Thurston Howell III DOESN'T Want Your Charity In Swellesley

At least, that's the message the charitable group "Home for Little Wanderers" got when they tried to set up a design home tour in the uber-rich liberal enclave of Wellesley.

The house, as you can see in the photo, is a low-rent dive, selling for a mere $6 million. Puh-Leeze! Lovey and I spend that every year at the Cape, really...

A design home tour works like this: People pay $25 to tour a house filled with stuff most of us could never afford. We don't park there, but ride a shuttle bus from a remote parking lot. The only sounds are the "ooohs" and "aaahs" of us peons as we gazed on how the other half lives.

But that's too much contact with the common folk for the Swells. They complained about and confronted the charity to such a degree that the group only raised a fraction of the money they were counting on.

This is nothing new from the Swells. Remember their efforts to shut down a Dunkin' Donuts on the main boulevard ("What--not a Starbucks? How gauche!")? It's all about the image, my dear.

And what more accurate image do you need of the wealthy NIMBYs of Wellesley than chasing away a charity?