Belle Isle Fantasy

The effort by the State to take over Belle Isle is not likely to fade away. Instead, the mainstream media (msm) is using this situation to redouble its efforts to denigrate and distort the opposition to state-foundation-corporate driven development.

After the City Council refused to consider the offer by the state to lease the island, Governor Snyder said he was pulling the deal off the table. The central question pushed in the media was, “How could a cash strapped city justify turning down the generous state offer of $6 million to run the park? “

This question was followed with a flurry of outrage by the msm directed at the Council and at the citizens who spoke out against the proposal. Among the least substantive and most insulting were the tweets turned into an article by Detroit Free Press writers Stephen Henderson and Nancy Kaffer. Under the title “The most outrageous things said about the Belle Isle deal during public comments,” Henderson could not contain his disdain for people. He clearly has no sense of the deep oppositional currents in the city. Kaffer posted, “THIS is why rational people need to come to council meetings.” The implication is that opposition must be “irrational.”