This guy is oozing with entitlement, which seems to come along with being part of a family political machine. While I certainly have no respect for this guy, let's not forget the antics of various Kennedys, Bushes, Dodds, and so on.
At least it seems to me that folks in Detroit are getting fed up with the guy.
maad charges on him... it almost seems like they're gunning for this guy hard, the cops do like to bring down the high and mighty. not that he's making it at all difficult for them. if he won't think of his constituents, won't he at least think of the children? the children!
those 'controversies' are insane.. that beatty chick is kind of hot though (way hotter than that 'nikki' person, coates!)
I count myself among the few fortunate Canadians who live in the Detroit network television region. The Detroit late local news is unintentional comedy at its finest.
Dude's got a dead stripper on his hands. I grew up in Detroit and I cringe every time I read the freep or the detnews. Why couldn't my old neighbor Freman Hendrix, a supremely competent guy who had served as deputy mayor, have won the 2005 election and denied this fool a second term? This was Detroit's version of Bush vs. Kerry (same percentages in the end, even), and they screwed it up just as bad.
Frankly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing when Billy Dee was shilling for malt liquor and "creating" fragrances for Avon (not to mention the Star Wars thing.) I'm for installing Ta-Nehisi's dad as the go to guy for Official Black Thumbs Up & Thumbs Down. Actually I think it would be a real public service for all o fus if there were a "Siskel and Ebert" show where Ta-Nehisi's dad and...oh, maybe Samuel L. Jackson opine on all of the "black" shit that happened each week. That would be Official Black Opinion I could believe in.
Frankly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing when Billy Dee was shilling for malt liquor and "creating" fragrances for Avon (not to mention the Star Wars thing.) I'm for installing Ta-Nehisi's dad as the go to guy for Official Black Thumbs Up & Thumbs Down. Actually I think it would be a real public service for all o fus if there were a "Siskel and Ebert" show where Ta-Nehisi's dad and...oh, maybe Samuel L. Jackson opine on all of the "black" shit that happened each week. That would be Official Black Opinion I could believe in.
"Frankly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing when Billy Dee was shilling for malt liquor and "creating" fragrances for Avon (not to mention the Star Wars thing.)"
I'll give you the booze and scent, but I'm going to have to respectfully ask that you step way back from Star Wars. Lando Calrissian could have been played by no one else!
According to the Onion, Marion Barry got re-elected on the Let's All Smoke Crack campaign platform. it was thought that he would be the most likely to fulfill his campaign promise.
"Since 2002, the Washington D.C. police will only offer professional courtesy protection to Kilpatrick while he is conducting official business in the nation's capital. Washington police no longer provide after-hours police protection to Kilpatrick because of his inappropriate partying during past visits. Sergeant Tyrone Dodson of Washington explained by saying "we arrived at this decision because we felt that the late evening partying on the part of Mayor Kilpatrick would leave our officers stretched too thin and might result in an incident at one of the clubs." The Kilpatrick administration allege that the statements and actions of the Washington police are part in a political conspiracy to ruin the mayor."
One of the less scandalous but more hilarious controversies. He must either go to DC a lot or have made quite an impression in a few visits.
I moved to Detroit right when Kwame entered office. At the time, he seemed like a pretty logical choice. Family politics is big in Detroit and it was an election of ridiculous contrasts: 70 year old Gil Hill against 31 year old Kwame Kilpatrick. If I could have voted then I would have voted for Kwame, although he won by something like eight points. He seemed like a guy with potential, admittedly, I didn't know much about him other than that his mother was my congresswoman and halfway decent if a little bit of a crazy woman.
Then for the next few years, there was a scandal about a party at the mayoral mansion that everyone knows happened and noone will acknowledge publicly, and some stuff about getting his wife a Navigator on the city's dime. Frankly, at that time, I could deal with that petty stuff because the city was making some decent strides in terms of turning downtown around (certainly no worse than Dennis Archer's administration).
I voted for Freman Hendrix in 2005, and somehow KK pulled off a ridiculous come-from-behind victory: Hendrix was ahead by double digits but he lost. Now, though, the residents know about the 9 million dollar hush money that came out of the city budget, the dead stripper that was, according to a DPD officer, gunned down by a member of the mayor's Executive Protection Unit (Kwame's 6'8"/320, and he rides around with two or three bodyguards).
He should have been out of office months ago. The city is full of people who for whatever reason will never turn away from him, leaders who are too afraid to speak out against him, a governor who doesn't have the guts to pull the damn trigger already (she can remove him from office unilaterally, but doesn't want to be seen as a meddler), and a dysfunctional city council that can't seem to get anything done except flailing around trying to get rid of the guy. Hopefully his recent detention and arrest will make people stand up and see the light.
