Charlie LeDuff will be the guest on The Colbert Report tonight, April 9 at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.
Charlie LeDuff will be the guest on The Colbert Report tonight, April 9 at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.
My goodness, he was even more embarrassing than I thought he'd be. Is he really the best we can do?
He had a chance to tell the world about the positive things happening in the city, yet he only dogged us and reinforced what we're already known to be.
What a waste of air time. Charlie disappointed me.
He's been peddling his book. I heard a few interviews on NPR recently. Well, I should say I had it on in the background. He was just as irritating to me on the radio as the few times I saw his "work" on TV.
If positive spin on Detroit is what you want, go back and watch Kwame's state of the city speeches.
He's keeping it real while answering the questions asked of him and simultaneously plugging his book. All while being interviewed by a quirky host in a 7 minute spot. There's not enough time to posture about Detroit's rise when the topic surrounds the EMF and his book.
I will say that Charlies quirkiness was not expected by Stephen and seemed to keep Colbert from his usual interview antics.
He's "keeping it real" like the over-amped, pseudo-authentic and deeply underinformed poseur he is. He has about as much credibility as the guy on the bar stool next to you, but is twice as grating because he believes his wannbe neo-Damon Runyon hipster act is actually important and is itself reporting something. The fact this know-nothing is taken seriously by some as a journalist just shows how abysmally far the reportorial profession has fallen.
"So, Charlie, why did you leave New York to come to Detroit?"
I guess he can't answer that truthfully: "Well, Steve, my newspaper had to apologize for me after I got caught ripping off another writer's work. So my name was Mudd at the NY Times, and Detroit was my only option."
I think this guy has substance abuse issues. Judging from the reported bizarre behavior he displayed on St Patricks Day in Cork-town, it looks like we have another Bill Bonds on our hands but possibly worse.
Unrelated to the Colbert interview, here's a drunken Leduff in an interview with Vice.
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-meets...yLe8TmF41Snr9i
DAMN!! Are you serious about this?Quote:
Originally Posted by dookie joe
Very enteratining,interesting,&informative imo. Thanks for this.Quote:
Originally Posted by subsidized
"neo-Damon Runyon"? C'mon. It's not nice to speak ill of the dead, and besides, Runyon had some talent. :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by EastsideAl
As to being taken seriously by " some journalist" you should add two recent articles in the New York Times, including a good review in the NYT Book Review and a third review in the Wall Street Journal. LeDuff is taken seriously - just a lot of haters here.
Pretty much.Quote:
Originally Posted by SWMAP
LeDuff, having had the career he has, adds a much-needed wider perspective to Detroit's problems. Many of us suffer from tunnel vision, having lived with it our whole lives. We create all kinds of bizarre distinctions and exceptions that have little basis in reality. I recently worked in our area with a group of people from down south, and I had a hard time arguing against many of their preconceptions of Detroit, which of course extended to the suburbs. When the city itself and nearly all of the inner ring suburbs are on a visible decline and the weather is predictably miserable, what can you really say to defend your hometown?
Yeah I was going to say, I didn't really take issue with his interview. I am really excited about what's going on in Detroit and I love it here, but my conversation with y'all on here is drastically different from the one I have when I explain things to people back home. People here, even if we disagree, tend to understand the subtle nuances of the changes here. People unfamiliar with Detroit do not. You can explain it in a good 30 minute conversation maybe, but not in the 5 minutes LeDuff had with Colbert.Quote:
Originally Posted by nain rouge
And anyways, even if he had spent his five minutes perfectly conveying why Detroit has a reason to be optimistic about its future, it wouldn't have been enough to change anyone's mind who is unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with Detroit. I think it will take years of positive press to undo what people think about Detroit on a national scale.
