By Joel Thurtell
PRESSURE'S ON -- Freepsters give Kwame two choices: Quit or suffer trial by newspaper. . Joel Thurtell photo.
Like everyone else in Michigan, I’ve been following Kwamegate pretty religiously. How can you not? The stories are everywhere, even when there’s not a story.
Occasionally, when my reactions to media coverage become too powerful to control, I resort to writing essays about this mess and posting them here on joelontheroad.com.
It seemed to work fine, even when I would go out of town for a few days.
But my latest vacation to the Georgian Bay really put me behind the eight ball.
On our way home to Michigan, we split into two groups. My sons went ahead. They planned to visit their grandparents in Lowell, my home town on the west side of Michigan.
My wife and I were towing our fishing boat with the second car, and our progress was a bit slower. I got a cell phone call from Abe, my younger son, just after we passed through customs in Sault Ste. Marie.
I should mention that the island where we stayed for a week has no telephone. Yes, there is TV, but I don’t watch TV at home, so why bother on vacation?
Most of all, no Detroit newspapers to roil the waters.
But Abe felt compelled to call. He’d seen a Michigan newspaper headline and wanted me to know Kwame Kilpatrick was out of jail.
Out of jail?
Wait a minute. I leave the state for a week and suddenly we’re time-warped into 2009 when Kwame’s supposed to be tried and all of a sudden he’s already been tried and found guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice, etc., and already been sentenced and served his time on the felonies?
I was talking from the parking lot of the state rest area at the northern terminus of I-75 in the Soo — 400 miles from where the Interstate crosses into Ohio. But it seemed like I was light years from comprehending what went on in Detroit while I was away.
That was then. I’ve been back in town a few days, I’ve read through a pile of Detroit Free Press papers, yet I’m still confused. This seems to be a drama with a huge cast of players. Everybody wants a piece of Kwamegate. Even at the Free Press, where staffers are holding their breath in hopes they’ll garner a Pulitzer for stoking Kwame’s fate, you see new bylines in the biggest journalistic traffic jam the city has seen, well, certainly since I got here in 1984. No wait, I exaggerate: The News and Free Press, come to think of it, blew another story way out of proportion back in the 1980s. Their combined coverage of their push for a newspaper monopoly in Detroit, euphemistically called a “Joint Operating Agreement,” would have overshadowed even Kwamegate in terms of hype and self-serving coverage.
Even so, the swelling of the dramatis personae in the tragedy of King Kwame is getting hard to track. Bear with me, please, as I try to sort it out.
First, we have the Detroit City Council. Not content that the mayor was charged by the Wayne County prosecutor with eight felonies connected to his testimony in a police whistle-blower lawsuit last summer, a majority of the council voted to hold a hearing into their plan to oust the mayor before he’s convicted. Despite news that the FBI is investigating four council members for possibly taking bribes in the city’s other scandal, Sludgegate, council members are forging ahead towards their first hearing Monday, August 18 in the case of Corruption vs. Corruption.
Never mind that a so-called council forfeiture hearing likely will involve testimony and other evidence that could be used in the criminal trial of Kwame and his erstwhile chief of staff and apparent lover, Christine Beatty. In other words, the hearing could make it harder for the mayor and Beatty to get a fair trial.
But in Kwamegate, a fair trial seems not to be the goal. If it were, you’d think the governor, a former federal prosecutor, would abstain from taking part in the fray. But now she too has stepped onstage and plans to preside over a removal hearing next month. Once again, evidence in Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s removal hearing, like evidence in the council’s hearing, could compromise the quest for justice in the criminal trial.
Come on, dumbie! This is not about justice. It’s about theater. Or maybe about giving Kwame the hook asap to get him off stage so he won’t screw up Democratic chances to take the White House in November.
Still, I was amazed at the way both the governor’s office and the city council’s attorney reacted to Kwame attorney Sharon McPhail’s (to my way of thinking, straightforward) request that the governor grant Kwame immunity from prosecution for anything he says in her hearing that might be used against him in his criminal trial.
Seems reasonable. This is the same issue that comes up in Washington, D.C. when the Justice Department is investigating alleged crimes and congressional grandstanders hold hearings that muddy the evidence for later criminal cases.
Seems self-evident to me, but not to Kelly Keenan, Granholm’s legal eagle. Keenan told the Free Press the governor has no authority to grant immunity.
From Keenan, the Free Press bounced to a source with an identical dump-on-the-mayor interest at stake — Bill Goodman, lawyer for the city council. “I didn’t understand what she (McPhail) was talking about,” Goodman told the Free Press. “It appears to me that he (Keenan) didn’t really understand what she was talking about either.”
I’ll spell it out for you, Bill: What Sharon McPhail was talking about is called due process. Fair trial. They actually teach about that in some of the better law schools.
This is not a Franz Kafka novel about the excesses of a totalitarian state.
But enough of the council and governor. This play is far from over. Let’s not forget the other actors who’ve blazed their way onto the boards.