Really, he's like a George W. Bush of mayors. Got in cause of his parents. Loaded city government with his Cass Tech '77 cronies. Corrupt deals with Bobby Ferguson for redevelopment contacts. All this while the neighborhoods continue to lose people. Detroit has one movie theater. Three full supermarkets (this is for 800,000 people in about 120 square miles). Scrappers are stealing copper off 20-story buildings standing vacant in the middle of the city, catalytic converters, construction materials, anything of value. Why shouldn't they? Kwame's jaunt to Canada that sent him to jail was to negotiate the sale of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. The city is selling off its properties to get the money to operate. The city and its residents are selling pieces of itself to scrape by.
And the person who's supposed to somehow lead Detroit out of all this is shoving our own police who are doing their jobs.
To echo James's sentiments, when Kwame was elected, he did have a very positive vibe about him. The Republicans who worked with him in the MIchigan legislature thought highly of him and his mother was a Congresswoman who was elected to the House as a reform minded candidate who defeated an ineffective and defective incumbant.
But what has happened since has been a huge disappointment. I do see the parallels between him and W Bush. The city council isn't exactly clean either, so the checks and balances aren't functioning at a high level.
At least with Marion Barry, he understandably bought himself some leeway with voters because of his Civil Rights movement credentials and having been famously shot by Muslim terrorists in the 1970s while a city councilman. Kilpatrick survives because of charisma, racial tension, and ennui.
One factual correction, and then another correction which is more analytical.
Detroit didn't have to come out of its coffers ($3 billion budget by the way) to come up with the 9 mill. Insurance took care of that. One of the tragic things about this whole scenario is that we're having a whole host of conversations about what could've been done with that sum that we DIDN'T have when they put up the casinos, or the (then) new Tigers Stadium, or the new Ford Field, or the...you get the picture.
And Kwame is far from George W. Bush. If George were Jeb, then this would be on the money. But Kwame was the best neoliberal mayor Detroit could have had. And arguably when he was on top of his game he was better than Archer (who left him with a serious deficit). (I say this not being a particular fan of neoliberal mayors.)
Finally though Kilpatrick gets what he deserves at this point, the comparisons to Barry are really unfortunate. Going to Windsor and not telling the judge isn't quite the same as smoking crack. Maybe it's me.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
This guy is oozing with entitlement, which seems to come along with being part of a family political machine. While I certainly have no respect for this guy, let's not forget the antics of various Kennedys, Bushes, Dodds, and so on.
At least it seems to me that folks in Detroit are getting fed up with the guy.
Check out the Controversies section of the Wikipedia page on this dude. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Kilpatrick#Controversies
If half that shit is true, this dude is off the chain.
maad charges on him... it almost seems like they're gunning for this guy hard, the cops do like to bring down the high and mighty. not that he's making it at all difficult for them. if he won't think of his constituents, won't he at least think of the children? the children!
those 'controversies' are insane.. that beatty chick is kind of hot though (way hotter than that 'nikki' person, coates!)
I count myself among the few fortunate Canadians who live in the Detroit network television region. The Detroit late local news is unintentional comedy at its finest.
How do you break a grown man's hip by shoving him into a woman? What terrible journalism to leave that image unexplained.
Dude's got a dead stripper on his hands. I grew up in Detroit and I cringe every time I read the freep or the detnews. Why couldn't my old neighbor Freman Hendrix, a supremely competent guy who had served as deputy mayor, have won the 2005 election and denied this fool a second term? This was Detroit's version of Bush vs. Kerry (same percentages in the end, even), and they screwed it up just as bad.
If any-one had learned from Marion Barry, he wouldn't still be serving on the DC Council, getting in the way of education (I think?) reforms.
Frankly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing when Billy Dee was shilling for malt liquor and "creating" fragrances for Avon (not to mention the Star Wars thing.) I'm for installing Ta-Nehisi's dad as the go to guy for Official Black Thumbs Up & Thumbs Down. Actually I think it would be a real public service for all o fus if there were a "Siskel and Ebert" show where Ta-Nehisi's dad and...oh, maybe Samuel L. Jackson opine on all of the "black" shit that happened each week. That would be Official Black Opinion I could believe in.
Frankly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing when Billy Dee was shilling for malt liquor and "creating" fragrances for Avon (not to mention the Star Wars thing.) I'm for installing Ta-Nehisi's dad as the go to guy for Official Black Thumbs Up & Thumbs Down. Actually I think it would be a real public service for all o fus if there were a "Siskel and Ebert" show where Ta-Nehisi's dad and...oh, maybe Samuel L. Jackson opine on all of the "black" shit that happened each week. That would be Official Black Opinion I could believe in.
Kwame is a trainwreck. But the D deserves the leader they chose.
I must say, though, "did you miss me ... sexually?" has made it into my personal lexicon. Thanks for that, Kwame and mistress.
"Frankly, I thought it was kind of embarrassing when Billy Dee was shilling for malt liquor and "creating" fragrances for Avon (not to mention the Star Wars thing.)"
I'll give you the booze and scent, but I'm going to have to respectfully ask that you step way back from Star Wars. Lando Calrissian could have been played by no one else!
Didn't Marion Barry get re-elected?
