It appears that one of the nation's worst former mayors -- whose claim to that distinction includes convictions on ten felonies committed while in office -- has a new job. Detroit media have been abuzz with the news of disgraced former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's hiring by Covisint, a subsidary of software products and services provider Compuware. During the scandal that would end Kilpatrick's tenure in office, Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos remained a vocal supporter of Kilpatrick. "He certainly should not resign," said Karmanos, "because he's the best we have."
Karmanos, it seems, would set the bar much lower than would the citizens of Detroit or the news media. An April 2005 Time magazine article named Kilpatrick one of America's worst municipal chief executives; the mayor had just eliminated 3,000 city jobs and ended 24-hour bus service in the face of a $230 million budget deficit -- while he maintained a 21-man security detail and shortly after his admittance of using city funds to rent a Lincoln navigator for his wife. "A tin ear for symbolism" was how Alan Ehrenhalt of Governing Magazine described Kilpatrick's apparent deafness to context.
So it would seem that Karmanos suffers the same sort of hearing impairment. The Kilpatrick hiring came as Compuware laid off 250 workers, or about 4 percent of its total workforce. But in local interviews, Karmanos cited Kilpatrick's "talent" and "charisma" as the reasons for the hiring.
All of which got me thinking about another potential reclamation project for Karmanos: Casey Anthony.
The parallels between Anthony's character and Kilpatrick's are more fundamental than their public faces would seem to suggest. Each suffers from some sort of compulsion to obscure the factuality of a situation, yet neither actually possesses the brains to tell a convincing -- that is, freeing -- lie. Anthony might have forever concealed her inability to conceal, had she not given birth at such a young age, while her apparently soft moral core still privileged shit-faced shenanigans over maternal duty. Likewise, the true dreadfulness of Kilpatrick's mayoralty might never have come to light, without exposure of the infamous Manoogian party. The title for this episode in the national reality show? Why not: "For the Life of the Party"?
I would have to argue that Kilpatrick is the more compromised of the two. As no rumor of Kilpatrick's misdeeds has proved false, it's tough for me to imagine that he had no hand in the murder of Tamara Greene. Anthony, meanwhile, never bilked a city out of $9 million or ruined the careers of any honest cops.
Anthony may not have Kilpatrick's "talent" and "charisma" (indeed, these may be euphemisms for Kilpatrick's narcisstic willingness to broker shady deals). But she is young, female, hedonistic -- and pretty, albeit in a "Girls Gone Wild" sort of way. It's hard for me to imagine that that wouldn't count for something, to Karmanos, whose name has become synonymous with the accused in a recent sexual-harrassment suit...
So, I'm waiting for Karmanos to foot Anthony's legal bills and create a high-paid position (as it were) for her once she's released. At least there'd be no questioning Karmanos's motivation, questionable though it would be.
