I’ll tell you why Pennsylvania State Senator Vince Fumo is going to be convicted by the jury currently considering his guilt or innocence on 137 charges of abuse of power. It’s because no mother would want a son to disappoint her so much. And Fumo is being judged by a jury consisting of 10 women along with two men, all of whom have heard, chapter and verse, about things that would shame a mother. The sins of arrogance and pride, the loss of perspective about what is right and what is not right, the fall from grace by a brilliant man because he thought he was beyond falling. Testimony during the epic trial that began before the Phillies won the World Series has revealed the son for the man he became, an insecure bully of staff and loved ones, a clueless tyrant who compared his misdeeds to spitting on the sidewalk, and excused his paranoia about a former girlfriend that led him to hire a private investigator to stalk her by explaining to the court that he — Vince Fumo — is terribly shy.

Bull-shy. Fumo may be socially inept but “shyness” does not accurately describe his single-minded quest for power or appliances or yacht trips or control over others. The case of the People versus Vince Fumo was settled long ago by the people’s court of Philadelphia. The verdict: the guy is a vindictive creep. The creep factor has loomed large in this trial, from the ALL CAPS profanity laced emails, to his compulsive acquisition of vacuum cleaners for each room of his mansion, to the private eye tailing his ex, to the taxpayer paid staffers and equipment dispatched to hoist a flag at his Jersey shore summer home, to the weird relationship between him and two older men — “surrogate fathers” — one who gave him a million dollars to settle a divorce, the other who testified against him in court. And then there were his favorite initials, OPM, for Other People’s Money. LOL.

But creepiest of all was the former state senator’s testimony in his own defense. “I did what I did,” he said in open court about things most of us would whisper to a priest in confession. Here was the self-proclaimed most powerful Democratic politician in Pennsylvania describing his duties to the chamber he represented and the people he served: “My only obligation as a senator is to go to Harrisburg and vote.” And then there was his Whopper Junior moment when instead of shouting, “I wish I’d never been broiled,” he said, “In retrospect, I wish I never got elected to the senate.” Et tu, Vincenzo?

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