America is awash in what might be called the “politics of victimization.” If you need proof, look no farther than 40 miles to the north.
The city is called Baltimore, better known to Washingtonians as that pit stop between their town and Philly. It is nicknamed Bodymore, Murderland, for its high number of homicides, but the city’s first female mayor, Sheila Dixon, should get the credit for reducing the number of annual murders to their lowest point in decades.
Too bad she was convicted this week on one count of “fraudulent misappropriation.” In plain, simple English, Dixon was found guilty of accepting a gift card from a developer who did business with the city that was supposed to go to a needy family, and using it for herself instead.
Before I get into how this devolved into the “politics of victimization,” a little more background is in order. Dixon was president of the Baltimore City Council before she became mayor. In that position, she voted on contracts that benefited several developers. She even had an affair with one of them, a guy named Ronald Lipscomb, who was married at the time, and not to Dixon.
Yet Dixon’s supporters claim she is a devout, church-going woman who attends a Christian service every Sunday. This clearly ain’t your daddy’s brand of Christianity we’re talking about here.
This is some other kind, the type you might expect in a town where voters see nothing wrong with their mayor or city council president accepting gifts from developers who do business with the city.
How Dixon got to be elected mayor with that sordid baggage in her past might be one reason the city’s residents have been derisively referred to as “Balti-morons.” There was evidence aplenty that she was guilty of something — a Baltimore jury thought so — but there are still some who choose to play the “politics of victimization” game.
Sitting in a restaurant last Sunday watching my Baltimore Ravens barely beat a Pittsburgh Steelers team using a scrub at quarterback, I asked one guy to handicap Dixon’s chances of acquittal: Would she or would she not be convicted? His answer came right out of the “politics of victimization” handbook.
“Mayor Dixon isn’t on trial,” he told me (he didn’t want to give his name), “the city of Baltimore is on trial.” He went on to mention several other black elected officials across the country who’ve either been prosecuted or are the targets of prosecution because of scandals of their own.
He mentioned former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick among the list of supposed “victims.”
I know — and have written — that Dixon’s troubles stem in part from an overzealous state prosecutor who did some things that, I believe, abused his prosecutorial power. But Dixon is also in trouble because of actions of her own; Maryland State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh certainly didn’t have the affair with Lipscomb, or take gifts from him.
And I know something about the Kilpatrick matter too, enough to know that the best thing that Baltimoreans can say about Dixon is, “She may have her flaws, but thank heavens she’s no Kwame Kilpatrick!”
Those text messages proved to be Kilpatrick’s undoing. Under oath he and the staff member denied having the affair. Then steamy text messages between the two appeared. And the woman in question was not Kilpatrick’s wife.
Nailed dead to rights, what did Kilpatrick do? Play the “politics of victimization,” of course. He compared his plight to that of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a Detroit physician who used firearms to defend his home from rioting whites in 1925. Kilpatrick is no Sweet, and his “the white folks are out to get me ploy” didn’t work for him.
To Dixon’s credit, she never even tried “the white folks are out to get me” ploy. But others are willing to do it for her.
Too bad it won’t wash. There are too many good, honest black elected officials who aren’t the targets of prosecution to make sure that “the white folks are out to get me ploy” doesn’t work.
There have been plenty of white Maryland elected officials who’ve gone down because of scandal. I wonder if my friend in the restaurant thought about that.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
