Mitch: “This is my city”

By Joel Thurtell

I saw the small-capital-letter headline in today’s (January 12, 2009) Detroit Free Press, “MITCH SENDS A MESSAGE FROM DETROIT” followed by the big red lower-case head, “We’re not gum on America’s shoe.” I wondered where he REALLY wrote that message to America.

I heard in working more than two decades at the Free Press that Mitch Albom seldom writes his stories from the sports desk in Detroit.

Turns out the Free Press was re-printing Mitch’s big January 7, 2009 Sports Illustrated column defending Detroit from people who say nasty things about it.

I wanted to ask him, “Hey, Mitch, where’d you send that message FROM?”

No luck: Mitch has an unlisted phone number.

What to do?

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Or, when Mitch ain’t there, do as Mitch would do.

Make it up.

Wow. That’s it — fake it!

Hey, if Mitch can get away with fiction-as-journalism, why can’t I?

Here’s my fake interview with Pseudo-Mitch Albom.

Joelontheroad: Hi, Mitch. Nice to meet you, at last. I worked at the Free Press 23 years, but I only saw you in the building once and never actually met you. When I did see you, it was at a staff meeting where you were talking to us about what it’s like to be a famous writer.

Pseudo-Mitch: You never met me because I don’t work at the Free Press, Joel. Didn’t you know that? I don’t work AT the paper. Newsrooms are terrible places to do any creative writing. Editors are there. Plus I have a busy schedule giving talks and promoting books and such things. An office is no place for a writer, Joel.

JOTR: In your Sports Illustrated piece, you refer to yourself as a Detroiter. And you say you work at home. Where is home?

PM: Why, home is where my office and personal assistant are.

JOTR: Somewhere in Detroit?

PM: Well, no. Not exactly in Detroit. Close enough for government — I mean, journalism work.

JOTR: If not Detroit, where?

PM: Why, Franklin.

JOTR: Franklin?

PM: Franklin. It’s close enough to Detroit.

JOTR: But it’s not part of Detroit?

PM: Well, no, not exactly. It’s a village.

JOTR: I see it on the map. It’s in Oakland County. Highest per capita income of any county in the state, Oakland.

PM: Franklin. Close to Detroit.

JOTR: Well, I’m looking at my map and it seems Franklin is four and a half miles from Detroit. It doesn’t even border on Detroit.

PM: Close enough.

JOTR: But you wrote this long, long article in Sports Illustrated that says, “This is my city.” And you mean Detroit. This was after a long, long preamble describing men in a homeless shelter in Detroit, and you conclude that passage by writing, “This is my city.”

PM: It IS my city.

JOTR: But you live in Franklin. That’s your city.

PM: Franklin is not a city at all. It’s a village.

JOTR: But you keep saying in the Sports Illustrated article that you’re a Detroiter, that you live in Detroit. You write, as if you live in Detroit, that “we are downtrodden,…” Are you downtrodden?

PM: Well, Joel, Detroiters ARE downtrodden.

JOTR: How about Detroiters who live in tony places like Indian Village? How about Detroiters who live in those nice condos along Woodward near Wayne State? Are they “downtrodden”?

PM: Well, Joel, like I say in Sports Illustrated, an article that the Free Press said is “part pride and catharsis,” the Free Press is in trouble and it’s going to deliver papers to homes only three days a week. That means I’ll get less attention from readers unless they run all my stories on the delivery days, HINT, HINT, so I guess I AM downtrodden, and I guess the Freepsters ARE downtrodden. They may not stay in a homeless shelter, but they are downtrodden. And if you run this story, you will be kicking them when they are downtrodden.

JOTR: Isn’t that kind of like saying “Detroit is hurting because the newspapers are hurting?” Kind of narcissistic, isn’t it?

PM: You know, Joel, this is why I work at home in my office, in Franklin, because I don’t run across smart-asses like you. The people in Franklin are like me. They’re nice.

