I can't say I generally favor snitching.
And by snitching, I'm definitely not talking about the average hard-working citizen who calls the police on the neighborhood crack dealers carousing late night in front of her house. That's not snitching. That, no matter what lames like Cam'ron say, is safeguarding your home and your community from ig'nit motherfuckers.
No, by snitching I mean ratting out someone with whom you've been closely involved in some sort of criminal or wrongful activity. Nigganalysis usually compels me to subscribe to the belief that if ya'll did dirt together, you'd better be ready to go on and do that time together, too. I don't mean to suggest that this is necessarily even the right way to think. But it's a code I was taught early on -- even my mom would get on me about "tattling" -- and it's one I've pretty much adhered to for much of my life.
But when I stare out over the fast-collapsing mess that appears to be Detroit mayor KwameKilpatrick's political career , I can't help but re-examine this code somewhat as I consider the plight of his now-disgraced former chief of staff Christine Beatty, whose affair with the mayor has been put on blast by this text-messaging scandal. Despite her role in some of the mayor's biggest successes, she's been cast as a major villain in this storyline, being portrayed alternately as a home wrecker and a 'ho, a conniving careerist chicken-head who boned her way into a cushy, powerful spot in Kilpatrick's inner circle and abused her privilege all along the way.
And she probably deserves some of these characterizations.
Still, even when you remember that she's regarded as his co-conspirator in all this, you still can't help but think she sure seems to have caught more than her fair share of hell. Her marriage went down the tubes, with her husband (reportedly a very decent brother and a Detroit native who, more than anybody else in this town, deserves the right to punch the mayor dead in his fat, smirking mouth) moving their children to another state. She was forced to resign her job in the administration. A law student, her legal career may be over before it ever even began. She's been forced into virtual seclusion and has barely made a peep since this fiasco exploded. When she does surface, Beatty (who I'll admit to regarding as vaguely cute, depending on what angle you catch her at) usually looks worn, depressed and humiliated nowadays.
Oh yeah, and she's facing seven felony charges stemming from the scandal, including various counts of perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice.
Meanwhile, the mayor -- who himself caught eight charges -- continues to insist on his innocence, has refused to step down, continues to show up on TV with this stupid-ass smirk on his face and continues to enjoy the support of a high-powered group of attorneys, citizens and members of his newly minted defense fund.
At some turns in all this, he and his girl Christine share the same lawyer, a white shoe legal mastermind whose exorbitant rate seems to translate roughly into about a pint of blood per hour. The lawyer, who's also repping her in her criminal trial, insists that there's no conflict of interest in representing her and the mayor. And Beatty, so far, has indicated that she intends to stick with the mayor throughout this legal ordeal.
But I can't help but wonder if the mayor is thinking the same thing. Sure, it's certainly expedient for him to say that, to convince her to take up a united front with him in much the same way he convinced his wife to endure public shame and ridicule by sitting alongside him during his televised apology to the city for transgressions he refused to name. But he's already chucked Beatty under the bus once, forcing her unceremonious resignation just as the text-messaging scandal began to unfold. And you can't help but think that, sooner or later, he's going to have to publicly assign blame to her for the blunder that started all this, the colossally stupid way his administration got rid of police officers looking into misconduct by the mayor's bodyguards.
Sooner or later, in other words, Kilpatrick will have to snitch Beatty out. And when it becomes obvious to even their lawyers that the mayor and Beatty have conflicting interests in this case, there shouldn't be any question who's going to get frozen out by the big-money attorneys and high-end backers. Christine will be ass out. I don't claim to know the woman's financial circumstances, but if the mayor is fighting to pull together his own twos and fews in an effort to pay these lawyers' $700-an-hour fees, I just don't see how Christine will even be able to pick up the tip on that kind of tab.
(And we haven't even begun talking about what she may be facing if and when the federales decide to start bringing charges against the Kilpatrick Klique.)
Ultimately, she's likely going to wind up right back where she was when she resigned back in January -- out in the cold.
If there's one thing I feel fairly certain about when it comes to Kwame Kilpatrick, it's that dude will sacrifice anybody and anything to avoid getting busted. And if Beatty can somehow be used as the scapegoat for his ass-clownery, I don't think he'll have any problem fitting her for those stubby little horns.
So I'm figuring, never mind the code this time 'round. Christine needs to start telling on Kwame Kilpatrick's ass as soon as possible, definitely before he starts running his own mouth. She needs to sprint, not saunter, into Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office and start giving up as much as she knows in hopes of cutting a deal. She knows where the bodies are buried, knows who got what and when and in what size brown paper bag. The same knowledge that could sink her just might also save her ass (or at least soften the inevitable legal blow).
I'm sure Worthy's hoping for something similar and would certainly welcome it. And even if she's not counting on Beatty's eventual cooperation, I can't help but think that she's going to apply a bit of extra pressure to ol' girl, just to see what, if anything, cracks. Again, judging by that forlorn look that seems superglued to Christine's mug these days, she's got to be struggling to hold herself together as it is. No telling what might happen if the prosecutor gets a chance to impress upon Beatty further very real prospect that she'll lose everything.
The mayor's entire family is connected, from his Congresswoman mother to his dad, a long-time political operative not above shoving his foot into his mouth. Kilpatrick's a spoiled, over-privileged elitist who utters inanities like his recent declaration that god chose him to be mayor and throws tantrums when people remind him that the scandal he wants to spin as "a personal matter" drained city taxpayers of $9 million. He may very well land on his feet once all the smoke blows over (and his sentence gets commuted).
I'm not so sure Christine Beatty will be able to say the same, though she appears not to be paying attention to her own best interests. In the same way dope kingpins try to cover their lieutenants' legal expenses in the wake of a big bust, the mayor's probably doing everything he can to keep his old flame and former chief of staff on his hip (and, thus, further his wife's humiliation). I'm sure he's spitting the same sort of game that convinced her and a whole lot of other otherwise smart, capable people to go along with his nonsense in the first place.
But Christine Beatty needs turn a deaf ear to that chatter now. And she needs to start making some noise of her own.
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