Harry T. Cook Essay 7/19/13

When No One Was Laughing at Detroit

By Harry T. Cook

7/19/13

Detroit has provided joke material to many a comedian -- funny and unfunny -- for quite a term of years. It's no joke today, folks. Detroit's leaders filed late Thursday for the bankruptcy we knew was inevitable.

Seventy years ago right now, Detroit was no laughing matter. The city was a 24/7 operation as its factories turned out military materiel and munitions as fast as they could be made to support the nation's military, which was duking it out with fascism on two fronts.

By then, Detroit had become the Silicon Valley of its day. Twenty-six new hotels were built in Detroit in the 25 years between 1911 and 1926 to accommodate the thousands of business people coming to the city.

They were coming here because that's where the most modern of manufacturing technology was being developed and applied. The city was then known as "Detroit the Dynamic." Its population went from around 250,000 in 1900 to almost 2 million in 1950 -- an astonishing growth rate. It wasn't just the birthrate but migration to a city whose industrial magnates were job creators of the first magnitude.

The four-year war effort made all the difference to the cause of freedom. The FDR administration approached the automobile executives in early 1942, asking them essentially to retool their factories for the manufacture of military equipment. Within six months, the skills and technologies that had had their birth and early years in the making of automobiles were turning out implements of defense.

When in the early months of World War II the U.S. Navy was in desperate need of gyrocompasses for its vast flotilla, its admirals turned to Chrysler Corp. for help. K.T. Keller, then the resident genius at Chrysler, simply told the Navy Department to ship its model to Detroit on the overnight train.

The Navy complied, but then worried that an expert should have been sent with the device to explain how it worked. A master mechanic at Chrysler said not to worry. The Navy figured that it would take Chrysler a year and a half just to turn out one that would work. Inside of six months, the first one was installed and in use. By war's end, more than 5,000 of them were delivered to the Navy. Not one of them malfunctioned, and the job was done at a price $20 million lower than the Navy had estimated. That was Detroit for you.

That's why nobody was laughing at Detroit in those years. The women and men who worked in the city's factories were going the extra mile to provide our Army, Navy and Air Force with the equipment and vehicles they needed.

So instead of laughing, maybe the nation that got saved by Detroit ought to think about a Marshall Plan for its survival and renewal. America did that for Europe and, in particular, for Germany, its onetime enemy. Detroit has been America's friend, especially when America needed it. Where's the payback?

It's what happened to Detroit in the years following World War II that is now the issue. The auto plants retooled to make cars again as quickly as they had retooled in 1942 to make war materiel. People made a lot of money and, thanks to Walter Reuther and the UAW, would go on to make more so that they could send their kids to college -- a privilege many of their parents had never had -- and finally to move out of those crowded, cabbage-smelling apartments into houses in the leafy suburbs.

The freeways were built through and on top of the demolition of whole communities mainly occupied by African Americans. Northland became Detroit's first suburban mall. The resources of tax dollars began to move north, east and west along the freeways -- leaving a minority to become a majority.

Today, of the roughly 700,000 people who live in the 139-square-mile area that comprises Detroit, more than 85% of them are probably descendants of those who were urged to come to Detroit in 1917 and again in 1942, when the white guys went to war and there was no place for African Americans in the armed services. Now they have been left with the shell of a city and few resources to operate what's left of it.

Several years ago, Time magazine sent a team to Detroit to vilify the city's leadership, the auto industry and the UAW for allegedly killing Detroit. They were wrong, wrong, wrong. Abandonment and racism killed Detroit, or at least its spirit.

No one was laughing 70 years ago, and no one should be laughing now. It's a damned shame is what it is. After the disastrous fire of 1805 that brought the city to its knees, its citizens adopted a motto that appears to this day on official monuments: Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus: "We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes."

Will it? A Marshall Plan would help. The nation owes it to us.

What a Friend They Had in Jesus: The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers

Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?

Available at:

Polebridge Press

Amazon.com

* * * * *

What reviewers said:

"Important and heart-warming ... Cook's keen insights into the most familiar of old-time gospel hymns ... help you do theology like a grownup."
--Robin Meyers, author of Saving Jesus from the Church

"A compelling look at centuries of Christian theology and practice, at how particular hymns have shaped American faith and religious thought."
--Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Boston

"A call to integrity in worship ... This exciting, penetrating and provocative study explores the theology we sing, which re-enforces the dated and pre-modern theology from which the Christian faith seeks to escape."
--John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World

Readers Write

Essay 7/12/13: Politics That Sell

Gloria Bowman, Cincinnati, OH:

Curious that your wife doesn't think the resistance to reproductive rights is not primarily misogyny. She really made me think about it. If she is right, this country is in worse shape than I thought.

Lane Woodard, Madison, WI:

Yours is a new twist on what white men are doing to this country. That a woman of your wife's obvious intelligence thinks it's "the market" rather than plain old woman-hating is a new idea, and it is worth a lot of thought. Maybe you would write about this again and at greater length.

William Plumm, Brooklyn Heights, NY:

Thanks for the enlightening essay on "politics that sell." If the Republicans think they are making hay out of this whole thing, I think they're wrong as wrong can be. Those buying what they are selling are buying defeat for themselves and for the party.

