The Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup on 4 June 2008. And then the following Friday, 6 June 2008, they had the traditional parade in downtown Detroit that was attended by an estimated 1.4 million people. The police reported no problems and that a good time was had by all.

Sadly, when Kwame Kilpatrick (Detroit’s Mayor) took the stage he was booed by most of the people who were in attendance. You may not have heard about the scandal surrounding the mayor, but it is big news here in Michigan and people are not happy with him. So the people at the parade felt the need to boo him as a result. Detroit’s population numbers less than 1 million and you may have noticed that there was an estimated 1.4 million people there for this parade, which means there was more people there than live in the city. I would even venture to say that 90% or more of the people there do not have Detroit addresses.

So most of those people didn’t even elect Kwame into office and their boos really don’t mean much. But I find it very disrespectful for them to have booed him while he was trying to honor the Detroit Red Wings and their accomplishments on the ice. This was not a political speech and he was personally invited to be at the parade by the owner of the Detroit Red Wings, Mike Ilitch. People should have just respectfully listened to him honor the Wings and enjoyed the day. While they all have the freedom of speech, I as a Red Wings fan was disappointed in my fellow fans.

However, the mayor sure didn’t make a good choice himself. I was watching the coverage of the parade while I was at the gym and I could not hear the audio, so I was reading the closed captions. At the end of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s speech I noticed he said, “Since we are all here and you are having a good time the beer is on me.” I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read that. Here is the mayor embroiled in a huge scandal over cheating on his wife with one of his main aides, facing perjury charges, paying hush money to people via city funds, having a huge party at the mayor’s mansion with strippers, then one of those strippers mysteriously being murdered, and now facing the possibility of being removed from office; and you are going to tell everyone that “the beer is on me”? What the heck was he thinking? Now is the time to do what you can to show yourself respectable and not look like a fool, but Kwame failed in those 5 words. You can see the video of the even below.

However, let’s not let this overshadow the tremendous accomplishments of the Detroit Red Wings. The 2008 Stanley Cup Champions! GO WINGS!!!