Kwame Was Not Made for the Sabbath, But the Sabbath for Kwame

Detroit mayor skips Sunday services

Darren A. Nichols / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Days after making public appearances throughout the city, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was again a no-show at his home church, Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ.

After going back to work and making three public appearances toward the end of the work week, many expected the city's mayor to return to his house of worship Sunday morning.

Imagine that. In spite of what "many expected" of him, Kwame, (whom we have noticed around here bears a striking resemblance to Marvel Comics' "Kingpin"), didn't show up for church yesterday.* What a surprise!

And after he was such a model of repentance and humility when he showed up at the church on Wednesday to make his religious pitch to Detroit's black churchgoers.

Not to worry. Kwame doesn't need to go to church if he has better things to do. As every nonchalant church-skipper will tell you, God is everywhere, right, so who needs to bother with seeking him out in some mere building? And it goes triple for Kwame that wherever Kwame goes, God is: that's because he's "God's guy" for the city, and the LORD "anointed" him to be mayor.

Which is just another way of saying Detroit's mayor do whatever he wants, and he can use whomever, and whatever he wants, and toss them aside when he's through--like a pair of -- say-- torn panties.** Someone else can clean up--a retinue of police officers assigned to his Executive Protection Unit, or his chief of staff, or his police chief, or his pastor, or his wife.

And, so far, someone else always does.

*A revised edition of this article reports that His Honor did show up at a later service--undoubtedly after the media requested comment on his failure to show up earlier.

**When former Detroit Police Officer Walter Harris was deposed, he described an instance in which he and his partner on the Mayor's security detail, while cleaning trash out one of the Mayor's city-owned vehicles, discovered a pair of woman's undies:

…there were a pair of woman’s underwear in the SUV. They were sitting in the backseat. And the one side was ripped -- it was ripped apart. And we looked -- we kind of looked at them and we said -- we know they don’t fit -- you know, these are a small pair of underwear and we know they don’t belong to the Mayor so-
Q. (Interposing) How about the first lady?
A. Or the first lady. We know they didn’t belong to her from looking at them.