A Proud Moment

A few years ago a subordinate of mine got in trouble for using a company computer to look at pictures of naked women on the Internet. His actions necessitated a meeting with my boss in order to formulate the appropriate punishment for the guy. When I was informed of the nature of the transgression he'd committed, I said to my superior, "I have to be honest with you (name deleted because he's an a-hole), I didn't know you could do anything on the internet except look at porn."

It turns out that there is. You can make friends. It is this that I like best about our new Age of Technology. I now have friends I didn't have before. They are people I have never met in person or even spoken with directly. But, I know they are friends. And good friends at that.

A case in point is the great Chicago attorney Dave von Ebers. Dave is one of the most insightful and well-spoken commentator on the tubes and I recommend his blog, "The Journal of the Plague Year" to Everybody. The link is posted on the right side of this page under the Everybody Wants to Read These Blogs" heading.

Dave made me so proud and touched me deeply a couple of days ago by devoting a post to me and MSU Spartan fans everywhere. You can read it HERE.

In his post, Dave cites an article written by Dave (rhymes with "siren") Ziren, one of my favorite sportswriters. If you think that all sports is about is who won and who got traded, etc., you won't like Ziren at all. If you think there is a context and a connection beteween sports and society at large, you need to read Ziren. And you can, right HERE.

I got in a little hot water after the game Monday night when I read a Faceook post about how by hosting the Final Four Detroit and won the PR Battle and about how we should all "stand up and be proud." That last part, the "stand up" part, is the theme of a campaign being aired by a local TV station. We're all supposed to stand up and be proud of Detroit. It drives me nuts. Jingles aren't going to get us here in Detroit out of the mess we are in. The reality is that we are in big trouble here.

I posted a comment to that effect which the original poster, a member of the organization I lead responded to by calling my comments "reprehensible and embarassing" which I didn't mind, but he then de-friended me on Facebook which I thought was really harsh, dude.

My relationship with sports is complicated and I'll write about that sometime. In the instant case (I throw legalese out there from time to time to impress my lawyers friends like Dave and Jay) the poster said it was wrong of me to speak out the way I did since I'm the president of the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association.

I wasn't knocking the Final Four or the hard work put in by the organizers or the excellent job they did. And I was not speaking in my official capacity. But, whatever, I am the president of the group so I can understand if people think I don't have the right to speak as a private individual. President Obama doesn't get to speak as a private citizen after all.

My point was, and I think it may have been missed, is simply that we have bigger fish to fry in this town.

I was convinced that I said what I needed to say yesterday when I drove all the way across town from the West side to the East for a dental appointment. The squalor I saw on that trip appalling. From the freeway I saw scores of abandoned buildings. Some burned out. Some boarded up. A lot of the scenery looked like the aftermath of war.

It made me think. If we could re-build Germany and Japan after the devastation wrought by World War II, why can't we rebuild Detroit? We are dying here. We need help. We need to do something. Something more than humming jingles about how proud we are. I look at how we make people live around here and pride is not exactly the emotion which it evokes. I'm sorry, but that's just the way I feel.