A shadow of her former self.....

I may get razzed about this, but I still sometimes can not help but feel sorry for Christine Beatty as I see the Mayor move on with his life. Her life seems to be somewhat on hold, and the future is very uncertain for her. She was a fool in love, and now seems to be very much alone. The prosecutor and the media has encouraged her to turn on the Mayor, which I doubt she will do. Hopefully she will reconsider it when the case gets to trial. Once in a major position of power as the Mayor's Chief of Staff, according to the Metro Times' Jack Lessenberry , Christine Beatty is now a shadow of her former self. He saw her at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Cobo Hall last week, and made some observations regarding her in his weekly column.

“....Seen on the sidelines:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick spoke briefly at the Freedom Fund dinner. His remarks were fairly brief and unremarkable. He didn't mention his own trials, upcoming or otherwise, though he did subtly attempt to place himself in a tradition of heroes and martyrs stretching back to Emmett Till.

In a slightly bizarre touch, he referred to the Rev. Wright as a "verbal acrobat," which made me wonder how much the mayor himself understood the meaning of this man. The crowd's reaction to the mayor was interesting too. He received what you might call "polite" applause (the person sitting next to me called it tepid.)

Dennis Archer, who was honored a few minutes later, got a much bigger hand. There was a feeling of mild tension when Kwame was on stage, as if his presence reminded people of things they didn't want to think about. He made a point of reminding people that his wife Carlita was there. Then somebody nudged me; look.

Standing in the entrance to one of the hall's sections, apparently all alone, was a somewhat drawn-looking Christine Beatty, the mayor's former chief of staff and lover, whom he discarded like an old fish wrapper last winter, in an effort to save his own political skin.

Gone was any trace of the famous arrogance that used to be on display. Occasionally people — women, mostly — would come up and offer her a few words, shake her hand, give her a hug.

She neither glanced in the mayor's direction (she was more than a football field away) or, as far as I could tell, looked at the monitor while he spoke. After half an hour or so, she slipped quietly away.”