By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: December 11, 2014 11:57 AM

Rep. John Olumba’s 4,930-word, 29-minute, rambling, delusional, insult-laden farewell speech Wednesday on the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives was a low point for the institution, and it’s a damn shame House leadership allowed Mr. Olumba to go on and on and on.

Some poor, taxpayer-paid soul on the House’s clerk staff spent heaven knows how long transcribing the travesty so it could appear, as all member farewell speeches do, in the official House Journal for posterity.

And maybe, as big a waste of staff time as that was, that is a good thing, because it will serve as a record of just how disgusting the whole episode was.

Many years ago, Booth Newspapers (now Mlive), did a story in which the organization labeled legislators based on their level of relevance and activity on legislation at the Capitol. One of those labels was “furniture,” as in they did nothing more than take up space in the building.

Initially I was going to say Mr. Olumba would have fallen into the furniture category, but he has been absent so much, he doesn’t even meet that threshold.

But Mr. Olumba did grace the House floor with his presence yesterday to offer his farewell remarks.

Some of the speech was unsurprising and while churlish for a farewell address, acceptable fare. He took shots at the House Democratic caucus. Mr. Olumba won office as a Democrat in 2010 and 2012, but then became an independent in 2013, saying the caucus had taken Detroit and African-Americans for granted. Mr. Olumba, however, undercut that move when in 2014 he decided to run for the Senate as a Democrat, surely realizing he stood no chance of winning election in his heavily Democratic seat if he ran as anything but (he lost the Democratic primary).

The opening of the speech was actually an interesting metaphor comparing his time at the Capitol to jazz and recounted a bit of his life before winning a House seat in 2010.

Then it was all downhill.

Mr. Olumba lamented that House Democrats had stopped his strategy of a “filibuster” on the emergency manager law. I have no idea what he could have meant. There is no way to filibuster a bill in the Michigan House or Senate. This is not the U.S. Senate where a member can talk as long as he or she can talk. At some point, the House or Senate leadership can and will shut down a member from speaking.

Even yesterday, as majority House Republicans let Mr. Olumba ramble on and on, they did finally ask him to wrap it up.

There was some trash talk to House Democrats about how he beat Rep. Jimmy Womack (D-Detroit) in the 2012 Democratic primary despite the party establishment rallying to Mr. Womack.

Then there was a long period of winding remarks, in which among other things, he whined about how Rep. Marcia Hovey-Wright (D-Muskegon) “screwed me out of my seat selection” for the current term on the House floor.

He attempted to tell a story, what the point was I have no idea, about a time when he, Rep. Harvey Santana (D-Detroit), Rep. Rose Mary Robinson (D-Detroit) and Rep. Sam Singh (D-East Lansing) had gathered. Instead of describing them by their names, he used their races, maybe – maybe – as a way of noting people of different backgrounds coming together. But then when he got to Mr. Singh, who is of Indian descent, Mr. Olumba, offered for clarity, “Like curry and tandoori, not like trail of tears.”

Thanks goodness he cleared that up by defining Mr. Singh’s ethnicity in terms of food. Ridiculous.

Then it got ugly. While claiming that some children unjustifiably get classified as learning disabled, he used the word “retarded,” generally seen as so insulting and reprehensible a word when talking about someone with a mental disability, that there is a movement to end its use.

“Sometimes it’s like if Jerome isn’t good in math or reading, then he must be retarded he can’t be good at anything else,” he said.

In a weird way, Mr. Olumba seemed to acknowledge what he said was wrong, noting the Legislature passed a law removing the word from state statutes. “Oh my bad, we passed a law banning that word. Was I here to vote on that?” he said.

If that was bad, what came next was worse.

Mr. Olumba launched into a tirade against Asians and Chaldeans, playing up a major stereotype, in blasting merchants of Asian and Chaldean descent for purportedly taking advantage of African-Americans in Detroit.

“Asians and Chaldeans should have a Black Misery Appreciation Day, they are selling fake hair, gas, and loose cigarettes to people all across Detroit that are hoping to catch a breath of fresh air. And making a fortune doing it,” he said. “I want African Americans to get back to our principles of once being an honorable and spiritual people, who wanted most to be right in front of God. When we have him, we won’t need the Chaldean to sell us loose cigarettes or the Korean to sell us weave or the media and Hollywood and the music industry to sell us toxic rap music.”

In a final insult, Mr. Olumba took a shot at transgender people, voicing umbrage that their push to be included in the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act has been compared to the act’s original purpose to protect African-Americans from discrimination.

“To me seeing a guy dressed up as a girl is either going to be really funny or really sad,” he said. “But I mean let’s make the observation and move on, but don’t offend me by comparing his journey to wear panty hose to work because he feels more secure in them to Martin Luther King being assassinated or to my wife’s father being sprayed with hoses or bitten by dogs, or to my great uncles being jailed multiple times. Or to millions of people losing their lives to forced bondage and servitude.”

Mr. Olumba closed by returning to his jazz metaphor. By then, he had long since wandered way off that path.

House leadership and the House clerk ought to take a look at a rules change for the upcoming term on these speeches.

Current rules allow the presiding officer to gavel down any member who questions the motivations of another member and for not speaking to the item at hand. If a person walks between the presiding officer and another member speaking on the floor, that member gets gaveled down.

It seems like slandering other races or mocking someone’s gender identity should get the same treatment.