Assume the position

News Hits got its hands on a copy of The Kwame Sutra, a new pocket-sized book compiling former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's "musings on lust, life and leadership" compiled by Freep Pulitzer Prize-winners M.L Elrick and Jim Schaefer.

There's not much really new in the slim volume, but it's still a hoot the way Elrick and Schaefer juxtapose Kwame classic lines like "I look forward to complete exoneration" after being charged with eight felonies to standing in court and saying, "I lied under oath" six months later.

Of course, that latter statement might never had been made were it not for the work of Elrick and Schaefer. Many of the quotes come from the text messages between KK and former chief of staff Christine Beatty that the reporters got a hold of.

You would think that these guys getting their paper journalism's equivalent of the Oscar (congrats on that, by the way guys, you deserved it) would earn them star treatment, but we hear from a quasi-reliable source that the Freep's management isn't willing to give this small effort at entrepreneurship any promotional ink. Considering the orgy of publicity the paper recently gave Mitch Albom's latest saccharine-laced literary effort, you could understand why a whiff of ill will might be detected in the halls over there on West Lafayette.

Of course, we can only imagine how much it must be rankling the Kwamster to see the guys who played such a big role in bringing the big man down now making a few bucks using the mayor's own words.

And we just luv the title. Really clever, that. But it did have a faintly familiar ring to it, so we did a quick Google search and found it had been used at least once before. It was way back in 2003 — in the pages of this rag's annual Best Of issue, when we picked that title as the best new nickname for hizzoner, amidst all the allegations of his philandering.   

Buy us a beer, guys, and we'll call it even.

And then buy us another one for giving you, the hated competition, the publicity your own paper — at least so far — won't. 

For info about buying The Kwame Sutra, go to — where else? — kwamesutra.com.