of a fine city one, had been stabbed in a robbery. It seems Baltimore's hoodlum element had proclaimed Thanksgiving weekend 2002 as their special time.
Should Baltimoreans let such miscreants drive them from the city? The overwhelming majority of us are decent citizens who work hard and obey the law. What prompts the car thieves and armed robbers to make life miserable for the rest of us?
It's poverty, liberals have long relished telling us. For years a message has been sent: Being poor, especially if you're a minority, means you don't have to measure up to the same moral standards as the rest of society.
Once one segment of society gets a free pass on decent conduct, the green light is given to everyone. That's why civility and common courtesy are becoming things of the past. It's now acceptable to be loud and profane in public. Our children will hear language in movies and on television our parents would have washed our mouths out for using.
The rot infects even the mainstream. Here we have a writer for the respected Sports Illustrated claiming Hall of Fame National Football League coach Vince Lombardi, who stressed character and integrity, was overrated because he couldn't coach today's players. That's a reflection on us, not Lombardi.
Another writer in the same magazine complained that Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant, because he's never been arrested or had trouble with the law, didn't have the "street credibility" of inveterate screw-up Allen Iverson. (You probably had no idea blithering idiots were now writing for Sports Illustrated.) Staying out of trouble and not being a miscreant is a bad thing these days.
You can bet the thugs who stabbed Rawlings, son of Del. Howard "Pete" Rawlings and brother of Councilwoman Stephanie Rawlings Blake, feel they have "street credibility." So do the 'hood rats who went on their little Northwest Baltimore car-stealing spree last weekend.
"Street credibility" is a phenomenon common to the male macho culture found in all too many of our cities. We should not be surprised when those who don't buy into such nonsense seek blessed tranquillity elsewhere.