Pride goeth before a fall.
~ Proverbs
I, like all Americans and now the world, was stunned at the sensational scandal that broke on the front pages of the New York Times on Monday. I asked myself the question, “How could a man of such towering stature, talent, position, privilege and power throw it all away for a prostitute?” I answered myself: “None of those attributes have anything to do with morality” – and there is the rub.
Since I was in the midst of writing my mid-week column about the crisis of leadership in Detroit, it became irresistible to me to do a comparative analysis of New York’s egomaniac governor, Eliot Spitzer, and Detroit’s pathological mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who incidentally delivered his “State of the City” address Tuesday.
I could have saved “America’s first hip-hop mayor” a lot of time and money on speechwriters and his audience the inconvenience of trudging out in the cold and snow by writing the speech for him using just six words: Hey yo, Dog? – Detroit is screwed!
To give you an idea of the efficiency of law and government of New York and the tolerance for the minstrel show here in Michigan, consider the following:
- Spitzer came to the press within hours of the news breaking of his affair with a prostitute. He resigned yesterday. However, in Michigan, over six years since Kilpatrick has taken office, published text messages conclusively prove that the mayor and Christine Beatty, his former chief of staff and lover, repeatedly lied under oath in a whistleblower lawsuit – a treacherous act that decimated families, costing the careers of four decorated police officers and the city over $9 million.
- Both Spitzer and Kilpatrick are ambitious, arrogant, narcissistic men who possess a cunning, evil and pathological nature.
- Both men won elections in 2002 – Spitzer being re-elected as attorney general with 66 percent of the vote and Kilpatrick garnering well over 55 percent in his race for mayor. Kilpatrick won a second term in 2006 by openly stealing the election. To date, not one Detroiter has had the vision to bring a campaign fraud lawsuit in protest.
- Spitzer won the governorship in 2006 after spending years as a district attorney and later attorney general of the Empire State, zealously fighting what he considered corporate greed and corruption within Wall Street. Kilpatrick, the son of two politically connected parents (his mother is the current chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus) was a state representative before becoming the mayor of Detroit.
- Spitzer saw himself as an incorruptible crusader of righteousness anointed to cast down the wickedness of the money changers of Wall Street. He was the sworn enemy of white-collar crime, the Mafia and organized prostitution, yet he apparently lived a double life regarding the latter. I wonder who paid the tab for his licentiousness.
- Likewise, Mayor Kilpatrick, in October 2002, had a wild party at his Manoogian Mansion replete with three strippers – one of them an aspiring young businesswoman, college student and mother of three named Tamara “Strawberry” Greene. Seven months later, Greene and another dancer would be murdered. According to 31-year law-enforcement veteran Lt. Alvin Bowman, the suspicious murders had the imprint of a trained police officer.
- Both men lavished their women with money, favors and trips. Spitzer (“Client No. 9”) reportedly paid his prostitute $4,300 plus hotel and travel expenses by train from New York to the exclusive Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. Kilpatrick did Spitzer one better: In the midst of all the embarrassing media coverage of the text messaging scandal with Christine Beatty, the mayor still found time to take a much needed vacation at a ritzy spa in North Carolina with his special woman Jan. 19-21. No, not his wife, Carlita, but a woman named, “Carmen Slowski.” The tab for Detroit taxpayers – $900.
- Spitzer’s vengeance knew no end as he wantonly abused the power of his office to punish his political enemies, real and imagined. In a Nixonian move, Spitzer even used state troopers to spy on a Republican state senator, Joseph Bruno, and authorized the punitive use of the IRS on Bruno, on Hank Greenberg, the former CEO of AIG Corp., and against several prominent Wall Street bankers.
- In 2003, Mayor Kilpatrick asked his buddy Attorney General Mike Cox (a Republican) to call off the Michigan State Trooper’s investigation of a “party.” Cox then abused the power of his office to “investigate” the alleged party at the Manoogian Mansion, and you guessed it, Cox found no evidence of a party, calling the alleged party “an urban legend.”
- Spitzer, whose supporters once predicted that he would become “the first Jewish president,” is now a broken, pathetic little man – a laughing stock and a sobering example of how quickly the pride of man is cast down to perdition in a day.
- On the eve of his “State of the City” address Kilpatrick was blindsided by an affidavit submitted by Janice Rogers in the Tamara Greene obstruction-of-justice lawsuit. Ms. Rogers, an unassuming 65-year-old retired police station clerk, made the astonishing claim that in late 2002 while she was doing her normal clerk duties of reading and cataloguing incoming police reports, she read the actual police report where Carlita Kilpatrick allegedly assaulted Greene at a party at the Manoogian Mansion. Rogers claims the report said Greene was touching Mayor Kilpatrick in a manner that made Mrs. Kilpatrick upset, which resulted in Ms. Greene receiving a severe beat-down “with a wooden object.”
- Spitzer’s role models were Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Dewey and Rudy Giuliani, who were all zealous crusaders against public corruption, ambitious men who cleverly parlayed their vocation into prestigious positions of power.
- Here in Detroit, Kilpatrick is referred to as “The Barack Obama before there was a Barack Obama” because as he ascended the throne of power as mayor of Detroit in 2002 at the tender age of 32, his gregarious nature and political talents made people envision him after two terms of perhaps even becoming a governor or a senator.
In the words of former presidential candidate Ross Perot: “What’s that giant sucking sound?” It is the gubernatorial aspirations of Spitzer, Kilpatrick and Mike Cox going down the toilet.
Sic semper tyrannus – Thus to all tyrants!
Related special offer:
“Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders”
