New York Parents Fined for Daughter's Chalk Drawings on Stoop

This is the headline. The story itself can be found at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301559,00.html

So here's the story: a 6 year old drew a flower on her own home's stoop with sidewalk chalk. This prompted some nosy, antisocial, hateful bitch to call and complain about "grafitti", prompting the city government to send the parents a note, threatening a fine.

Let's go in reverse order. First, the city presumed the family was guilty. Who here thinks the city actually followed this complaint up to find out what situation was? One can argue that they can't follow up on every single complaint, but why not? That's their job, and if they don't want to make sure that a law is bring broken -- or that it's not in fact being broken -- then they don't need to have the law on the books. And isn't there supposed to be a presumption of innocence? Whatever happened toi that? (Increasingly I am seeing governments presume guilt, which is a dangerous trend.) Therre is a huge difference between grafitti and sidewalk art made with chalk that can be washed away by the first rain.

Next, there's the neighbor. Once upon a time there were these things called neighborhoods. People knew their neighbors by at least their first names -- sometimes neighbors would get together and play cards or cook out (I do remember those days). Neighbbors would borrow things from each other. They were neighborly. They created a neighborhood. So what do we have now? Houses next to ours with anonymous people coming in and out of them. If someone new moves in, nobody bothers to welcome them.

The problem is precisely the kind of neighbor who would call to complain about the chalk sidewalk art of a 6 year old drawing in her own yard. What this woman did wasn't very neighborly, in fact undermines the social fabric of the neighborhood. There was a time, long before my time, when if people thought someone "wasn't being very neighborly," they would go and talk to that person, as a neighborhood, and let them know that they did not appreciate them being a jerk, and that if they continued being a jerk, they would be asked to leave the neighborhood. There was an acknowledgement that humans are social, that you don't interfere with people and their property, and that being antisocial undermined the community and made it so people didn't look out for each other. The consequence has been the breakdown of communities and neighborhoods, the rise of crime, and the isolation of everyone. And it's because of women like this idiot who complained -- but also because the community allows people like her to comtinue to be in the neighborhood, complaining. This is further backed up by governments who kowtow to every whim of every whiny asshole. Government too, then, undermines our sociality, or communities, our neighborhoods by doing what they did in response to this whiny idiot.

And why did this women call and complain? To be a jerk. That's the only reason. She knows the difference between a 6 year old drawing with sidewalk chalk on her parents' stoop and grafitti. And everyone in her neighborhood should let her know that they don't appreciate what she did. And they should do it openly, together, and voiciferously -- as a neighborhood.