The Fumo case: Understanding 'a sense of entitlement'

IN ADDITION to the long shopping list of charges that prosecutors presented to the jury that controls the fate of Vince Fumo, they also provided an all-embracing motive: The former state senator's "sense of entitlement."

We've heard that phrase before, and I think I know what it means. Prosecutors saying it doesn't make it true, but I stopped to think about what might have gone on in Vince's mind and how I might relate to it.

I've gotten so much for others, who could object if I took a sip myself? he might have thought. The Mafia calls this getting its beak wet, getting a "taste."

Before the "ethnic insult" alarms go off, I'm not suggesting that Vince was any part of organized crime, and I'm not selecting the Mafia metaphor just because Vince is Italian.

You don't have to be Italian to do bad things.

Myself, I am not Italian.

For a few years when I was in elementary school, my parents were leaders of the Parent Teachers Association. That's what it's called in Noo Yawk, where I was born. Here it's called the Home & School Association.

My father, a union organizer for pay during the day, was a community organizer for free in the evening. Yes, like Barack Obama - except Dad got exactly zero money for his freelance neighborhood activities. He was president of the PTA because he believed in service, in making the world a better place, starting in your own neighborhood.

At 92, he is still tearing around Florida like Batman in a Buick doing what he has always done - helping others to improve their lives.

During the Blizzard of '47, after New York was shut down by 2 feet of snow dumped on it in 24 hours, Dad pulled a sled a half-mile through waist-high snow drifts to reach a dairy distributor. Dad was slim and wiry then, and by the time he reached the distributor, a carpet of snow covered his thick black hair.

He loaded the sled with cases of milk - it came in bottles then - and painfully dragged it back through the snow to our neighborhood. He handed out the milk to neighbors for what he paid, not a penny more.

Dad passionately believes - and lives - the ideal of service without profit, which is why he is loved, even by people who don't agree with some of his socialist beliefs. If everyone were like Dad, socialism could work. But they are not, and so it will not.

My mother, who shared Dad's dedication to service, was secretary/treasurer of the PTA. She got the job mostly because she volunteered, but also because her penmanship was as lovely as a Shakespeare sonnet.

They kept the PTA cash box in our apartment and I occasionally stole from it.

I didn't steal much. There wasn't much to steal. The kitty never held more than $20, and even a $2 shortage would be immediately known. I was the pettiest of petty thieves, stealing a few coins now and again to spend on penny candy, because that's all it would buy. I am embarrassed by how cheaply I sold my honor.

When you are a thief, you are a thief. Morally, the amount you steal doesn't matter that much.

What I did was wrong - proven, I think, by my memories being so clear so many decades later.

But back then, if you asked me why I stole - no one did, because I was never caught - I might have said it was to compensate me for the time my parents took from me to spend on the PTA.

I was entitled to it.

But, of course, I really wasn't.

E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns:

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