Why, wouldn’t you know, the state’s top lawman, Attorney General Mike Cox, has put his stamp on the proceedings by charging Kwame with assault when a pair of sheriff’s deputies tried to serve the mayor’s buddy with a summons. Kwame either did or did not shove one of the cops, depending on whether you believe the cops or the mayor’s bodyguards, who also happen to be cops. Any way you look at it, cops are lying.
There may well be a case against the mayor, but what amazed me was that Cox actually okayed criminal charges against Kwame. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since it was an easy entrance to the play, stage right. Easy headlines, especially with the Free Press gunning for anything it can print. But for Cox to charge an elected official? That doesn’t happen every day. I’m going to assign the students in my Joel’s J School classes to count how many cases of public corruption have been referred by law enforcement offices to Cox for prosecution and then count how many times he’s actually charged someone.
Or hey, maybe one of the trained Journalists at the Free Press might take on this assignment. Please give credit for the idea to joelontheroad.com. I’m busy, or I’d do it myself.
The list of players continues: I thought Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy was dealing with the case in a classy way until she met with a bunch of boosters, aka Detroit business leaders. The boosters are convinced Detroit’s good name is being besmirched by the ongoing political-legal theater of Kwamegate and they’d like to contribute to the chaos by short-circuiting Kwame’s trial. Get him out of the way so they can go about the important business of making money in Detroit.
That seems to be the message I read from Peter Karmanos Jr., founder and owner of Compuware and David Bing, former Detroit Pistons basketball star and Detroit businessman. They want Kwame gone, pronto. What’s the deal? Does one of these guys want to be mayor?
While the lawyers for the governor and city council were merely playing dumb, the boosters had no need to act. Dumb comes naturally. They were doing what they do — trying to fix the end of the play by pressuring Worthy into concocting a court agreement that would allow Kwame to plead guilty, but to offenses light enough that a conviction wouldn’t endanger his law license. Ease him out a side door, but let him make a living as a lawyer.
That Worthy would actually meet with these bozos and let them hammer away on rigging the case is mind-boggling. Maybe their behavior doesn’t constitute obstruction of justice, but it seems to me that a prosecutor needs to maintain independence from self-serving business people who put their own profits above the course of justice.
Oh I know, there’s all this concern with Detroit’s image. Seems to boil down to profit and loss, though — lost conventions and hotel bookings.
Come on — since when has Detroit enjoyed a stellar reputation? A first-class tourist destination Detroit is not, with or without Kwamegate.
So butt out, business guys.
Same goes for the pastors. Yes, they couldn’t resist jumping into the limelight, and so we are treated to a photo of four very uncomfortable-looking Baptist preachers calling for Kwame to resign.
That photo says what the Free Press story can’t: These ministers know this publicity could taint them in future if Kwame manages to skate away from criminal convictions.
Oh yes, these are dark days for Kwame. But notice that his mom, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, squeaked by a challenger and held her seat in Congress despite the bad smell of Kwamegate.
Those pastors know that if Kwame somehow dodges all these bullets, he could come back, reincarnated as a mayor-elect once again or in some other role with goodies to hand out or withhold. Then they might regret having pounced on him in summer 2008.
Maybe it’s the specter of a phoenix-like Kwame rising from the ashes that has all these people teaming up to run him down. Squash him in good Machiavellian fashion. Knock him down for good.
So Kwame spent a night in jail for going to Windsor on city business but without letting the judge in his perjury case know. That was all the Free Press needed. They ran a photo of the mayor that made him look like a ghost, an image of an image from a court video screen. “PRESSURE’S ON,” their nearly 2-inch headline screamed. On cue, two Freepster columnists banged on the theme that he needs to resign. Front page news: Even his minister urged him to abdicate.
The media seemed primed for the mayor to spend another night in jail after Cox blasted him for spending time with a sibling. Since his sister is a witness in the deputy-shoving case, he should not have contact with her, Cox maintained.
Judge Giles didn’t see it that way, though. Thank God for a little humanity.
But talk about lynch mentality. On August 13, 2008, there were five Kwame-related stories in The Detroit Free Press. One of those stories quoted Kwame’s mega-lawyer, Chicago-based Dan Webb, warning that “things have gotten out of control in Detroit. The prosecutors and media overreact to everything the mayor does. He should not have to deal with this type of hysteria.”
Know what? Kwame’s not the only one who’s tired of hearing the constant din of Kwamegate. Five goddam stories in one day at the Free Press! Don’t the reporters have something else to do?
But I’m forgetting: Kwame’s story is an investment at the Free Press. The paper’s in free fall with advertisers and readers. But they just won another award for covering Kwame, so all hope of judgment or calibration is gone.
A Pulitzer would salve many egos at the Free Press. A few people whose bylines have dominated Kwamegate could use the award as a lifeline from one sinking newspaper to…
Well, to where?
Another loser paper?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
