It’s usually tricky to tell who likes the sweet taste of political scandal more: the local television newscasters who serve it up to viewers via “breaking news alerts” or the audience members who are pleasantly surprised during their regularly scheduled programs by the news. But as WDIV News reporters broke into Thursday night TV to dish out selections from the scandalous text messages between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and then-chief of staff Christine Beatty, there was hardly anything delectable about it for the viewing audience.
First, there were the sexually explicit details laced into the lovers’ conversations, details so precise it’s like they were written for a prosecuting attorney. Granted, there are plenty of justifiable reasons for releasing the words exchanged between Kilpatrick and Beatty. But at first glance, it seemed a little unnecessary for the newscasters to run a segment where the text messages were read verbatim by a newscaster. Do I really need to hear from my local TV news that the mayor’s top aide was made to “feel so damn good” by the mayor “the most recent Saturday at the Residence Inn”? Especially given that these conversations happened more than five years ago, it was a little too much information about a part of a political scandal that has enough history and information to sustain itself without divulging the exact content of the text messages.
Then, there was the unnerving sense of déj