JOTR: They’re like you in that they’re rich, too. I just looked up some stats — sports term — stats about Franklin. Population in 2008 was 3,024, projected to be 3,600 in 2035. Hey, that really IS a small place. But growing. That’s good. Let’s see here, according to the Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments, the population of this burg is 95 percent white and 1.7 percent black, with the rest hispanic, Asian or Pacific islander or other. And I see that in Detroit, the town where you write that you are from but where you don’t actually live and work, the population in 2008 was 855,836, projected to decline by 95,434 to 705,128 by 2035. And I see that whites make up 20.7 percent of the population with blacks at 75.3 percent. One-fifth white, three-quarters black. I wonder, Mitch, if it’s fair to say that the city you call “my city,” though it’s not where you live and work, is a mostly-black town, while the village you don’t acknowledge in print as your own, though it’s where you live and work, is almost entirely white? And the city you call “my city,” though you don’t live and work there, is losing huge numbers of residents while the place where you really live is gaining?

PM: And yet we remember when the streets were stuffed, a million people downtown at a parade, as our hockey team was given a royal reception; every car carrying a player was cheered.*

JOTR: Bear with me, Mitch. I’m leading to something here. I see that the median household income in Detroit, your city though you don’t live and work there, was $29,526 in 2000. But in Franklin, where you do work and live, the median income in 2000 was $124,014.

PM: When people ask what kind of sports down Detroit is, I say the best in the nation.*

JOTR: Is it fair to say that people who live in Franklin are rich? Compared to people who actually live in Detroit, I mean. Franklin’s median income is more than four times what it is in Detroit, where you say you are from but where you don’t live or work. Would one of those rich people in Franklin be you?

PM: We have all heard the catch-phrases about Detroit: A city in ruins. A Third World metropolis. A carcass. Last person to leave, turn out the lights. For years, we wore a cloak of defiance. But now that cloak feels wet and heavy. It has been cold here before, but this year seems colder. Skies have grayed before, but this year they’re like charcoal.*

JOTR: Are the skies in Franklin like charcoal?

PM: Week after week, as our business suffocated, as our houses were foreclosed and handed over to the banks, our football team lost — to Jacksonville by 24 points, to Carolina by nine, to Tampa Bay by 18.*

JOTR: Was your house in Franklin foreclosed?

PM: At halftime Sharpe wore that bag over his head and joined his colleagues in loudly suggesting that the NFL take the annual tradition away from the Motor City. “We have kids watching this,” Sharpe said. “And they have to watch the Lions.”

JOTR: Kids read the Free Press, too. Around the time you got in trouble for faking that Free Press story, I don’t think you wore a bag over your head. I heard back then you made a couple hundred thou in salary from the Freep alone, not counting TV, movies, books and so on. What do you rake in per year — a million? More?

PM: And yet… And yet the gods toy with us. They give us the Lions. Our football team puts the less in hopeless.

JOTR: By the end of your column, it seems like you’re defending the entire state of Michigan from bad-mouthers. Isn’t it true, though, that people in, say, St. Joseph and Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo and most places outstate consider Detroit a place they’d rather stay away from? Isn’t it true that even in the suburbs of Detroit, there is plenty of disdain for Motown, even maybe in Franklin where you live and work though you say you are a Detroiter?

PM: And yet…And yet we go on. The Tigers were supposed to win big last season; they finished last in their division…And maybe you ask…”Why don’t you leave?” Maybe because we like it here.*

JOTR: Where? Detroit or Franklin?

PM: Okay, Joel, where do YOU live?

JOTR: Tony Plymouth.

PM: Why Plymouth?

JOTR: Plymouth Township, actually, where the local taxes are less than 3 mills, compared to 34.65 in Detroit, where the schools are managed well and are safe places for kids to learn, like in tony Franklin, where the taxes are less than 9 mills, where the police and fire people come when we need them, which is seldom. I can’t remember the last time we had a murder. When was the last homicide in Franklin? Mugging? You don’t have to lock your car and our elected officials have never gone to jail. A few years ago, voters tosses some corrupt politicians out of office. In Detroit, they re-elected a thug as mayor. Plymouth Township is a peaceful place to write my articles and books. What’s more, by not working in Detroit, I don’t have to pay their city income tax.

Any of that explain why you live in Franklin, Mitch?

PM: And yet it’s our misery to endure.

We interrupt this colloquy in the interest of brevity. Unlike the failing Detroit Free Press, which printed a front page story and jumped it to THREE FULL PAGES OF REAL PAPER NEWSPRINT inside, JOTR does not have enough space for the remainder of our interview with Pseudo-Mitch. Another time, maybe.

* Actual quotations from Mitch’s Sports Illustrated column as seen in the Free Press.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com