Tales from the D

I love a good soap opera. I grew up watching All My Children and Loving with my mom and grandma and I can't help but follow the scripted drama of today's "reality" shows. Love affairs gone wrong are one of my favorite topics. So imagine my joy when I heard that the text messages between the former Detroit mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick and his head of staff Christine Beatty were released for all to read. These text messages have really given me hours of voyeuristic happiness. They became public in batches, a few months in between each release. I was like a kid at midnight waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out. I checked back at Freep.com several times a day until that amazing PDF file was finally posted for the world to see. And disappoint they didn't. The first batch that was released several months ago was a bit on the R rated side, with even a possible X rating. I mostly dry-heaved through those, but like any trashy drug store novel, they were impossible to put away. Hotel room rendevous', late night "sexting", intimate discussions about bikini waxing, it's all there.



This last batch (and by batch I mean thousands of messages), was released at noon yesterday. It covers most of what happened between 2002 and 2005; that's four years of their illicit love affair, illegal activities, and Kwame's inflated sense of entitlement. You couldn't make this stuff up even if you wrote memoirs for a living. A few of my favorite bits:



- Kwamster dropping some serious BS to poor, lonely Christine. He called her "the Wind Beneath My Wings", my soul mate, and actually used lines from Barry White songs.

- Christine responded several times by joking about how it's not like she wanted to marry him...right now...ha haha LOL...

- LOL is their favorite abbreviation...they had many laughs together, especially about getting caught by their spouses

- Kwame's wife chimed in every now and then, but the only thing she wanted to talk about was when she would get her "Navi"...otherwise known as the city paid for Lincoln Navigator. In the middle of Kwame and Christine telling each other how their love will never die and they will express that feeling tonight at the Marriot in Southfield, Carlita K. drops sentimental lines to her husband like "WHERE IS MY NAVI?!" "CAN I GET IT BEFORE THE 2004'S COME OUT?"

- Christine had serious self confidence issues. She would constantly apologize for not "looking cute" for him at the office. She even decided to get a bikini wax so that she could be cuter. He responded with a gag worthy line about how he was going to be "all over that bikini wax area later"....huuuuurlll....I'm really sorry about that.

- Finally, when they had time to discuss work it gets interesting and not just disgusting. It was them against the city and they were going to destroy anyone in their path. It's completely obvious to anyone who reads the messages that we were dealing with a bunch of crooks who were more concerned about their love fests and Navigators than actually doing good for this sad excuse for a city.

I applaud the Detroit Free Press for staying on top of this story all the way to the bitter end. Now if only someone can bring justice to the family of Tamara Green (aka Strawberry the stripper), we'll have closure to this whole mess. And just a word of advice to the Kilpatrick's new neighbors in Houston, TX. If they have a party, you might want to skip it.