John Montgomery Presents This Week's	February 10, 2001	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Robert Pickett
	Voted Most Likely to Play 'Suicide By Cop' at the White House

We've all met guys like Robert Pickett. The polite term is "neat freak". Excessively left-brained. Anal retentive. Binary bit heads. Think Martha Stewart. Everything has to be exactly right or they start making those frightening nasal noises like Felix Unger used to do when Oscar Madison would drop a cigar ash on the rug. They become accountants. One of them probably does your taxes. You have to take your shoes off before you go into their houses. They have perfectly groomed lawns that look life golf courses and they go berserk if leaves from your tree end up there. They're such high strung, tightly wound pains in the ass that you know it's only going to take one more straw of stress before the camel's back breaks and all hell breaks loose along with it. It's only a matter of time with these guys and you hope that when it happens, you (and any weapons) aren't in the general vicinity.

Robert Pickett's time finally came this week. He showed up at the southwest gate of the White House, firing a .38-caliber revolver in the air and babbling incoherently about suicide. The secret service tried to convince Robert to give up the gun, but didn't succeed. They finally ended the face off by shooting him once in the right knee. Authorities call this kind of behavior "suicide by cop."

Robert's background won't surprise anyone. He got kicked out of West Point. He lived alone, secluded with no social life. He was a certified public accountant from Indiana, but not an especially effective one. He'd disappear for weeks or months at a time, especially during tax season. A neighbor says he had "emotional problems" related to his family. He sued his brother in a dispute over their father's estate. A client described one of Robert's many fixations: "If you moved his pencil, he would move it back in place."

The Big Event in Robert's life was getting fired by the IRS 13 years ago. He's hated them ever since. Of course, hating the IRS doesn't automatically make you a nut case. Everybody hates the IRS. But Robert was obsessed. His home was filled with written diatribes against the feds. Recently he sent a letter to the IRS commissioner, saying that government was responsible for ruining his life, along with an ominous warning: "My death is on your hands. You are guilty of murder. Your predecessors made decisions which killed an innocent man.''

Robert couldn't even play "suicide by cop" properly. Not only did he fail to get killed, but now the pathetic details of his life have been plastered all over the media and if he ever does walk the streets again, it'll be with a notable limp.

He could have stayed an anonymous fruitcake forever, quietly harassing his employers and scaring his neighbors. But something in Robert finally snapped. What was it that finally drove him over the edge? What make him pick up the gun, drive all the way to Washington and start a game of chicken with the Secret Service? At this point, we don't know, but as usual, I have a few theories:

• He went to give Bill Clinton a piece of his mind about the pardons and became enraged when the White House guard told him, "Bill has left the building."

• He suddenly realized it was a conspiracy when Stacey got voted off the island on the first "Survivor".

• One of those couches the Clintons stole from the White House looked exactly like the one in his therapist's office.

• When George W Bush finishes reading a speech and makes that idiotic smirk face it just makes him want to hurl!

• He was overcome with the overwhelming fear that Jesse Jackson is his father.