Shout Out To The Detroit Metro Times For Their Hit Piece Calling Me A 'Confused Token LGBTQ Culture Writer'
From the Detroit Metro Times:
Source - If there’s one thing that’s true about people from Detroit, its that we’re very protective of our city. Sure, we’ll moan and groan about the lack of public transit, the crazy high car insurance, and the fact that the sky seems to be grey for like 5 months out of the year — but the second someone outside of Detroit tries to talk shit about our city, you better believe the claws will come out.
At least that’s how we felt when the notoriously toxic and frequently misogynistic low-brow clickbait website Barstool Sports decided to take a cheap shot at our fair city.
On Tuesday, writer Gay Pat, Barstool Sports’ seemingly confused token “LGBTQ Culture” writer wrote a short hit-piece about Detroit based on drone footage of the Packard Plant – a property that is currently being rehabbed by Spanish-born developer Fernando Palazuelo.
In the article “I genuinely don’t understand how anyone can choose to live in the city of Detroit after seeing this drone footage” (yes, that’s the actual headline), Gay Pat calls Detroit “war-torn Syria,” “America’s first third world country,” and recounts other tired diatribes frequently flung by sheltered white dudes who have never set foot inside the 313.
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First of all, if you’re going to use my own quotes to attack me, at least use the good ones. ‘War-torn Syria’ and ‘America’s first third world country’ aren’t even in the same stratosphere as ‘decrepit, post-Chernobyl wasteland’ and ‘buy a house for the price of a VCR.’
Second of all, it was a joke! The entire blog was a fucking joke! Obviously I know that the Packard Plant isn’t the entire city. It’s the essence of the city, which is why I wrote about it in the first place.
You said it yourself, people in Detroit take the city too seriously yet that’s exactly what you do in your article.
If there’s one thing that’s true about people from Detroit, its that we’re very protective of our city. Sure, we’ll moan and groan about the lack of public transit, the crazy high car insurance, and the fact that the sky seems to be grey for like 5 months out of the year — but the second someone outside of Detroit tries to talk shit about our city, you better believe the claws will come out.
Take a chill pill and put the claws away. Detroit isn’t some shining city on a hill. It’s a dump that’s apparently so poor it can’t afford a sense of humor.
As for calling me a “seemingly confused token ‘LGBTQ Culture’ writer”…well, I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like it. Not one bit. If there’s one thing I’m not confused about it’s being an LGBT culture writer. That and the fact the media in Detroit can’t even defend their city without bringing it down.
Here’s are some of the qualifiers the author used before she attempted to write nice things:
“We don’t expect everyone to understand why we live in Detroit. Hell, on a bad day you might even catch us asking ourselves that same question.”
“It may not have the ritzy skyline of New York City, the palm trees of Los Angeles, or the booming tech industry of San Francisco…”
“We know that “New Detroit” offers its own variety of problems and obstacles that we’ll have to tackle in the years to come. “
“We know that Detroit may not be perfect…”
Stand for something, Devin. The people of Detroit deserve better. I was ready to move beyond this, but now I don’t know if I can. Time will tell…
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PS: Credit to me for not writing about the Packard Plant bridge collapse.
Here’s what I was going to blog before I decided it was in bad taste.
Why do bad things happen to good people? I had just written a blog yesterday about how great the city and people of Detroit are and now this happens. Sure, the Packard Plant has sat dormant for almost SIXTY years, but that doesn’t matter. It’s being rehabbed, remember? You can tell they’re making progress based on this picture the developers website.
Was going to be great.
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PPS:
Still need one of these for Detroit.