Monday, April 28, 2008

The Scapegoat Mayor

There's a relief and an eagerness about the Kwame Kilpatrick scandals. Things haven't been going well in this city-- for forty years. Suddenly the reason is found. There he is! Fingers pointing; the populace up in arms with pitchforks and torches like in a Frankenstein movie. After him! A culprit has been discovered who can now be blamed for Detroit's many problems. It's all Kwame's fault!

People seem to think we need, and can have, a Mr. Clean mayor on the order of Philadelphia's Michael Nutter, when Detroit's problems are way beyond that. With the city facing even the disintegration of infrastructure, from schools to firehouses, the only requirement now is a person of talent willing and able to turn the city's financial situation around. That's it. Personal corruptions in a crisis situation are irrelevant. The area do-gooders look to the mediocrities of City Council for a replacement, which is no solution at all.
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Throughout the discussion about the mayor, the suburban/city, white-black divide in this area remains as subtext. How could it not?

The liberal media feeds into the Subtext with their headlines without context-- with illustrations of the city's failure which fail to mention real causes. The stories sustain the Subtext, this area's gigantic Godzilla monster which overshadows all. On a scale of 1 to 10 of metro area problems, mayoral corruption is a 3, auto company stagnation is a 20, and the racial divide is 100.

An irony is that the conservative business community better understands the importance of the core city. They know you cannot have a hole of devastation existing at the center of your metro area-- a vacuum into which all else will collapse. Or if you do have such a vacuum, and we do, you'd better find a way to "spin" it, to turn devastation-- grittiness; authenticity-- into a strength.

Which is where I come in.

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