Detroit Public Schools President Otis Mathis and that scene from "There's Something About Mary"

There's something about Detroit Public Schools President Otis Mathis:

One day after facing accusations of fondling himself, Detroit Public Schools President Otis Mathis wrote a letter to colleagues today blaming "ongoing health problems" for his "poor judgment."

The letter, which attempted to rescind his resignation he submitted Thursday, doesn't explicitly address accusations from Superintendent Teresa Gueyser that he touched himself during a private meeting.

But Mathis acknowledged that he "made inappropriate actions toward a professional employee of the board" and promises to remove himself from personnel decisions involving her.

"I am following up with my doctors because I need to pursue treatment, and because I want to make sure that what happened doesn't ever happen again," Mathis said. "However, I do not need to resign in order to take care of my health."

The letter to colleagues came the same day board Vice President Anthony Adams today released a two-page letter from Gueyser accusing Mathis of fondling himself during a meeting this week. She called it his "usual habit" during one-on-one meetings. She said she tries to ignore it.

"On many occasions, I have asked him not to touch himself," she wrote in the letter dated Wednesday.

Mathis attended the board's 5 p.m. meeting today, but sat in the front row of the audience. His name plate was already removed from the board table. Adams said the board won't comment further on the controversy and is moving forward as if "he is no longer a board member."

Board member Reverend David Murray called the allegations "a terrible thing" but said he doesn't believe the 55-year-old Mathis should quit.

"It happens to a lot of young men. They engage in behavior they feel is harmless and it's offensive to certain people," Murray said. "... It could be deemed offensive, but some women are more sensitive to those types of things than others."

"I feel bad for him because he probably felt that it was something she would probably like or she got humor out of it."

Gueyser's letter describes in detail an incident during a meeting about her employment agreement. Her contract is to be reviewed tonight.

"President Mathis continued to fondle his genital area for approximately 20 minutes, or the entire time I was talking," Gueyser wrote. "At one point, I lifted some papers from my binder above my eyes to separate my peripheral view in order to avoid watching his activity."

To abandon Detroit is to abandon Black America, but middle class Black residents are beginning to leave the city in droves leaving a city populated and run by alleged perverts as The Wall Street Journal reports:

This shrinking city needs to hang on to people like Johnette Barham: taxpaying, middle-class professionals who invest in local real estate, work and play downtown, and make their home here.

Ms. Barham just left. And she's not coming back.

In seven years as a homeowner in Detroit, she endured more than 10 burglaries and break-ins at her house and a nearby rental property she owned. Still, she defied friends' pleas to leave as she fortified her home with locks, bars, alarms and a dog.

Then, a week before Christmas, someone torched the house and destroyed almost everything she owned.

In March, police arrested a suspect in connection with the case, someone who turned out to be remarkably easy to find. For Ms. Barham, the arrest came one crime too late. "I was constantly being targeted in a way I couldn't predict, in a way that couldn't be controlled by the police," she says. "I couldn't take it anymore."

Ms. Barham's journey from diehard to defector illustrates the precarious state of Detroit today. The city—which has shed roughly 1 million residents since the 1950s—is now losing the African-American professionals who had stayed steadfastly, almost defiantly, loyal.

Through decades of white flight and economic distress, these diehards have sustained the city's cultural institutions and allowed prime neighborhoods such as Indian Village and Palmer Woods to stave off the blight that infects large swaths of Detroit.

Today, frustrated by plummeting property values and high crime, many diehards have hit their breaking point. Their exodus is consigning borderline neighborhoods to full-blown blight and putting prime residential areas at risk. By some estimates, this year's Census will show a population drop of 150,000 people from the 951,000 people who lived within city limits in 2000. That would be roughly double the population loss in the 1990s, when black, middle-class flight began replacing white flight as the prevailing dynamic.

There are other signs the middle class is throwing in the towel. From 1999 to 2008, median household income in Detroit dropped nearly 25% to $28,730, after growing 17% in the 1990s, according to Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit that analyzes Census data for the city. Over that period, the proportion of owner-occupied homes fell to 39% from 49%, while the proportion of vacant homes nearly tripled to 28%.

You always hear white people say they move to whitopia's for the 'good schools' that their children will attend, forever fearful of admitting why those schools are so good. A cursory glance at Detroit, where Mr. Otis Mathis finds 'choking the chicken' a more suitable action at a Board of Education meeting than fixing the city's near 50 percent illiteracy rate provides an incredible glance into part of the problem.

Of course, Mr. Mathis is also the same individual who confessed to being incapable of putting together a lucid sentence, despite his apparent dexterity in 'rubbing one out':

As if Detroit doesn't have enough problems these days, the president of the city's school board offered the shocking admission that he can't pen a coherent sentence.

Otis Mathis, who oversees the academic future of 90,000 public school students, told the Detroit News that he's a "horrible writer" after reports surfaced that he sent a Feb. 29 e-mail to the financial manager of Detroit Public Schools that was rife with spelling, punctuation and usage errors.

"If you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats," the e-mail read, according to the paper.

Mathis, 56, of Detroit, has had difficulties with language as early as fourth grade, when he was placed in special education classes. His college degree was also held up for more than a decade due to repeatedly failing English proficiency exams required for graduation from Wayne State University, the paper reported.

Some parents are now questioning whether Mathis is fit for his role. "It's kind of scary to even talk about," Patrick Martin, 49, a Detroit contractor whose 12-year-old son is a student at Noble Middle School, told the paper. "If this is the leader, what does it say about the followers? It explains a lot about why there's so much confusion and infighting with the board and Robert Bobb."

Mathis has also worked as a substitute teacher in Detroit schools, which are ranked among the lowest-achieving metropolitan public school districts in the country. But he told the paper his story is about someone who has managed his limitations.

"Instead of telling them that they can't write and won't be anything, I show that cannot stop you," Mathis told the paper. "If Detroit Public Schools can allow kids to dream, with whatever weakness they have, that's something. ... It's not about what you don't have. It's what you can do."

The Detroit News reports the school system in Detroit is the worst in the nation. A school system is only as proficient as the students who sit in the classrooms, regardless of the amount of Crusading White Pedagogues attempting to Teach for America and enlighten the minds of the hopelessly erudite-less masses.

Of course, President Otis Mathis - who resigned his post as president of the school system only to ask for it back (apparently he.. misfired?) - can't be blamed for all the problems plaguing Detroit, the nations most violent city.

The glory of earning that ignominious title falls squarely on the shoulders of the cities Black residents.

Now, being inclined to participate in chronic masturbation - even to the point of fondling oneself in the workplace - well... that seems to be a skill that Mr. Mathis can add to his resume.

There's something about Otis Mathis besides his self-acknowledged inability to formulate a rational sentence, and in case you ever have the chance to shake his hand, that isn't gel in his hand.

Otis Mathis joins Alvin Greene in the Pantheon of Stuff Black People Don't Like Heroes.

We don't like poking fun at Detroit here at SBPDL, it's just sometimes that city blows an impressive load that we can't help but comment on. Wasting raccoons is one thing; Otis Mathis pulling a Judge Reinhold from Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a horse of a different color.

Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood has been confirmed as Otis Mathis' favorite song.

Who knows how long this story will last online, but to watch a news report on Mr. Mathis, click here to see the ABC affiliate in Detroit report.