{"id":3532,"date":"2008-09-04T13:04:59","date_gmt":"2008-09-04T17:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2008\/09\/04\/good-news-from-detroit-kwame-kilpatrick-resigns\/"},"modified":"2008-09-04T13:10:26","modified_gmt":"2008-09-04T17:10:26","slug":"good-news-from-detroit-kwame-kilpatrick-resigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/09\/04\/good-news-from-detroit-kwame-kilpatrick-resigns\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news from Detroit: Kwame Kilpatrick resigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The breaking news from Detroit City is that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will resign from office later this month as part of a plea bargain after admitting he lied under oath. The Detroit Free Press has a good collection of articles and videos<\/a> that cover this sordid tale (which has many, many chapters) while Salon.com just posted a piece<\/a> that relates this news to some deeper themes in Detroit and Michigan politics (it’s the place where the term “Reagan Democrat” was born), as well as what it means for the Obama campaign:<\/p>\n

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice on Thursday morning. Kilpatrick will forfeit his office and serve 120 days in jail, ending a scandal that began when the Detroit Free Press published raunchy text messages between Kilpatrick and his ex-chief of staff. Messages proving that, in spite of Kilpatrick’s testimony during a civil lawsuit, the pair had, in fact, been knocking boots. <\/em><\/p>\n

As much as Detroiters are relieved to be rid of their lubricious, dissembling mayor, Barack Obama has to be even more relieved. <\/em><\/p>\n

Last year, before addressing the Detroit Economic Club, Obama praised Kilpatrick as “a great mayor.” This year, he told the mayor to stay away from the Democratic National Convention. On Wednesday, as Kilpatrick apparently balked at accepting a plea deal, Obama issued a public statement asking him to resign<\/a>. The longer Kilpatrick stayed in office, the more the Detroit-phobic white voters of Michigan were liable to ask, “If a black Democrat can’t run the city, how can one run the country?”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do we think of this up here in Toronto? Perhaps first a sense of relief that this once great city, with so many other problems, can now look forward to new leadership soon. Detroit is the kind of place that puts things into perspective. I remember hearing a former mayor of Windsor talk about meeting with Detroit’s late mayor Coleman A Young<\/a> in the 1980s and being shocked at firepower of his security detail who all kept loaded Uzi’s under their coats. Young also famously installed bullet proof windows at the official mayor’s residence, The Manoogian Mansion<\/a>, the same place one of Kilpatrick’s sordid chapters unfolded one night in the form of a wild party with exotic dancers (one who eventually was murdered<\/a>). Kilpatrick and his entourage sailed through his broken city in a fleet of black tinted Cadillac Escalades, and quickly evaporated the excitement generated when he was first elected in 2002 as a young and energetic 31 year old political force with such promise. Known as “the hip hop mayor,” he was reelected in 2005 even as many accusations of corruption were already public.<\/p>\n

In Detroit nobody talks about bike lanes or cars parking in parks or tearing down freeways or the effects of gentrification or the look of a particular new condo tower. In fact, most of what we post about on this blog is so far down the hierarchy of concerns in Detroit that I feel a pang of guilt when I look back on what we discuss here. Even though many of us disagree politically on various issues, I think there is a general sense from all sides that most of the characters involved in Toronto’s civic life are generally inherently decent folks, and a regime like Kilpatrick’s is so foreign a concept that it’s nearly impossible to relate.<\/p>\n

That guilt changes quickly to a feeling of being grateful to live in Toronto, where we get to care (and celebrate and discuss and argue) the details of city life.<\/p>\n

Top photo by CAVE CANEM<\/a>, lower photo by ffg<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The breaking news from Detroit City is that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will resign from office later this month as part of a plea bargain after admitting he lied under oath. The Detroit Free Press has a good collection of articles and videos that cover this sordid tale (which has many, many chapters) while Salon.com justContinue reading “Good news from Detroit: Kwame Kilpatrick resigns”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10172,10176,10173,854,10171,10180,10174,10177,1445,1441,10178,426,2242,10175,21,809,10179,10182,19,10181,853],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-barack-obama","tag-chief-of-staff","tag-coleman-a-young","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-city","tag-detroit-economic-club","tag-detroit-free-press","tag-great-mayor","tag-hip-hop-mayor","tag-kwame-kilpatrick","tag-late-mayor","tag-mayor","tag-michigan","tag-official-mayor","tag-other-cities","tag-salon-com","tag-the-detroit-free-press","tag-the-manoogian-mansion","tag-toronto","tag-uzi","tag-windsor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGood news from Detroit: Kwame Kilpatrick resigns - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/09\/04\/good-news-from-detroit-kwame-kilpatrick-resigns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Good news from Detroit: Kwame Kilpatrick resigns - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The breaking news from Detroit City is that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will resign from office later this month as part of a plea bargain after admitting he lied under oath. 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