Mama’s (and Sis’s and Wife’s) Boy

For those who held out a sliver of hope that disgraced Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would learn from his mistakes and come out of everything a better man, I’m afraid today is a sad day.

Kilpatrick continues to beat the drum of victim, deflecting every attempt to get him to own up to his actions. The latest are his bleatings, through his family mouthpieces, that the text message scandal is making him depressed, angry and fearful of the future.

Those mean old Skytel folks, in the World According to Kwame, are the real villains. Had they not released the highly incriminating and maybe even more embarrassing text messages between Kilpatrick and his aide/mistress Christine Beatty, then everything would be hunky-dory.

Now comes the revelation that Kilpatrick will never be a man, after all. For he has, surrounding him, a fortress of apologists and enablers—all women, by the way—who are feeding into his crocodile tear mentality.

Brian Dickerson, Free Press columnist, wrote in today’s edition that a series of interviews between psychiatrist Norman Miller and the women closest to Kwame—mother Carolyn, sister Aiyanna and wife Carlita—have come to light, which blatantly show why the ex-mayor and current convict just ain’t never gonna get it.

Kilpatrick, with mother Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick at right, celebrates his re-election in 2005

And there go the last vestiges of hope that Kwame Kilpatrick will somehow ever be reformed.

How can he, when he is insulated by people whose only purpose, it seems, is to tell him what he wants to hear, and feed tripe to the rest of us?

Here’s a sampling of what Kwame’s ladies had to say, in case you haven’t already clicked on Dickerson’s link:

Mother Carolyn explaining how corrupt judges and jealous journalists railroaded the light of her life: “My son is a political prisoner … he is just so confused about how all this happened.”

Here’s sister Aiyanna: “It is gut-wrenching [for him] to relive the unfairness … I think his anger is toward the company that released the texts and started this windfall of unjust activity toward him.”

And here’s wife Carlita, lamenting “the emptiness that exists from being away from your children and family so long, especially because we see it is so unfair and we can’t get justice.”

“Do you see the release of the text messages as the primary moving cause?” psychiatrist Miller asked Carlita.

“Yes,” she answered. “I fully believe the release of them really started all of the ball rolling.”

Are you nauseous yet?

I count myself among the fools.

I thought Kilpatrick, because he’s still relatively young, might look at his imprisonment as having hit bottom, and would therefore be a better man five, ten years down the road. Politics would be out of the picture, but perhaps he could re-enter civilian life in the private sector and make something of himself, after all.

But after reading how Kwame’s ladies are covering for him and all but pressing him to their bosom, you can forget about any rehab.

Oh, how it could have been so different.

Kwame Kilpatrick, when he was elected mayor in 2001, could have been the best and brightest thing to hit Detroit since the Model T. He was young, vibrant, and big in both stature and importance. He had an attractive family and Detroit could have, by now, be about 10 years into a revival.

Now look at him, and look at the charges he leaves behind.

I’m not sure which is more revolting—Kwame’s behavior or that of the women who are too eager to give him emotional sanctuary at the expense of his loss of manhood.