Detroit's Thug Mayor Finally Steps Down

Detroit, your long local nightmare is over. Kwame "Lady Killer" Kilpatrick has come to his senses:

DETROIT - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges Thursday in a sex-and-misconduct scandal and will step down after months of defiantly holding onto his job leading the nation's 11th-largest city. He was ordered jailed for four months and fined $1 million.

The plea deal brings to an end a seven-months-long ordeal that led to felony charges against Kilpatrick and plunged the city, region and state into political chaos.

As part of the deal, the 38-year-old Democrat is to serve four months in jail and five years of probation. He would pay the $1 million in restitution over the five-year probationary period.

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge David Groner asked Kilpatrick if the mayor understood he was giving up the right to be innocent until proven guilty.

"I gave that up a long time ago," Kilpatrick replied.

I thought this day would never come.

I haven't hid my disgust for Kwame Kilpatrick. Mostly because he's crooked and a jerk and his mistress was the one who got fired while he pranced around in his SUVs and expensive suits, appearing on TV with his wife apologizing for being crooked. Hiding behind his mama, who defended him and almost lost her seat in Congress for it.

But fear not crooked politician fans, as my play cousin AverageBro has described, Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah "Barracuda" Palin possesses her own Kilpatrick-style strong arm policies. While Kwame tried to fire the cop investigating him, revealing those porno text messages I hope to never hear another reporter read out loud again, Palin is under investigation for firing the public safety official who wouldn't fire her brother-in-law. Sarah's living that "Thug Life," as evident in her speech Wednesday night where she tried to put the smack down on Barack Obama without really explaining why she was the right woman for the job.

Who cares! She's thug! That's all that matters! MC Rove nods in agreement. At least with her I can enjoy the thuggery and laugh at it, rather than cringe through Kilpatrick's Suge Knight impressions.

Oh, happy day!

Kwame Kilpatrick Goes To Jail; Continues to Embarass Self and Detroit

Some people don't know when to leave the party.

And by "people," I mean Detroit's Thug-4-Life mayor, Mr. Kwame Kilpatrick. As you may have heard on a TV set or read in a blog or news site near you, Kilpatrick violated the terms of his bond recently by attending to some city business in nearby Canada. He didn't notify the authorities that he was stepping out of the country for a bit, so the judge treated him like any other criminal and sent him to jail.

It was while watching this unfold it occurred to me that this man was still the acting mayor of Detroit.

In a brazen act that would make Bill Clinton blush, he still continues to rule the roost while fighting a legal battle that could slam him with a decades long prison sentence. I've seen politicians stay in power in all sorts of hinky situations, but Kilpatrick's woes are so overwhelming, so distracting that if he cared about Detroit and its citizens he'd step down.

I'd falsely assumed he'd abdicated his throne by now. With the controversies and the firings and the affairs and the embarrassment and the whole cover-up, perjury, breakin' the law thing. You know? That stuff. And now he's going to jail. The mayor of Detroit. Jail for breaking his bond. How can you execute as Detroit's top executive if you are in the clink? How exactly does this work? Slipping city legislation through hollowed out Bibles? Engraving the daily itinerary on the prison walls?

And what I don't understand are the people who still doggedly defend Kilpatrick. Blackness is not an immunity amulet to shield corrupt politicians from criticism from the same community they are embarrassing and victimizing. I'm for defending the defenseless and the wrongly accused, but Kilpatrick has done nothing to warrant such loyalty. He chose to do the things he did in a sloppy effort to hide his affair. It would have served him better to just admit he was screwing around that break the law and commit perjury to conceal it. Did he learn nothing from Bill and Barry Bonds and countless others who lie to federal grand juries?

Screwing around and taking steroids (which aren't illegal, mind you) doesn't get you in trouble. Lying about it to a federal judge does. Lying about it to Congress does. Lying about it to a prosecutor while under questioning does.

Now if you're not stupid enough to figure that out, you don't deserve to be dog catcher, let alone mayor of anything. If former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer knew to back down after screwing call girls, and he's successor David Paterson knew to own up to his past extramarital dibbling and dabbling from jump, what is Kilpatrick's excuse ... other than he is too stubborn, too self-involved, too vain, too obtuse, too hood to step down?

Kilpatrick was cut by his own overplayed hand. There's really only one question left to ponder:

Who's going down as the worst black American mayor? Kilpatrick or reigning king former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Berry?

Busted in an FBI sting while smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with an ex-girlfriend, Barry ended up serving a six month sentence, but remained part of the D.C. political scene and returned to be mayor again four years later. Berry's had a history of drug problems and as recently as 2005 tested positive for cocaine in the midst of an IRS investigation, but he's still kicking around, currently as city councilman. At one time he ran for office under the slogan "He may not be perfect, but he's perfect for D.C."

Nice.

But what's worst or who's worst? And why? Did either do things that helped their respective cities while the mayors were in-between controversies? Is there something to be salvaged from these tarred and tattered legacies?