Very funny. Kwame Kilpatrick is a loser and a crook, but this is low. Farther down, bruthas_back tries to derail the thread with a Bush/Cheney reference, and the incipient racism boils over.
I want to return to B'wana, above. For a long time I couldn't figure out why every single article relating to Kwame Kilpatrick drew dozens of spiteful comments, and why these comments depressed me so much. Mostly people just reaffirm his criminality and general sleaziness. Occasionally they compare him to Coleman Young or make labored points about What The Black Community Is Really Like Because I Know For Real. MLive's Kwame updates become less and less relevant, but the commenters' appetite for them doesn't wane.
No one could accuse me of having an excess of faith in human nature. I don't know why I didn't realize this immediately. They're piling on Kilpatrick not because they particularly dislike him, but because he's an easy target. I can't tell where B'wana lives, but I seriously doubt it's near Detroit. He's tuning in not because he's personally interested in a public figure in his community, but because he understands that he can indulge his worst instincts. Kilpatrick is already a pariah. Bashing him is actually more fun than bashing poor people, immigrants, or Muslims, because he won't face any pushback. By this time, vanishingly few will bother to defend Kilpatrick.
Kilpatrick-related threads depress me every time because they have less and less substance, deal less and less with events of public importance, yet have the same or greater level of vitriol. The commenters can't or won't just let it go because these threads are their special safe place.
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