The "Fuck Detroit" attitude among Michigander right-wingers is a long-held view.

The Mitt-Wit is merely echoing an attitude long-held by bigots and sociopaths hereabouts, going back to the 40s, 50s and 60s when 8 Mile Road (the demarcation between Detroit and suburbs, Wayne County and Oakland county) was 'white' on one side (north) and 'black' on the other. It was STARK.

As a kid in the 50s, one of my very favorite summertime haunts was Crystal Pool on the northeast corner of 8 Mile Road and Greenfield. It was a fresh water public (privately-owned) swimming pool. People of color were NOT allowed. Folks living and sweating in the summer heat (air conditioning was NOT common) mere yards away to the south, on the other side of 8 Mile Road, knew they were banned. Period. They risked life and limb if they ever tried. On the off-chance they got past the admissions folks, they'd be beat up in the locker rooms. It was (in retrospect) weird. Families felt fairly comfortable allowing their teen-aged kids to spend the day at Crystal Pool without adult supervision, but the color line was in full force.

The attitude of right-wingers all over the state, whether in Oakland or Macomb County (both on the northern border of Detroit and Wayne County), or on the west side of the state (e.g. Grand Rapids and DeVos/Amway territory, or Michigan Militia territory), or other provinces of Dumbfuckistan has traditionally been one of regarding Detroit as populated by "those people" -- and not safe for "God-fearing" white folks. The resentment over ANY state funds being spent on Detroit (people or infrastructure) continues to this day. Any visit to Dumbfuckistan (most areas not in southeast Michigan) and interaction with locals would normally encounter the "I wouldn't live anywhere near there with 'those people" attitude. The animosity was so thick it was disgusting.

As a student at Wayne State University (adjacent to "inner city" Detroit and the "Cass corridor&quot , I was very accustomed to enjoying the diversity and variety offered by the urban experience. I live off-campus. I continued to live there immediately after graduation and working at my first jobs -- teaching math at a Detroit parochial high school and then working at Chevrolet Central Office as a computer programmer. Then ...

It was 1967 ... and the riots broke out. I was living off-campus and working at Chevrolet. Convenient. Local. The urban lifestyle for a 20-something. Good years. Accommodating my family whose "concerns" for my safety were exaggerated, I agreed to spend the night(s) at my mother's home (in Oakland County) while the city was placed under martial law and the National Guard was brought in. That Sunday evening, as I drove north from Detroit and crossed 8 Mile Road, I encountered a police roadblock. Police reservists and some regulars. Their headlights aimed south into my face. I was stopped by a carbine-wielding cop ... aiming the muzzle of his carbine right at my head and telling me to keep my hands visible on the steering wheel. I was required to produce ID, explain where I was going, and have my car subjected to scrutiny lest I be carrying any passengers. ("Those people.&quot I was allowed to proceed. "Allowed." Barely. Civil rights? Civil liberties? Due process? Forget it.

Bigotry and racism have been pervasive here as long as I can remember. It's no wonder that I feel more "at home" in the SF Bay Area than here, where I was born and raised. The Mitt Wit, on the other hand, shows EVERY symptom of a privileged right-winger, steeped in the attitudes of his 'class' at the preppy Cranbrook School (all white, of course) and nurtured by pervasive animosity towards "those people" in Detroit. The Mitt Wit was a studnet there at the same time I was a student at WSU. (I'm a few years older than him.)

Hell, the "Reagan Democrats" of Macomb County were largely union factory workers whose resentment that the union and the state Democrats were defending the rights of "those people" drove them from being "Kennedy Democrats" to "Reagan Democrats." Many of them were only Democrats by heritage, often being first generation refugees from the Jim Crow south ... coming north for the jobs.

The dog whistle is getting worn out.