This morning a Detroit judge removed Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s court-ordered tether, thereby permitting Kilpatrick to travel to the Democratic National Convention. It is being speculated that the Republican judge set Kilpatrick loose so that the Mayor can be seen (and videotaped) in the proximity of Barack Obama. The Republicans are already running ads in Tennessee invoking Kilpatrick as a scary, incompetent Black man. The ads ask voters to consider whether they really want to elect another (potentially scary and incompetent Black man) to the White House. UGHHH! It is Willie Horton all over again.
The Horton story in a nutshell: In 1974, in Massachusetts, Horton and two others robbed a gas station, and in the process murdered the attendant by stabbing him 19 times. Horton earned life in prison without parole. Just over a decade later, Horton was given a “weekend pass” from prison. The passes were given out as part of a rehabilitative furlough program Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent first instituted in 1972. However, when in 1986 Horton received his pass, it was not Sargent who was in the Governor’s mansion, it was Michael Dukakis. And, it so happened that Dukakis was running for President against George Bush (not “W,” but his daddy).
While on his pass, Horton walked away from his confinement and kept on going until he ended up in Maryland. In Maryland, in 1987, he broke into a house and knifed the male owner. When the guy’s fiancée showed up, just back from her engagement party, Horton beat and raped her. Horton was convicted for this crime and sent to a maximum-security prison in Jessup, MD.
Bush supporters ran two political ads. One featured Horton prominently, and it accused Dukakis of being a liberal who opposed the death penalty and would let a murderer out of jail to roam the country. The second ad, the “Revolving Door” ad, again referenced the furlough program, and feature a revolving jail door in which criminals left the prison as they pleased. The association of Dukakis with a scary Black man cost Dukakis the election. The Willie Horton ads, even today, are counted as some of the most controversial racial propaganda in history.
Kilpatrick isn’t Willie Horton. But it won’t be hard to paint a similar picture given the stories and scandals surrounding him—assault on police officers, perjury, extra-martial affairs, a $8 million judgment paid by tax-payers for his lawlessness, a rumored party with strippers, the murder of a stripper after she was beaten by the Mayor’s wife, racist rants, his father under investigation by the FBI for corruption, $400 million missing from the public schools, 911 operators who curse out and then hang up on emergency callers….
Kilpatrick—STAY AWAY FROM THE DNC!!! RESIGN NOW!!! You’ve destroyed your city; don’t continue to put yourself in a position where you can be used to destroy Obama!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment