Who will replace LBrooksP ?

[EastsideAl]

L Brooks Patterson has been pretty terrible for the region, but to compare him to George Wallace and Kim "John" Il? It makes it hard to hear any slightly valid points when people just toss out those names as if they are even remotely similar to a LBP. I know he's said some ridiculous, inexcusable stuff [[the blanket quote everyone knows), but he is not a dictator responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, not is he as blatantly racist as George Wallace.

Ugh, I hate that I am defending L Brooks, but come on.

I don't know about Kim Jong Il, but I'm not sure how he doesn't at least bear comparison with George Wallace and other southern demagogues of that era. After all, he really did begin his public career as the spokesman of a fight against integrating schools. A fight that turned very ugly and violent, in large measure because passions were ginned up publicly by the inflammatory statements and fear mongering of opportunist segregationists like L. Brooks. His public career, and political appeals, since then have been largely focused, either implicitly or explicitly, on "us" [[largely white Oakland County) vs. "them" [[largely black Detroit). His whole brief as leader of Oakland County has been about anything but working together across lines to make this whole region better.

He has been a divisive figure from the start, and a lightning rod of racial division, and his time in this region has finally [[thank goodness) passed. It's long past time for him to gently retire from public life and get the hell out of the way.