Rabbi Larry Mahrer, Parrish, FL:

As you stated, your wife is correct. It appears to me that every individual, every person, has to stand against something. In that way, they assume that they know what they support, and thus obtain some measure of personal worth. As she said, "It's the flavor of the year." It is no longer considered to be proper to be anti-black or Hispanic. Women are one of the few groups left to disdain. Sorry, but I think that is true - and I know that it garners votes.

John Bennison, Walnut Creek, CA:

Being "clueless" and "cynical" are not mutually exclusive possibilities to poor marketing strategies. Renewed efforts legislatively to restrict women's reproductive rights may be an attempt to peddle what sells, but like similar attempts to repeal Obamacare or same-sex marriage, my hunch is it is a flailing and reactionary one-step-back effort and a diminishing market share.

Dave Carlin, Newport, RI:

It is very odd that one would attribute misogyny to pro-lifers. Has nobody told you that pro-life movement is chiefly made up of women? Or that pro-life women are on average far more ardent in their hatred of abortion than pro-life men?

Dewey Barton, M.D., New Smyrna Beach, FL:

The anti-abortion group is ignorant of women's rights. Their way forces people into the "back-alley" to get it done. I witnessed this when I interned at Wm. Beaumont Army hospital in 1956-57, when abortion was illegal. Women crossed over into Mexico and many came back with serious injuries which we had to attend to. We were in El Paso, just across the border from Juarez. It reminded me of prohibition when the illegal alcohol made the Mafia a fortune.

Karen Davis, Royal Oak, MI:

You're right: [Politicians] are clueless in the extreme and cynical (if they even understand the concept) and have no business running the country! I fear for us all . . . and especially for our daughters and granddaughters. As to your wife's comments about marketing: yes, it does work that way AND male targeting of women has, I think, a good deal to do with ages old fear of the power of women and a desire to control that power. Women are the ones who bring life, nurture it for the most part, support the well-being of the family and that of the community (think of all those comments about pioneer towns that became civilized once the good women arrived). Women have a great deal of influence and, until medicine and science figured it out, really were looked on as fearful and magical because those new little lives emerged from their bodies. I envy the good discussions that take place in over your dinner table.

Dr. Robert Causley, Roseville, MI:

I agree with your wife! The entire government is now, from my personal experience, all about selling. The plans are drawn up in back rooms then groomed by professionals for presentation to the masses. It makes no matter what, just as long as it hits a cord to obtain a reaction. The resultant reaction is groomed and the program rolls on it's own. It is a unique situation if you think about it but really works especially in the era of media manipulation we live in today. -- Thank you for sharing the thoughts and helping maintaining a semblance of sanity in this world.

Rusty Hancock, Madison Heights, MI:

[You wrote] "I mean, either they're clueless in the extreme and have no business running the country, or they're cynical and have no business running the country." That says it all. Actually what I think we have is both. We have Congresspeople who know better, but pander to the clueless because it's to their advantage, and we have those who are equally as clueless as their constituents. I'm not sure which is worse because the outcome is the same: mindless obstructionism of anything worthwhile accompanied by zealous (and totally contradictory) insistence on government intrusion into private lives on behalf of their religious principles. Actually I believe the zealots are worse, because sometimes you can bribe the cynical to do something right. The zealots are hopeless. It drives me crazy because I keep trying to figure out the logic behind it, while in truth, there is none, or rather there is purpose but no rationality. This is the faith-based crowd, after all, to whom the highest good has nothing to do with rationality. Once this is grasped, it becomes easier to figure out the illogic. They have no room for logic in their worldviews, indeed finding it quite suspicious, if not downright evil, because it may pry you away from your faith. So what are you left with? Could it be . . .marketing?

Bev Shapiro, Shelby Twp., MI:

Women are also to blame. They are the keepers of their "temple," and if they chose to give access to someone who doesn't revere and respect it, and them, then shame on them. If every woman denied access to her man, especially those in power, the laws would change pretty quickly. Also, these same women go to church and get brainwashed by men. Shame on them again for having no critical thinking skills, nor gumption to stand against repressive misogynists.

Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, VT:

A bit of a broken record, I know, my again pointing out that your puzzlement about misogyny and other popular screeds, is fed by your assumption that people like to rationally consider these matters. I love to think about just about everything, which has made me something of a pariah at social occasions and family gatherings. Not that I am smarter than others, or necessarily more rational, but that I am an "intellectual" in the old sense of finding ideas fascinating. I more and more think that makes me a freak. Much as I'd like to gloat about it, I find little reason. I don't understand the pervasive war on women, the seeming refusal of certain groups to consider the growing evidence that austerity is a disaster during economic slowdown, the undeniable reality that immigration has been the backbone of this nation since we displaced the original native Americans, and countless other contrary issues that are proven vote-getters. And that's the heart of the matter; that I don't understand the appeal. Which keeps me on the fringe of life. Where I confess I struggle, mostly without success, to keep from feeling smug and superior. As a mythical king of Siam once said, "Is a puzzlement."

What do you think?

I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at revharrytcook@aol.com.

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