According to the Onion, Marion Barry got re-elected on the Let's All Smoke Crack campaign platform. it was thought that he would be the most likely to fulfill his campaign promise.
@Nathan
Marion Barry is using his position on the DC City Council to prevent repairs on schools via a "hold".
Per Wikipedia:
"Since 2002, the Washington D.C. police will only offer professional courtesy protection to Kilpatrick while he is conducting official business in the nation's capital. Washington police no longer provide after-hours police protection to Kilpatrick because of his inappropriate partying during past visits. Sergeant Tyrone Dodson of Washington explained by saying "we arrived at this decision because we felt that the late evening partying on the part of Mayor Kilpatrick would leave our officers stretched too thin and might result in an incident at one of the clubs." The Kilpatrick administration allege that the statements and actions of the Washington police are part in a political conspiracy to ruin the mayor."
One of the less scandalous but more hilarious controversies. He must either go to DC a lot or have made quite an impression in a few visits.
I moved to Detroit right when Kwame entered office. At the time, he seemed like a pretty logical choice. Family politics is big in Detroit and it was an election of ridiculous contrasts: 70 year old Gil Hill against 31 year old Kwame Kilpatrick. If I could have voted then I would have voted for Kwame, although he won by something like eight points. He seemed like a guy with potential, admittedly, I didn't know much about him other than that his mother was my congresswoman and halfway decent if a little bit of a crazy woman.
Then for the next few years, there was a scandal about a party at the mayoral mansion that everyone knows happened and noone will acknowledge publicly, and some stuff about getting his wife a Navigator on the city's dime. Frankly, at that time, I could deal with that petty stuff because the city was making some decent strides in terms of turning downtown around (certainly no worse than Dennis Archer's administration).
I voted for Freman Hendrix in 2005, and somehow KK pulled off a ridiculous come-from-behind victory: Hendrix was ahead by double digits but he lost. Now, though, the residents know about the 9 million dollar hush money that came out of the city budget, the dead stripper that was, according to a DPD officer, gunned down by a member of the mayor's Executive Protection Unit (Kwame's 6'8"/320, and he rides around with two or three bodyguards).
He should have been out of office months ago. The city is full of people who for whatever reason will never turn away from him, leaders who are too afraid to speak out against him, a governor who doesn't have the guts to pull the damn trigger already (she can remove him from office unilaterally, but doesn't want to be seen as a meddler), and a dysfunctional city council that can't seem to get anything done except flailing around trying to get rid of the guy. Hopefully his recent detention and arrest will make people stand up and see the light.
Really, he's like a George W. Bush of mayors. Got in cause of his parents. Loaded city government with his Cass Tech '77 cronies. Corrupt deals with Bobby Ferguson for redevelopment contacts. All this while the neighborhoods continue to lose people. Detroit has one movie theater. Three full supermarkets (this is for 800,000 people in about 120 square miles). Scrappers are stealing copper off 20-story buildings standing vacant in the middle of the city, catalytic converters, construction materials, anything of value. Why shouldn't they? Kwame's jaunt to Canada that sent him to jail was to negotiate the sale of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. The city is selling off its properties to get the money to operate. The city and its residents are selling pieces of itself to scrape by.
And the person who's supposed to somehow lead Detroit out of all this is shoving our own police who are doing their jobs.
Sorry for the rant.
To echo James's sentiments, when Kwame was elected, he did have a very positive vibe about him. The Republicans who worked with him in the MIchigan legislature thought highly of him and his mother was a Congresswoman who was elected to the House as a reform minded candidate who defeated an ineffective and defective incumbant.
But what has happened since has been a huge disappointment. I do see the parallels between him and W Bush. The city council isn't exactly clean either, so the checks and balances aren't functioning at a high level.
At least with Marion Barry, he understandably bought himself some leeway with voters because of his Civil Rights movement credentials and having been famously shot by Muslim terrorists in the 1970s while a city councilman. Kilpatrick survives because of charisma, racial tension, and ennui.
Kwame is trifling.
Trifling.
I do believe that he's destined for an orange jumpsuit.
No more can be said about a man who puts his hands on COPS...for SOMEONE ELSE'S BUSINESS.
What Black man is that stupid?
One factual correction, and then another correction which is more analytical.
Detroit didn't have to come out of its coffers ($3 billion budget by the way) to come up with the 9 mill. Insurance took care of that. One of the tragic things about this whole scenario is that we're having a whole host of conversations about what could've been done with that sum that we DIDN'T have when they put up the casinos, or the (then) new Tigers Stadium, or the new Ford Field, or the...you get the picture.
And Kwame is far from George W. Bush. If George were Jeb, then this would be on the money. But Kwame was the best neoliberal mayor Detroit could have had. And arguably when he was on top of his game he was better than Archer (who left him with a serious deficit). (I say this not being a particular fan of neoliberal mayors.)
Finally though Kilpatrick gets what he deserves at this point, the comparisons to Barry are really unfortunate. Going to Windsor and not telling the judge isn't quite the same as smoking crack. Maybe it's me.