Infidelity-Salacious messages are reminder that character counts for officials

Editorial: Texts validate Kilpatrick’s removal

Salacious messages are reminder that character counts for officials

The Detroit News

There’s only one reason to read the disgusting text message exchanges between disgraced Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief-of-staff/lover Christine Beatty, and that is to validate his removal from office.

If there was any doubt before about how well off Detroit is without Kilpatrick, it is certainly gone now.

The raunchy messages that traveled back and forth between the pair on their city-owned pagers reveal in graphic detail a sexual affair carried on while both were married to other people. If nothing else, they confirm the extraordinarily poor judgment of Kilpatrick, not to mention a lack of maturity and moral character.

From the beginning, defenders of Kilpatrick have tried to characterize his affair with Beatty as his personal sexual business and not a matter of public concern.

Beatty worked for Kilpatrick. A boss caught carrying on with an employee in the manner described in the text messages would lose his job in any private company in America.

In addition, it is mind-boggling to think about how much city time the two wasted in crafting their cyber fantasies, and how their bedroom business distracted from their city business.

The texts make for some mighty salacious reading, and many may question the propriety of making them public.

The answer to that is Kilpatrick was a public official, using public resources to abet his improper behavior. And he repeatedly denied doing so.

Printing the text messages exposes the lies the former mayor told in a desperate effort to keep his job.

And it serves as a reminder to Detroit voters who will cast ballots in a series of elections next year to replace Kilpatrick that in picking a mayor or any other elected official, character matters.