By Joel Thurtell
Recently, I wrote that Manuel “Matty” Moroun came from the Middle East. A reader pointed out that Matty himself told an interviewer he was born right in Detroit on June 5, 1927.
Here is how he described himself to a Corp! writer:
“My grandfather came from Lebanon and my dad was born in Buenos Aires,” says Moroun, sitting in a wood-paneled conference room at his spacious company headquarters in Warren, Mich. “My mom was also from Lebanon, but we think she was born in Cuba. The U.S. was always the magnet and that’s why they wanted to get here.”
His parents, Tufick (who went by Thomas) and Jamal, were married in Detroit where Matty was born, on June 5, 1927.
Growing up on Detroit’s east side with his three sisters and parents, Moroun attended Our Lady of Help elementary school, graduating from University of Detroit Jesuit High School and continuing his education at University of Notre Dame, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1949.
I don’t know why I thought Matty was Lebanese. Did I read it somewhere? A friend suggested that the error was published on a blog and amplified on the Internet. Well, I don’t want to be a link in that loudspeaker chain.
Somebody also suggested that we need to check Matty’s birth certificate to be sure.
NO, NO, NO!
That is the kind of nativist dumbthink that has right-wingers demanding to seek President Obama’s papers.
If Matty says it, that’s good enough for me.
I removed the error from that essay. It didn’t change the column’s purpose, which was to chastise Matty for suggesting through his surrogate, Ambassador Bridge president Dan Stamper, that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is unpatriotic for supporting a Canadian loan to Michigan to build a government-proposed international bridge to compete with Matty’s private monopoly on trucking fares between the U.S. and Canada. The kicker to Stamper/Moroun’s critique of the governor is that she was born in Canada and thus lacks, so they suggest, the loyalty to the red-white-and-blue that a “true” American, presumably like Matty, would have.
That is sheeer bunk.
Granholm has served the public as Wayne County corporation counsel, an appointive job, then was elected attorney general of Michigan by voters who apparently were not worried about her loyalty, and again she was elected and re-elected by Michigan voters to be governor. But for a weird quirk in the U.S. Constitution, she is barred from running for President because she was not born a U.S. citizen.
I’ve never understood why a fully-qualified person should be barred from one particular office because of a quirk of birthplace.
It is demagogy of the lowest sort to play on the governor’s birth, especially when the real motive of the Ambassador Bridge owner is to deflect attention from the fact that he’s struggling against mounting odds to retain control of a business monopoly.
That has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with loyalty to profits.
The governor’s dual citizenship, brought up in this manner, is a red herring.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
