Kwam-foolery: The Delusions of the Emperor of Detroit

Detroit News Thursday, January 20, 2005: Two cops sue mayor, police chief

Accusing Detroit Emperor Kwame Kilpatrick of arrogance only goes so far toward illuminating the roots of the Kwam-foolery that has engulfed Detroit since 2002. Kwame is arrogant, yes, but after losing his fight against the release of a secret deal he withheld from city council, it's now clear that Emperor Kilpatrick is delusional.

"I think on a certain level, the mayor just doesn't get it, or he's in denial," [Council President Ken Cockrel Jr.] said.

The documents show that once Mike Stefani, the attorney for the three cops who filed suits against Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty, confronted Kilpatrick's attorneys with text messages that showed the pair lied under oath last summer, the mayor moved to settle the suits in exchange for the text messages. The amount grew to more than $9 million with attorneys' fees.

The documents further show that Kilpatrick scrapped the original settlement in an apparent attempt to circumvent a Free Press Freedom of Information Act request for the settlement documents. The city then concocted a second agreement that had two parts -- one for public consumption and the second that contained the agreement to conceal the text messages.

The City Council never saw an agreement about the text messages when it approved the settlement.

Not only will Kwame not resign from his job, he believes "[t]his is what I was born to do." And the city of Detroit and the rule of law are mere obstacles in the way of his destiny.

Kwame also states "[t]here was no cover-up." Which is an incredible claim. The documentation he fought to suppress, Detroit city council and multitudinous lawyers and journalists beg to differ. No cover-up? Just because a cover-up is poorly perpetrated, doesn't mean it didn't happen. For Kwame to claim otherwise demonstrates a clear disconnect with reality. There's no question he has spent too long among his inner circle of yes-men.

Regarding the money spent to settle the whistle-blower court case (almost $9 million) that opened this entire can of worms, Emperor Kilpatrick says, "I pay it back every day. . . . When I go out and do an economic stimulus package for hundreds of millions of dollars. When I go find a way to do a deal on the (Detroit-Windsor) tunnel for $75 million dollars. . . . I work every day to make sure the city gets what it's owed."

Emperor Kilpatrick believes he's above the law. He doesn't realize that it's his job to do these for Detroit, and he's still obligated to follow the law.

"My wife trusts me, my kids trust me and I think a great deal of citizens here (trust me, too) . . . What you can trust is that I'll be out there shoveling your snow, that I'll be fixing the streets up after the (snow) is all melted away."

"I'll be out there shoveling your snow". Unbelievable. Kwame Kilpatrick literally believes he is the city of Detroit. There is no separation, when the reality is ordinary Detroiters showing up to their jobs day-in and day-out -- while Kwame lazes about amid one tryst in the Carolinas, in Colorado, at the city's expense -- are getting the job done, keeping the streets cleared, continuing to collect the garbage. The comic effect the mental image Kwame Kilpatrick conjures of himself decked out in his pimp winter-gear, shoveling snow, clearing the city sidewalks and streets himself proves that mental illness does have its entertaining moments.

And finally, the last refuge of every scumbag politician: their families. Obviously desperate for some handhold on credibility, Kwame shields himself with his family, telling us his wife and children trust him. Some man he is hiding behind these poor, wronged people. The taint and tarnish with which Kwame has painted his own reputation and that of the city of Detroit is quite bad. Pouring that bucket over the heads of his family is sickening and really demonstrates the man's moral squalor.

If there is any justice in this world -- and there is little evidence it exists at all -- Kwame will remain in office long enough to burn every bridge he had once planned to cross into post-mayoral prosperity. That even his whores turn their backs on him -- but not in the fashion he's accustomed to -- and that in five or ten years time we do find him outside in the winter, a hulk in rags, shorn of his pomposity, shoveling snow from a smashed Detroit sidewalk.