BILL MCGRAW: Super Bowl prep hides a gritty reality

[shugah]

BILL MCGRAW: Super Bowl prep hides a gritty reality
January 17, 2006

As workers begin to transform building interiors into Hollywood-style sets for ultra-exclusive parties, one thing is becoming tangibly clear: As Super Bowl venues go, Detroit certainly is different.

~snip~

It's the age of anxiety across southeast Michigan: Detroit itself, with a higher percentage of people living under the poverty line than any other big city in the nation, has been laying off police officers and firefighters, shutting recreation centers and shedding cultural institutions. Schools are closing. More drastic cutbacks will be announced in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, severe financial problems in the auto industry are shattering the decades-old social contract between companies and workers that created metro Detroit's middle class. As the game approaches, you can hear the death rattle of Michigan's manufacturing economy.

That is the gritty world of Detroit that is colliding with the glamour world of the Super Bowl, and it's creating strange juxtapositions: Deserted by businesses for the last 50 years, Detroit will become the playground of corporate America for several days. The automakers themselves, criticized harshly across the region for months, will be honored at a gala Jan. 30.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060117/NEWS0101/601170343/1007/NEWS

[rodeodance]

1. The Two America's coming together (but we will only see the glitter).

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Think I'll take another look at "Roger and Me". Flint, MI was

depicted in its stark poverty and faded glory by Michael Moore.