December 21, 2001|By Dan Rodricks
HOWARD County is the seventh-wealthiest county in the United States and people in Columbia, the pleasure capital of Howard County, walk off with thousands of dollars worth of towels a year from the Columbia Association gyms. Which reminds me of a line from a famous sermon: "The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rich get the towels."
Which reminds me of the pizza deliveryman who said the cheapest tippers on his route were in Ruxton.
And which further reminds me of what my mother, the former Rose Popolo, always used to say for no reason at all. She'd stick out her hand, rub her thumb in a circle against her fingers and say: "People with money keep their money. That's why they got it."
The people who do this in the gyms of Columbia ought to be ashamed. And they've got a lot of brass to complain that the free towel service might be cut off. Allow me to invoke St. Groucho: "Begone, and never darken my towels again."
The necessities
You want good towels cheap? Try D.J. Liquidators in Highlandtown. ... And, if you're Christmas shopping and in the market for Ginsu knives ("As seen on TV"), go to Shocket's, across the parking lot. I pretty much wiped them out yesterday, but they've a few sets left.
Mouthing off
Since about a month after becoming mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley has been rocking our world with outrageous statements, sometimes with profanity thrown in just so we know how angry he is.
He started off with stick-figure sarcasm aimed at top Maryland judges, followed by his foul tirade against Pat Jessamy, the city state's attorney, for not prosecuting the Sewell case, a real loser, or for not making his vaunted Early Disposition Court, another loser, work. Then, he went down to Congress a couple times to complain that the FBI wasn't sharing information about terrorists with Baltimore police.
At first, O'Malley's outbursts were refreshing. After 12 years of the Schmoke administration and government as Sleepy Hollow, the residents of Baltimore were anxious for action. We still are. O'Malley's focus on fighting crime is appreciated across the city, and beyond.
But he has invested so much in this issue that it's considered a barometer of his leadership - the homicide total in particular.
Homicides have fallen since he came into office and Ed Norris became police commissioner.
But there's been a hellish run of homicides in the last couple months. The numbers have crept up again.
When asked about this Wednesday, what did O'Malley say?
Did he suggest that maybe he and his police commissioner placed a little too much emphasis on making Baltimore a hard target for terrorists during the last three months?
Nah. He led with his lip again and fired off criticism at the feds for not helping enough.
"Apparently they feel that murders that happen in Baltimore City are things that are unimportant street crimes that the federal government can't deal with on its crushed docket that has all those important cases regarding the illegal importation of caviar and protecting federally protected geese from being baited for hunting, and I think that's really sad," O'Malley told reporters.
Then, in a thinly veiled suggestion of racism among the feds, he added, "I doubt very, very seriously that if these murders were occurring in Baltimore County, the federal government would regard these as unimportant street crimes."
O'Malley throws verbal grenades in public when a little private schmoozing would probably be more productive.
We're glad the mayor of Baltimore gets hacked off about things. It's obvious that he cares about the city and cutting the crime rates. We all understand that getting Baltimoreans to stop killing one another, especially when heroin and cocaine still infest city life, is a complex problem.
But maybe the way to get help - especially from a new U.S. attorney who took the oath of office only a week ago today - is to buy the guy a cannoli from Vaccaro's instead of dropping a bomb in the press.
As is often - but not always - the case with these verbal outbursts, O'Malley has some little piece of truth on which to base his argument. He told a Sun reporter that the feds are making it harder for city gun cases to qualify for federal prosecution.
Under Project Disarm, started by former U.S. Attorney Lynne Battaglia, a defendant qualified for federal prosecution if he or she had one previous felony conviction. Now, according to the mayor, the feds want to see two previous convictions before they step in.
This might have been what U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz was talking about at the new U.S. attorney's swearing-in ceremony. The judge said federal authorities "cannot reasonably be expected to assume primary responsibility over crimes whose prosecution traditionally has fallen within the province [of] states and municipalities.
