Detroit: So Ghetto'ver It Already

For those of you hoping that Obama’s election, whatever else it might mean for the future of the Republic, at least will start to lower the sea levels of racial victim politics, I have to report the levels are holding steady in Detroit.

According to the Detroit News, (“Remarks topple Detroit's top lawyer”), Detroit’s corporation counsel, Kathleen Leavey, a white woman, has been forced to resign. Why? Because she mentioned that the city’s 36th District Court, affectionately known in the legal community as a “zoo,” was “acting like a ghetto court” in its sloppy handling of a legal matter it had with the city. Leavey said later she called the court that

“because of the way they treat people,” . . . referring to long lines for service that are common. “They treat people poorly ... whether you are black or white. You just get less service than you get in the suburbs. It's just a bad situation.”

Indeed, the 36th DC has a well-earned reputation for horrible public service, ticket-fixing judges, and general incompetence--and when County Prosecutor Kym Worthy was prosecuting Kwame Kilpatrick, she "tried to have every judge in the court barred from hearing preliminary stages of the criminal charges against Kilpatrick because she claimed they were too entwined in his political machine."

But the court administrator to whom Leavey made her "ghetto" remark was black, and, perhaps newly filled with the Holy Ghost after the election of Barack Obama, immediately decided Leavey’s comment was racist. And then Chief Judge Marilyn Atkins, who is also black, decided that the comment was both racist and unforgiveable. Atkins wrote a letter to Leavey, (so far not released to the public), in which she stated that:

she was offended and that she would not accept an apology from Leavey even if she offered one. She also defended the court in the letter, saying it has a “positive reputation” in the city and that judges are hardworking and dedicated.

“You should really think before you speak, especially when referring to this court -- a predominantly African-American court in a predominantly African-American city with an African-American about to become president.”

Clearly, Obama’s election accomplishment notwithstanding, Atkins still feels she needs to use her office to enforce a race-based administrative philosophy. (Were the racial mix reversed, Atkins’s letter would be exhibit A in a race discrimination claim against the city. You can't tell workers "because we're all one race and you're different, you aren't free to speak").

When Atkins warns Leavey that “you’d better think before you talk,” she uses as her basis the fact of dramatic African-American progress in both local and national government, the high-point of which is “an African-American about to become president.” So why the heavy hand?

It’s like Obama's election means the tables have turned, but we all have to keep playing the same damned game. Instead of hearing, “I’m offended and because we're victims, now you have to pay,” are we now going to hear; “I’m offended and because we’re on top now, now you have to pay”? This doesn't sound like change and progress. It sounds like getting even. (Did I mention Marilyn Atkins is a Chief Judge?).

Atkins’s behavior certainly doesn’t signal that she looks forward to greater racial harmony and a healing of old wounds. Obama’s election notwithstanding, she thinks it's her duty to increase racial hypersensitivity, not lessen it, and lay down more stringent punishments of white people for perceived racial foo-poos.

Even if I believed that Leavey’s use of the word “ghetto” was a sin, (maybe because it’s a scintilla of an emanation of the penumbra of the n-word--but then how come no one fired Elvis for using it?), even if it were, for the life of me I can’t imagine how Atkins decides she can refuse in advance to accept an apology even if one were offered.

After all, Atkins can afford to be big. Because she's absolutely right about the predominance of African-Americans in Detroit government. Leavey is one of the few, the very few, white people working in a high position in the city, and it’s ludicrous to imagine that, even if Leavey harbored racial animus against the race of persons she's been surrounded with her entire professional life (which I don’t believe), not the city nor the 36th District Court, nor the concrete interests of any black person in Detroit face the slightest risk simply because Leavey used the word “ghetto.”

This kind of maximum pique by Atkins is especially uncalled for from her position as a chief judge in, as she puts it, “a predominantly African-American court in a predominantly African-American city with an African-American about to become president.”

Don’t get me wrong and blah, blah, blah; but Atkins’s stubborn refusal to resolve this minor dispute sensibly is exactly the kind of behavior that leads to so much strife and violence and lost opportunities--in the ghetto.

Detroit's Divine Kwamedy

The shiny black Escalade pulled to the curb in front of Detroit's 36th District Court.

Plainclothes police officers began assuming positions as if they were going to protect their very important passenger, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

Someone sitting in the backseat was wearing a stylish fedora, just like the mayor.

But the scene on Madison Avenue on Tuesday afternoon was not what it appeared.

The Escalade was a decoy.

The person in the backseat was a body double.

A body double?

Yes, a body double, just like the one used by U.S. President Henry Ashton in the current film thriller, "Vantage Point."

While the faux Kilpatrick rolled up in front of the courthouse, the real mayor entered from the rear. (“Mayor's security pulls rare ruse/Body double tactic seldom used by U.S. city leaders”).

They say that every comedy ends up relying on a case of mistaken identity. I don’t know if that’s always true, but Detroit’s mayoral comedy was a case in point just the other day, when His Honor was scheduled to show up at 36th District Court to be arraigned on 8 felony counts. The courtroom activity was televised, naturally, and the news crews were waiting out front on Madison for the Kingpin’s arrival. Those of you goldbrickers who were watching it, like I was, know all about the 3-4 minute wait after the Escalade rolled up, only to find--fooled ya!-- Kwame was already standing in the courtroom in front of the judge.

DU has been unable to confirm what we’re told by sources close to the Kipatrick defense team that Kilpatrick’s lead attorney, Dan ("Dream Weaver") Webb, actually had to argue Kwame out of walking into court through the front door. It turns out Kwame had been rehearsing one particularly stylish shoulder-rolling, knee-popping perp walk for weeks, hoping to impress potential jurors with it. It’s the same one he uses when he arrives at church, so he doesn’t get to use it much.

Still, (we're told), Webb insisted on the decoy operation. But not just to spare the Mayor an embarrassing encounter with pushy reporters in front of Steve Wilson’s camera crew. Rather, Webb's already planning now how the decoy operation will play a key role later in the Kilpatrick trial strategy.

We've watched for weeks as Defendant Kilpatrick has flatly denied, (pretty unconvincingly), that he did any of the things that all the evidence shows him doing. Webb's strategy is to have his client just come right out and level with the jury:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the reason I say I never did those things, is because all those things were done by my body double.

“It was my body double who was holding Christine Beatty’s face in his hands while he ‘sang whatever song it was;’ it was my body double snuggling up with the Jamaican chippie in that Russell Woods barbershop; it was my body double lolling in a North Carolina hot tub with ‘Carmen Slowski.’”

In fact, if push comes to shove, the Mayor is prepared to swear under oath that it was his body double partying at the Manoogian Mansion the night the First Lady sent Tamara Greene to the ER, or who told all those lies in court during the whistleblower trial, or who signed the secret agreement.

And what possible reason, you may ask, could Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick offer a jury that might explain why he would ever send a pinch hitter in to do his God-given off-hours pinching, or to seize his divinely-ordained opportunities to hit it?

To protect his family, that's why.

It was the only way this desperate, put-upon Mayor could save his family from all the threats made against him by hostile non-Detroit Wayne County residents , and all these other people who “don’t care about us,” as Reverend Horace Sheffield III describes them--the ones who spend every waking hour trying to figure out ways to harm Detroit's very own "God's Guy."