Squaring the Culture

Kwame Kilpatrick, the Democratic Mayor of Detroit, was indicted today for perjury, obstruction of justice, and official misconduct in connection with the handling of a lawsuit involving two police officers who claimed they were fired because they were exposing the Mayor’s extramarital affair. During the trial, which cost the city of Detroit an $8.4 million settlement, Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff, Christine Beatty, both testified in court that there was no illicit affair between them. Detroit Free Press later exposed text messages between the two that brought their testimony into question and started the official investigation.

Blogs (Hot Air, Gateway Pundit, Power Line) are noting that the Associate Press story manages to report the entire incident without once naming the political party of the indicted mayor. Fortunately, Reuters does a better job, and there’s always Wikipedia if you want to know the man’s political party.

I’m hoping that the immediate blogosphere attention may influence mainstream press reporters to do their damned jobs with respect to objective reporting, and stop playing games with the party names. The Republican Culture of Corruption meme is sounding a little less persuasive in the wake of an alarming wave of Democratic office-holders having to step down for one type of corruption or another. However, I sincerely doubt that the Republican party has the moxie to use this during the election season the way Democrats have done in the past.

Discounting the “it’s just sex” angle, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy observed,

Some have suggested that the issues in this case are personal or private… Our investigation has clearly shown that public dollars were used, people’s lives were ruined, the justice system severely mocked and the public trust trampled on. … This case is about as far from being a private matter as one can get.

My sympathy goes to Kilpatrick’s wife and three children, the unnamed victims in the affair, whose lives are about to change unalterably for the worse. Further sympathy to the husband and two children of Ms. Beatty, who have likewise entered a world of pain that won’t recede for a long time. Adultery matters, folks.