Everyone else has already said what I was thinking about Ms. Dickerson, the audience this article is playing to, the conflation of race/class/sociopathy, etc., so I'll leave that alone.

Like others,my personal faith and political philosophy demand that I at least genuflect toward the Golden Rule. However, like all of us I too have had my charitable impulses eroded by no-class grifters.

I think the one positive takeaway from this article is: When you start to give things away or do favors for people, people with true class and the users tend to identify themselves by behavior rather quickly. When the users start showing out, you need to cut bait, and do it quickly. Users behave much like the 'Smith kids'--often you'll never get a "thank you", but the demands will quickly escalate as you are identified as a soft touch. Those with dignity on the other hand are usually effusively grateful, and perhaps a little abashed at receiving charity. Moving forward, I have had some success with a token quid-pro-quo system, not because I needed the cheap labor, but because some people appreciate the dignity that comes with exchanging services for goods. Everyone has something to contribute, even if it's watching your car or your dog while you run an errand. Ironically, that's what I see the drug dealers doing.

I see both kinds in my neighborhood; those who roll out after every snowstorm, offering to shovel walkways, and those who push up on pedestrians, demanding cash, and in some cases becoming abusive if they don't get it. Ms. Dickerson's largesse in the face of these kids' behavior went a couple of paragraphs beyond the common sense or street smarts I (stereotypically?) expect from a striver like her. Everyone I know would have cut those kids off long before she did.

God bless the social workers and others who have to deal with all comers. I couldn't do it.

Sephora is a cosmetics and perfume retail chain. Moses' wife was Zipporah.

I'm looking forward to scoring a bootleg DVD of Norbit from brothaman in the parking lot of Mickey D's (one of the benefits of living in the 'hood). Then I can give it away to my teenage neighbors, so the cycle of thievery can continue.

Because a) I now have to see it, but b) I'll rot in hell before I pay for what I think I'm about to see.

Honestly, haven't we been through all this before?

If you want to see:

Eddie Murphy as a hilarious nerd: Bowfinger (vastly underrated, if you ask me)

Eddie Murphy in a fat suit: Nutty Professor franchise

The lovely Thandie Newton: Flirting (filmed when she was still apparently eating food)

As a sista who is smaller than Rasputia, but who could probably only fit one arm into Thandie's jeans leg, I live with the blowback from this kind of stuff every damn day. Stereotyping is NOT benign.

(p.s. Spend your money on a CD of Nina Simone singing "Four Women")

Thanks from another one of those kids. Interesting how so many of those little black geeks that didn't fit in anywhere turned out to be pretty accomplished adults. Too bad you're not a licensed therapist Keef, or I'd ask your availability for some sessions with Debra Dickerson.

Although racism is a plank of the modern-day GOP platform, not all of them have drunk that particular Kool-Aid. I'll never forget watching Obama give a speech in downstate Illinois a couple of years ago, with former (GOP) Illinois governor Jim Edgar sitting onstage watching him with a look on his face that could only be described as fatherly. Obama's appeal to a narrow slice of Republicans surprises me not at all. Remember that Illinois in particular has a strong tradition of moderate,socially progressive GOP governors (e.g. George Ryan's death penalty moratorium). As the quintessential "qualified minority"-- Ivy-League college, Harvard Law (as is his wife), President of Harvard Law Review--Barack has been able to garner support from all sorts of unlikely quarters. The University of Chicago, which is the Anti-Berkeley, has never stopped begging Barack to join their faculty since he taught there. At the risk of sliding into the "some of my best friends" cliche, the fraught partisanship of the last eight years has us all demonizing the political "other". While I still believe that GWB supporters are mouth-breathers, I know for a fact there are others in the GOP who still have their wits about them and are appalled at the state of their party and politics in general.

My snark-o-meter is set off only when the person committing the gaffe is hateful (outing homophobes is a time-tested favorite). I don't have much use for beauty pageants, but raking a kid over the coals for having a brain freeze while speaking in public seems pretty pointless. Her subsequent high placement in the rankings however does give me a measure of cynical joy; we've known all along that beauty pageants are about physical appearance and nothing more.