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Reflexive Support for a Crook

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald has this column on the remarkably slow decline and fall of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Pitts compares the agonizing year it took to get rid of Kilpatrick with the sudden departure of Eliot Spitzer, whose political base vanished overnight. Why the difference? Pitts says that Kilpatrick's race gave him a broad base of "undeserved support" despite his obvious crookedness. Truth is, we [African Americans] get played like checkers any time any high profile one of us is caught in scandal or sin. From Michael Jackson to O.J. Simpson to Tawana Brawley to Mike Tyson to Marion Barry to Kilpatrick, lying his natural backside off in court, we keep proving pathetically susceptible to manipulation by any brother or sister who says white folks have done him or her wrong -- especially if they invoke God a few times for good measure...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).