Bread and Circuses?

This is a fine time to live in the City of Detroit, Michigan, let me tell you. What a fine crop of political leaders we have here.

I suppose that it isn't enough to be the laughingstock of the nation with the Kwame Kilpatrick/Cristine Beatty, ahem, affair. Rather than getting beyond that and improving our City and the outlook with which the country views us, we get stuck with Detroit Common Council President Monica Conyers raising the spectre of that old devil racism and fellow Councilwoman Barbara Rose Collins bellowing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' at meetings called to an illegal purpose. As my Army son would ask, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?"

What brings this on is the issue of putting Detroit's Cobo Hall exhibition center under a regional authority, a move aimed at helping the City (which cannot afford even the maintenance fees at this point) while making the center a more viable convention hotspot so that we can keep things like the North American Auto Show. You know, Madame Councilwoman, make it so that we can keep bringing major events and the cash which comes along with them into Detroit and, yes, the entire region of Southeast Michigan. Cash which we sorely need, much more than your pompous grandstanding.

You want to know who's racist, Ms. Conyers? You are. Telling a white Teamster that there are too many faces like his and not enough like your own fabulous mug at construction sites. What would happen if that Teamster had said that to you? He'd be the worst soul on Earth, that's what.

How dare you. You demand respect but won't respect others.

Why were you calling the meeting anyway? Oh, right: to override what you think an illegal veto by Mayor Ken Cockrell approving the move to the regional authority. Along the way I guess it doesn't matter that your own move clearly violates the City Charter: vetoes must be addressed at regular, not special, Council meetings. Are you so special that you're above the law?

What we have here, my friends, is something akin to the old Roman Empire: bread and circuses. Yet we have no bread. We're only just stuck with the three rings.