DROP DEAD, DETROIT! says neighboring-county exec

[quiller]

L. Brooks Patterson is the Oakland County, Michigan chief executive, a job he's held now for about 21 years --- and voters there love him. He's been their champion and a master practitioner of the broad art of sliming Wayne County and its festering chancre, the City of Detroit.

Unlike bankrupt, corrupt cesspool Detroit, Oakland has a "platinum" credit rating, and scores of high-tech and other businesses vying for space. Voters return Patterson to office with enthusiastic regularity. Unlike Detroit, L. Brooks Patterson gets the job done.

DeadlineDetroit.com (one of the area's rising alternative-media stars) offers the short version of a recent New Yorker profile of Patterson, with these morsels. The headline for the subscription-only New Yorker item? DROP DEAD, DETROIT!

* "Oakland County embodies fiscal success as much as Detroit does financial ruin, and Patterson, the county executive, tends to behave as though his chief job in life were to never let anyone forget it."

* One week in September, he gave me an extended tour of his empire, in a chauffeured minivan. Near the end of the first day, we headed toward Lake St. Clair, at the mouth of the Detroit River, for a party on a yacht. Patterson sat in the front passenger seat. Over his shoulder, he said, "Anytime I talk about Detroit, it will not be positive. Therefore, I'm called a Detroit basher. The truth hurts, you know? Tough shit."

* Patterson told me, "I used to say to my kids, 'First of all, there's no reason for you to go to Detroit. We've got restaurants out here.' They don't even have movie theatres in Detroit—not one." He went on, "I can't imagine finding something in Detroit that we don't have in spades here. Except for live sports. We don't have baseball, football. For that, fine—get in and get out. But park right next to the venue—spend the extra twenty or thirty bucks. And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That's just a call for a carjacking." . . .

* When I asked him how Detroit might fix its financial problems, he said, "I made a prediction a long time ago, and it's come to pass. I said, 'What we're going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, an then throw in the blankets and corn.'"

* At a retirement retirement roast of an employee who had moved to Louisville, Patterson joked, "Mike told me when he went to the Kentucky Derby, he saw a bumper sticker that said, 'I miss Detroit.' So he broke the window, stole the radio and left a note that said, 'I hope this cures your homesickness.'"

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/8005/the_new_yorker_profiles_l_brooks_patterson_read_the_worst_of_his_detroit-bashing

But then there's Detroit's reaction to Anthony Bourdain visiting that place, writing a review of various (relatively unknown) restaurants and their dishes. He's had to apologize --- repeatedly --- but then had a change of heart and went all Jimmy Cagney about it..... (My edits for language.)

I love Detroit. I think it's beautiful. I think it's one of the most beautiful cities in America — still. . . .

Detroit looks like nowhere else. Detroit looks like mother***kin' Detroit. As it should.

I'll say it again. And again.

I love Detroit. I love Detroiters. You've got to have a sense of humor to live in a city so relentlessly ***ked. You've got to be tough — and occasionally even devious. And Detroiters are funny, tough — and supreme improvisers. They are also among the best and most fun drinkers in the country.

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/7153/profane_bourdain_phrase_merits_detroit_t-shirt_as_a_redditor_illustrates