Office of the Independent Blogger

Grover Cleveland, the American President, was confronted by chants of Ma ma ma, where’s my pa? when he ran for President and it was revealed that he had a bastard child. When his aides asked what to do about it he said, “Admit it.” Move on, win the election and do your work without the burden of denials on your shoulders. More politicians should take that advice as those who don’t and ruin their political careers with sex scandals are the biggest dolts in the arena. That is said without any moralizing, as I’ve got my own romances, of course, and I am sure that there are things I’ve done and said which would be exposed in any cutthroat campaign, embarrassing me. But here’s the distinction I make: I would never, under any circumstances, lie about sex under oath and probably not to a reporter. Sex scandals go away when you admit them but they hover over you when they’re reported and you deny it. Yet politicians still find themselves stumbling over their own dicks, even after what happened to the terribly miscalculating Bill Clinton. Today it was revealed that a man who I consider the worst Mayor in America (on his own merits, not his penis’) has another inch against him:

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick bristled in the witness chair last year when asked whether he had an affair with a top aide. No, the mayor confidently told jurors, the two were never romantically involved. But a trove of 14,000 text messages that emerged this week tell a different story: The mayor and his chief of staff carried on a flirty, sometimes sexually explicit dialogue about where to meet and how to conceal their numerous trysts. Now the mayor’s indiscretion has landed him in a Clinton-style scandal that could cost him his job and his law license and even bring perjury charges.

“I think the mayor needs to take responsibility for the situation,” City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel said Thursday. In politics, she said, “you operate in a fishbowl.”

The Detroit Free Press did not explain exactly how it obtained the messages, which were sent or received in 2002-03 from Chief of Staff Christine Beatty’s city-issued pager. The newspaper said it cross-referenced the messages with the mayor’s private calendar and credit card records to verify events in some of the notes. The mayor’s denial came last summer during testimony in a lawsuit filed by two police officers who alleged they were fired for investigating claims from two former bodyguards that the mayor used his security unit to cover up extramarital affairs.

This man, if you aren’t aware, has been busted for using public money for all sorts of extravagent purposes (my favorite? Limos and a 210,000 bill on a city credit card for food, amongst other things). Detroit is, economically, in a precarious situation and he hasn’t done much to bolster the city or his own image. Now he is in position where he might be impeached and in fact I hope he is, for lying under oath and failing miserably as a Mayor. If it were illegal to be a stupid son of a bitch, I’d have him for that, too, but as Truman said of Generals I will say of Mayors: “that’s not against the law for [mayor]s. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

And you know what’s sad? That isn’t the dumbest thing a Mayor has done today. Rudy Giuliani, if you’re unaware, staked his entire Presidential campaign on the Republican primary in Florida. Now he’s tied for third place and I wouldn’t bet on him winning that battle. I very much doubted that a mediocre Mayor with almost nothing to his name but scandal, some success at reducing crime and a little courage on September eleventh could be elected President, especially since he’s a Liberal Republican making him almost a lock to lose the nomination, but I wanted to see it because anything can happen in a democracy. Fortunately, it’s looking like my prediction will bear out and this tiny, lisping tyrant will be beaten back by his party. I just need to see his corpse to believe him dead, before I celebrate his political demise. Although I should add that he has been smart enough to admit his sexual indiscretions and move on. This is a guy who divorced his wife via Press Conference and nobody ever talks about that! See? It’s the wisdom of my words: “sex scandals die when faced.”

It doesn’t give you a better or even good chance to be President, however, and especially not if you’re in a political party where your appeal is limited and your experience is lacking very, very much.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Outside Retort (Current Affairs).