Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts

Symphony in D: Detroit's Troubled Orchestra


You might be surprised to learn that, for all its troubles, Detroit retains its old-line arts institutions, including a world-class symphony orchestra. You will not be surprised to learn that the orchestra is not long for this world, at least in its present form. Terry Teachout has the gory details:

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is staring into the abyss. In order to survive a fix-it-or-else financial crisis—the DSO is expected to run up a $9 million operating deficit by the end of 2010—the management wants to slash the pay of its musicians by nearly 30%. The musicians have responded by voting to authorize a strike, and it is widely feared that this may lead to the orchestra's demise.

Does anybody care? Yes—but probably not enough to do anything about it.

The numbers tell the tale: Nearly two million people lived in Detroit in 1950. The current population is 800,000. Forty of the city's 140 square miles are vacant. Downsizing is the name of the save-Detroit game, and Mayor Dave Bing, who is looking at an $85 million budget deficit, wants to slash civic services drastically and encourage Detroit's remaining residents to cluster in the healthiest of its surviving neighborhoods.

Can a once-great city that is now the size of Austin, Texas, afford a top-rank symphony orchestra with a 52-week season? Does it even want one? The DSO, after all, is not the only one of Detroit's old-line high-culture institutions that is sweating bullets. The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Michigan Opera Theater are also in trouble, and the editorial page of the Detroit News recently declared that Detroit is "no longer a top 10 city by any measure. The reality may be that this region can no longer support a world class orchestra, or art museum, or opera company. . . . They are remnants of an era when the city was awash in automotive cash."

The symphony's musicians - who are among the highest paid and well regarded classical musicians in the US - have reacted in the classic Detroit Way: they have authorized a strike should the orchestras trustees slash the payroll from $100,000+ down to $75,000. A brilliant maneuver sure to generate sympathy in a city that has no money, and has been destroyed by the sort leftist "solidarity" represented by strikes and unionism. (actually, Detroiters probably think their city was destroyed by the Japanese, Ronald Reagan and "them," but they still won't be sympathetic towards a bunch of long hairs).

The death of a great American city continues...



Fondling Father: Detroit's School Board President


If we placed every elected official in US history on a continuum, ranked from 1 - 10, you would find George Washington holding down the fort at the "10" end. And, at the other end waaaaayyy over at "1" you would find Detroit School Board President Otis Mathis (h/t The Other McCain):
Otis Mathis was a D-student in high school, went to Wayne State University in a program for the academically unqualified, sued for his degree because he couldn't pass a basic English test, became a community organizer, and eventually was unanimously elected President of the School Board despite his being unqualified (just like our Community Organizer-In-Chief)including being functionally illiterate. On June 17, Mathis handed in his letter of resignation, undoubtedly written by someone else, after it was revealed that he had a habit of masturbating right in front of school Superintendent Teresa Gueyser. He tried unsuccessfully to rescind his resignation and, as Detroit News' Laura Berman said: "The Detroit Public Schools board wiped clean its website of disgraced President Otis Mathis."
Note that no one batted an eye that a D-student who had to sue for his college degree was elected to the Detroit School Board, and became its president. It was only when he got ants in his pants around the superintendent that he lost a position that rightfully should never have been his in the first place.

Detroiters and other urban types have long blamed impersonal forces - globalization, deregulation, the dreaded "white flight"- for their ills. But, when a guy like Mathis can get elected to a school board, of all places, that's a sign of poisonous voter apathy at the very least. I'd love to know the circumstances of his election. Did he have the most walking around money, or what?

You have to feel bad for any teacher who has to work within a system that would allow Otis Mathis within 10 feet of a policy making position. You have to feel doubly sorry for any parent who can't avoid putting their kid into such a system, and triply bad for the kids themselves.



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