Right, the problem is that putting a positive spin on Metro Detroit takes too many "buts". You know: well, there's a lot crime, but...; well, there's a lot of drugs, but...; well, the winters suck, but...; well, the Big 3 doesn't hire like they used to, but... need I go on? It's tough, but I always believe embracing reality is the quickest path to real change
From what I gathered about Leduff's book, he takes an interesting point of view. If many other cities are on the Detroit path, and Detroit itself is a pioneer in this rusting trend; should Detroit not also be the pioneer in revival? Should we not [[on a national level) look at what needs to be done, avoided and how much $$ it should cost to turn these cities around from decay and destruction? Interesting and baiting to say the least.
It's not that I wanted a positive spin, it's that I wanted something a little more useful and analytical than a "we all just need to come together, ya' feel me bro?" 'voice of the people' hipster act, which is what Charlie generally seems to provide instead of, you know, actual reporting and analysis.
As for the Times review, first one would do well to remember that, as dookie joe points out above, LeDuff was pushed out of the Times after engaging in some very ethically questionable "journalism" [[he made his name there straight out of school as part of ill-fated editor Howell Raines' move to hire untested young journalists to make the Times more 'youthful' and 'relevant' - a move that also brought us Jayson Blair). The Times review was written by LeDuff's buddy and fellow professional Detroiter Paul Clemens. One of the few good things I have to say about LeDuff's work is that at least he doesn't engage in the borderline racism that marks Clemens' work.
LeDuff is considered hip? Who would've thought all I had to do was not comb my hair and I would be hip.
See, that's where you and I diverge. Just imagine if blacks and whites - Detroit and the suburbs - really did "come together"? Let's face it, the racial divide has been a HUGE part of the problem here for decades and decades.Quote:
Originally Posted by EastsideAl
Personally, I think too many people look for "analytic" problems so they can ignore the reality smacking them in the face. It's easier to talk about investments and crime in the abstract than to confront everyday truths.
Maybe the problem is everyone wants to blame race. I have never been to an area where people are so quick to jump to racism on nearly every issue. If a white man farts next to a black man here it's racism.
Agreed. I think someone else put it very well on this board - everything that some people blame Detroit's ills on have been faced by another city. Racism, suburban flight, loss of manufacturing. But no city has fallen the way Detroit has. The uncommon denominator I've noticed is the animosity between the the city and suburbs [[aka black and white). I've never experienced anything like it.Quote:
Originally Posted by nain rouge
For example, I've noticed that some [[nice, rational, well-meaning) residents of surrounding cities bristle at being called the "suburbs." I've gotten corrected more than once when I referred to Birmingham as a suburb of Detroit. Perhaps these are isolated instances [[but I've asked other non-native Detroiters if they've experienced the same and it's been a yes) but I think they are indicative of the anti-regional mindset that plagues the Metro area. Metro Detroiters do need to "come together."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shollin
Sure, but that's just a symptom of the underlying disease. The racial tensions in Metro Detroit are palpable, and I think that's the way some people deal with their frustration over it.
See, there was this whole liberal idea that we could "fix" racism by changing the terms people used and tweaking legal and corporate policies. That was a fallacy. While it has helped some, it's also put an insidious politically correct sheen on some very nasty discrimination. Black customers became the "urban demographic". Changing your postal address from Detroit to a nearby suburb became the nice way to disassociate yourself from a particular community. People think because we've made some cosmetic changes we can move on.
No way, man.
I was really aggravated by this when I first moved here [[and I still am). Then I started reading the history of the city and how the blacks were treated, and then I understand the anger. But at some point, you still have to get over it. My [[black) family went through a lot of shit down south, but if you don't get over it decades down the road, it only harms you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shollin
That being said, most white Southerners would agree that blacks were treated unfairly by them down there, which makes it much easier to move on. Older white suburbanites seem, in my newly formed humble opinion, to not shoulder any part of the blame. I was having lunch with an older [[60s) friend who now lives in Ann Arbor and she was like "Well, they wanted "whitey" to leave, so we left. That's on them." Well, yeah but did you ever think about why they wanted you to leave?