Detroit's plight decades in the making

Laura Berman is horrified that people are making fun of Detroit after a call to get taxpayer funded help and a woman who had no clue where or why this money came to be.

Nobody laughs at Indonesians buried under rubble. They don't sneer at hurricane victims whose houses float away. But to the media conservatives who feed on the despair of the poor, Detroit's economic Katrina is an opportunity to stir up the rabble. In this week's case, it created a rush to Google and YouTube and provided fodder for fringe hate groups. "Detroit's Model Citizens Line Up for Money from Obama's 'Stash' " is the way Rush Limbaugh's Web site headlined a story about the stampede for grant applications at Cobo. Two breathless days of commentary were devoted to the appalling greed of broke Detroiters. He also nationally aired WJR-AM's (760) onsite interview with a Detroit woman who explained she'd come to Cobo for "Obama money." "Where did he get it?" asks WJR reporter Ken Rogulski. "I don't know, his stash," the woman responds. "I don't know where he got it from, but he's giving it to us, to help us." She added: "We love him. That's why we voted for him." How did this woman's anticipation and excitement become a trigger for ridicule? For contempt and loathing? From that brief exchange, Limbaugh extracted a wealth of knowledge about this anonymous woman. He went on to describe her as "dumb, uninformed, shockingly, saddeningly stupid, the model citizen for Barack Obama." The truth is that her answer wasn't stupid: She believed she had a chance to qualify for assistance from the federal government. She received an application. But she said, "Obama money," a phrase that he uses to then disparage the entire mass of people in attendance, people he assumes lack all good qualities, from work ethic to intelligence to education. Those are qualities he and his audience apparently share automatically, by virtue of their enjoying of his program and their shared ability to sneer at desperation.

Wrong, the reason Detroit has become a national joke because everyone sees the slow death march of an major city due to politics(mainly liberal) that has killed it. The same goes for the state. It has become an example of entitlement and people looking to be given the good life. The issue is not color but character and this one woman embodies everything that conservatives have pointed liberal policies contributed too.

The making of an entitlement society where government gives out "Obama" money and the Dem party that encourages it because it keeps them in power. That is what people are mocking and sad about this time around.

People like her and others who want government to be their mommy are major obstacles in making a strong community/society for people to live in and a country to remain strong. You can't have those who can keep providing for those who refuse to do without major problems in the future. Detroit serves as that warning.