Naysayer tees off on those who would help Detroit

“I’m ready to buy in Detroit.” -- Warren Buffet, during The Detroit Homecoming

This past week in Detroit saw The Detroit Homecoming, a three-day program for “expats” who, largely through the coordination of Crain’s Detroit Business, came back to the city to take another look around.

The hope was that the invitation-only program would stir those who grew up here and then left to reconsider Detroit as a business center. The guest list included successful people, even a few billionaires. I don’t think Buffet is an expat, but he was on the guest list, anyway.

The Detroit Homecoming sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? At the very least, Crain’s and the other organizations that pulled the program together are trying to find ways to help Detroit, rather than just sitting around and grumbling about it.

Like Michael Jackman, managing editor of The Metro Times. I would call the weekly by the name I see on the nameplate, The Detroit Metro Times, but they moved out of Detroit to Ferndale.

Anyway, Jackman wrote a blog about The Detroit Homecoming and posted it the afternoon of Sept. 18 on Metrotimes.com. Jackman said, after a paragraph introducing The Detroit Homecoming to his readers, that the program is making for “an exciting week of events that is lighting up the media.

“It’s also a bunch of crap,” is the single-line second paragraph of Jackman’s blog.

From this point forward Jackman, sliding on the mystical hat of Carnac the Magnificient, tells his readers that the leadership of Michigan and metro Detroit “do not have their priorities in mind and never will, no matter how many presentations and declarations of victory they trumpet.”

Jackman, 45, goes on, telling his readers what young people think about, want to have and want to do in Detroit, and none of it puts Detroit in a good light. I understand a blog is nothing if not opinion, but that doesn’t mean it can be all bullshit, either.

If Warren Buffet is ready to buy here, according to his quote in Crain’s, then that’s good enough for me.

As my bio says, I spent the first 24 years of my life growing up in Detroit. I liked it. I’m not above taking a good swing at Detroit if the city deserves it, but it surely didn’t deserve Jackman trying to pick off people who are attempting to get something good done for the city.

I remembered a quote for the occasion. It’s from Eldridge Cleaver, who said, “If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.” Speaks for itself.