Letter to Kwame

[donation]

By Joel Thurtell

Dear Mayor Kilpatrick:

Yes, you are still mayor, until September 18, 2008 when you will take off the fancy dress shirt with “MAYOR” embroidered on the cuffs and put on a Wayne County Jail suit.

It’s a long, hard fall from the mayor’s 11th-floor office in the City-County Building to a cell across downtown in the county jail.

This has to be a very depressing time for you and your family.

I’m writing because I want you to understand that those powerful people and institutions that conspired to rush you into pleading guilty to felonies, thus removing yourself from office, have given you a huge gift. They have forced you to agree not to seek public office for five years.

So, jail for 120 days. No elective office for five years.

This is a gift, Mayor Kilpatrick. It may not seem like that right now, but it is a wonderful opportunity for you.

I believe you when you say you’ll make a comeback.

But first, you need to re-think your approach to government. You made some good moves, but you also made light of the trust Detroiters placed in you. The parties, the big cars, the relatives and cronies on the payroll — those were not the moves of a statesman. They were not the moves of a man who has a vision for his community.

Vision is what you need to work on. Think about that while you’re sitting in a jail cell. How could I have served better? How could I serve better in the future?

I caution you not to seek revenge on those powerful people and institutions who flayed you, who circled you like sharks scenting blood, who waited until you were way, way down and then, certain of their own safety, stabbed you again and again.

As for the newspaper that staked its own survival on destroying you, well, I think in months to come you will have the satisfaction of seeing that organization wither from causes of its own making.

But if the Detroit Free Press somehow survives the current bad cycle for newspapers, my advice to you would be to remember that the so-called practitioners of self-styled journalism in that newsroom are desperate men and women whose ranks have been decimated by their owner’s mismanagement, whose morale has sunk so low they clutched at the story of your text messages like a panicked person sucked into quicksand.

If they have the satisfaction of winning a Pulitzer Prize from their harrying of you, then you will have the satisfaction of knowing that a revered award has demeaned itself, supporting and promoting National Enquirer-like attacks by the Free Press.

Now, if you feel you must have some satisfaction from this newspaper, that you must wound it in some way like they wounded you, then my advice would be to simply stop reading it. Period. Don’t buy it on the newsstand. Don’t pay for its delivery. And don’t look at it online. You might encourage friends and relatives to do the same. Point out to people that it hasn’t got to do with the way they walloped you editorially so much as that neither “Detroit” paper circulates throughout the city that is seated on their “Detroit” News and “Detroit” Free Press mastheads.

(They’ve been combined at the wallet since 1989 — let’s start calling them the “Frewp”.)

You don’t support redlining. Simple as that.

I would not go so far as to recommend you foment an advertising boycott of the Detroit papers, unless you really want to see them dead and buried. I can tell you that an ad boycott by black Detroiters is something the dailies have feared for years. But in the past, I doubt anybody took seriously the impact such a collective back-turning could have. That’s because the newspapers never were in such trouble financially as they are today. And that difficulty stems from their failure to sell enough ads to make their businesses profitable.

A boycott now could destroy them. You wouldn’t want that to happen.

Would you?

See, you need the papers to stage your comeback. I’m thinking that you might want to place your sights on Congress. You found out that the office of Detroit mayor doesn’t have much clout compared to the governor and the attorney general. But look at your old friend John Conyers Jr. The Free Press reported alleged abuses by Conyers five years ago, but what happened to the follow-up? The paper didn’t have the stomach to go after the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, did it? No telling what forces a member of Congress might unleash to make owners of a questionable newspaper monopoly feel discomfort, right?

As for the five-year ban, I suspect you can have that lifted sooner. You have options: A judge might be convinced that the powers-that-be in Detroit and Michigan overstepped in getting you to abandon basic rights of a citizen, even a convicted felon. And some of those people who pounced on you may in future deem your political participation a useful thing, in which case, they might re-think the terms of your plea agreement. Or you might simply file to run for office and dare an opponent to challenge your status on the ballot.

All of the above could actually be kind of fun for you, since you’d have nothing to lose. And it could be embarrassing for those people and media institutions that were so eager to trash you.

Remember that all those people who united to bounce you out of office won’t be able to stay united. Power in the city is up for grabs. They’ll be gunning for each other soon.

Watch and enjoy.

All in all, Kwame, I think you have a bright comeback future.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting to read the next chapter of a book called “Sludgegate.”

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com