Dave Bing can’t add, but wants to be mayor of Detroit

Maybe today will be the day that Detroit mayoral candidate Dave Bing comes up with a good and credible explanation for how he figured he finished his college degree in four years when, in actuality, it apparently took him more than 20. If not today then I kinda hope that day comes soon because I’d really like to understand how someone who is supposed to be so good in business got to where he is without learning how to add.

I don’t expect it’s a requirement for business leaders to have masters degrees in advanced mathematics or anything like that. Hell, I’ve known some very good businessmen and women who didn’t even graduate from college. And if you want to count drug dealers – discounting the fact that they prey on their own communities, are generally reprehensible individuals and are making money illegally – then you could even say there are some extremely business-savvy kids out here who haven’t even finished high school.

But even the lowly drug dealer knows whether or not he finished school. Right? I mean c’mon already.

So what’s entertaining about this somewhat minor scuffle (which has the potential to become something considerably larger) is that here is a guy who essentially entered the race under a slogan promoting him as Mr. Honesty and Integrity come to the rescue. He was captain of every team he ever played on, he likes to say. Good thing he was never elected to head up the math team, eh?

Hi. My name is Dave Bing and I seem to have misplaced my integrity...

Not that this is the first time we’ve ever heard a politician lie, nor encountered someone in business who has inflated their resume to the size of the Goodyear blimp. But sometimes a story like this still has the potential to surprise, or at least cause us to shake our heads. Because deep down we still would like to believe there are at least a few out there who are actually who and what they say they are. And we know they exist because we have seen them, but sometimes it just seems like…damn.

And the sad thing about Bing is that, if he were really the honest guy he swears up and down that he is? He could have so easily set the record straight the minute the story broke. So easily. All he had to do was say two simple words; “I’m sorry.” And then, for good measure, maybe add in, “I was wrong.” No need for a lengthy diatribe about how it just slipped his mind or how maybe the University that has no record of him graduating in four years might be at fault too. No, just own up to what  most regular folks see as being pretty obvious; You fucked up, Dave.

And then you had to go and act like a politician.

~ by Keith A. Owens on March 16, 2009.