Stephen Henderson: Blame game won't solve Detroit's problems

BY STEPHEN HENDERSON
DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

I don't expect complexity from Glenn Beck any more than I expect sober clarity from Charlie Sheen.

So Beck's assertion Monday that Detroit 2010 is Hiroshima 1945 was predictably crude and one-dimensional -- effective, perhaps, for a predisposed audience, but not much grist for the intellectual mill.

Give Beck this, though: For an unrefined analogy, the core of this one was pretty spot-on.

Anyone who lives in Detroit can tell you that some pockets of the place do look like an atomic bomb went off there, and moreso than in any other American city where I've lived or visited. That speaks not just to the desolation, but also to the sheer emptiness. Drive to the lower east side at dusk and tell me it doesn't appear apocalyptic and make you wonder: Where the hell did everybody go?

Where he went wrong

That's not to take anything from the great things this city has going -- the momentum downtown and along the riverfront, stretching up into Midtown and New Center; the new leadership and sense of determination.

But to someone who's not from here, someone who's used to bustling urban images from Chicago or New York or Atlanta or Baltimore, this place looks to be an astounding mess.

I don't think that's news to any of us who do live here.

But Beck's Fox News soliloquy veered into a sociopolitical rant that was as historically inaccurate as it was simplistic.

Look at the bigger picture

Continued at: http://www.freep.com/article/2011030...oit-s-problems