A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

by Jeffrey C. Billman, Holly Otterbein and Andrew Thompson

Evan M. Lopez

Last week, we told you that Philadelphia received a report card informing us that our longtime subsistence on Fritos Honey BBQ Twists and purple drink has made us the very least healthy county in all of Pennsylvania. The city Health Commissioner's Office, though, has known for some time that the city is becoming fatter and deader; at its prompting, on Feb. 24, City Council's Committee on Public Health and Human Services held a public hearing on obesity. And lest you think the hearing was a bunch of political acrobatics designed to make you think Council actually does things, the hearing produced more than just numbers on how fat and ugly we are, although it did that, too, and yes, we are quantifiably fat and ugly: 29 percent of adults and 28 percent of children in this city are obese. Another 35 percent of adults and 29 percent of children are overweight. We've known about this problem for some time: In 1999, Men's Fitness declared us the fattest city in America, and hell if anything's changed since then.

But it's not just us. The whole state is fat, too — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Pennsylvania's adult obesity rate was 27.7 percent in 2008; among blacks, the state's obesity rate is above 35 percent.

No, we're not alone; we're just the worst.

At the hearing, city Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz announced some in-progress plans to counteract this epidemic of lardassitude: On Dec. 1, the city filed an application with the CDC to get grant money for an anti-obesity program.

The city is also considering new restrictions on corner stores, to keep kids from consuming purple drink and Fritos Honey BBQ Twists every goddamn day. (A single corner store visit usually provides around "360 nutrient-pool calories ... for just over $1 per visit," Schwarz said at the hearing.)

These restrictions, Schwarz tells us, could include what corner stores can display and where they can locate junk food. Actually enacting such a measure will, of course, be subject to a tidal wave of lawsuits. Which leaves us with our only other option:

Vitamin-infused purple drink.

If you were a school official somewhere who had anything to do with LANrev, the software that the Lower Merion School District allegedly used to spy on its kids in their homes, you'd toss that skeleton into a closet guarded by Sayid Jarrah and the Smoke Monster and call it a day, right? LANrev who? Exactly.

So we were a little surprised at what Roy Britton, the information technology director at Bucks County's Bensalem Township School District, told us when we asked if Bensalem uses LANrev on the 500-some laptops it lends to students:

"Yeah. We've used it to recover laptops. Twice."

And will you continue using it? "Absolutely."

But you at least told parents that you could use LANrev to activate the laptops' webcams and take pictures of whatever is in front them, right? "We never published that information, so to speak. We didn't want to lose the ability to use the software if needed."

Well, that cat's out of the bag. For the record, Bensalem's students, unlike Lower Merion's, don't take their laptops home. Still, that doesn't change the fact that an IT guy could accidentally (or not accidentally) snap a picture of a teenager changing for gym class.

Meanwhile, Absolute Software, the company that sells LANrev, is acting like LANrev is some guy it met once, at like, a party or something, but totally hated, and would never talk to again, swear to God: This month, the company will release its LANrev update, which will permanently disable Theft Track, the specific LANrev feature that makes spying via webcam possible.

And what are the company's thoughts on vigilante IT directors who take it upon themselves to search for stolen laptops?

"We absolutely don't encourage doing that," says Stephen Midgley, Absolute Software's head of marketing. "That is work best left to the professionals."

John Dickey may be costumed as a human tea bag, but don't call him a "tea bagger." "I don't know if you know what a tea bagger is," he says. "But I looked it up, and it's very, verrry dirty. We're the Tea Party, not tea baggers."

Dickey, a leathery-faced man in his 50s with thick glasses almost as old, is standing on the corner and Broad Street and Washington Avenue, holding up a double-sided sign crafted out of lots and lots of PVC pipes, tape and American flags. One side reads: "Unwanted as President: He Bowed to Them, But Not We the People." The other: "Throw the Tea in Boston Harbor Again!!! It Worked the First Time."

It's Feb. 27, which, in case you don't get the Tea Party Patriots RSS feed, is the very first birthday of the Tea Party movement. And what — or who — gave life to this beautiful baby?

"Rick Santelli!" declares Diana Reimer, the grandmotherly coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots in Pennsylvania. On Feb. 19, 2009, in what the movement's followers refer to as "The Rant of the Year," Santelli bombastically railed against President Obama's proposed housing bailout on CNBC.

Some of us thought Santelli was acting like a spoiled, belligerent jackass. But a sizable enough group, it seems, took his message to heart. "He asked, 'Do you want to be paying for someone else's mortgage?'" Reimer recalls fondly. "Then he said we should throw an old-fashioned tea party, and a week later there were 50 tea parties across the country."

By: Holly Otterbein (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION

Like her 15 or so comrades, most of whom are in their 50s and 60s, Reimer waves a sign and American flag throughout the hourlong protest. (Winning sign of the day: "Reid My Lips: No Reconciliation.") When drivers beep their horns in solidarity, Reimer presses an empowered thumb into the air, hollering "Yeah!" like an endlessly enthusiastic 16-year-old. For most of the hour, the protest doesn't breed anger, but rather, fun — well, you know, fun for old folks who'd never thought of themselves as "political types" before.

Brief, impassioned conversations pop up: "Did you know state workers in California are getting $400,000 a year in retirement benefits?" asks Dickey.

"Teddy Kennedy was the worst guy. Liberals just used black people to get to their progressive ends. They created a class of dependents," says an ex-New York cop.

"There's health insurance out there for everyone. You can get insurance if you want it," says Barbara Dahdah-Anderson.

But the protest isn't fun for everyone. An African-American woman approaches Don Reimer, Diana's husband, and an argument ensues over whether the country is a representative democracy or a republic. (Both?)

There's yelling, and eventually the woman starts to cry in frustration.

"We don't consider you the opposition," one protester says.

"Well, I do!" the woman responds. Then, a passer-by, who mistakes your Million Stories correspondent for a Tea Partier, grabs us firmly by the shoulders. She is overweight and sickly. She stares us dead in the eye: "Starting Monday, I don't have health insurance."

This week's report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Holly Otterbein and Andrew Thompson. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.