Diary of a Delusional Michigander

The Michigan inferiority complex has afflicted the inhabitants of the Wolverine state since the commencement of the first westward expeditions that transformed what was once the westernmost colony in America into an overworked, underappreciated middle child.

This envious scorn, build up over hundreds of years of absent admiration, is exposed alongside the faintest suspicion of east coast bias. Why is ESPN showing the Red Sox and Yankees again instead of Tigers and White Sox? Why is does everyone love Tupac so much when Eminem is obviously better? Why are their only sharks in the ocean? Is it just that those snobby Californians get to fish for sharks and I’m stuck here fishing for Catfish in Lake Michigan?

While the eldest, easternmost offspring of the American dream and the tempestuous, golden haired western bombshell conceived through promiscuous manifest destiny monopolize the cultural consciousness of America, the palm of American and its Northeasternish companions were left with “the Paris of the Midwest” and the Renaissance Center.

The real question is not whether the Michigan Inferiority Complex exists, but what fuels it? Oh and why doesn’t anyone pay attention to us?

These sensitive inferior sentiments can be triggered by merely a cordial introduction to one of those foreign car driving egomaniacs. Nonetheless, with the imminent arrival of Mr. Big Shot Studio Executive to scrub away the filmy layer of filth left by the coming soon to a history text book near you auto companies, we shine the spotlight on Hollywood’s role in the muted perceptions of the Five Lake State.

Hollywood must maintain accountability for the gratuitous, melodramatic embellishments of our great state’s cultural defects and in turn broaden their funneled focus away from certain disconcerting aspects. The current approach is utilized only by amateurs who aspire to dedicate minimal amounts of effort and creative thought process to their non-masterpieces.

Take young David Zucker as exhibit A. Perhaps a proletarian, perhaps an overzealous intern. In his half-hearted stab at film making, “Scary Movie 4,” he illustrated the city of Detroit as flaming caricature of its true self. A woman speaks of an alien assault as we survey an already harassed Renaissance City in fiery red ruins, realizing its scorching mortality only to rise again like the Phoenix! Tears surged out of their ducts, a current of passion that raged on fiercer than the Detroit River, which is, incidentally, far superior to even a Siamese combination of the Missouri and Mississippi, strutted past my nostrils.

To hell with you David Zucker for what your filthy mind transmitted to the silver screen! The City of the Phoenix was not to ascend to its former splendor amidst blistering sparks of passion. The joke, my fellow Michigander associates, was on us. The Detroit we observed breathing its final, handsome but agonizing breath was before the extraterrestrial ambush. An allusion to the unbearable death of the most prominent city in my beloved state? To hell with you David Zucker.

This boorish vulgarity was not an isolated incident, my friends. For “The Man with No Name” has become the man with no core. Clint Eastwood’s profane “Gran Torino” depicted our great state in the most irreverent of ways. Ogling the audience from the big screen, adorned on an adolescent nonetheless, was a Detroit Lions jersey. There was also a lot of gang violence and a big shootout at the end that certainly added to the inferiority complex.

These burning spears of deceit that pierce through the retina and manifest in your mind as misconceptions of the great state of Michigan are patriotic hazards that mature into underlying turmoil between the city folk and suburbanites. This overstated trepidation being planted in our Paul Bunyan hearts by external Americans for the purpose of profit has molded Michigan’s only mountain out of class division and racial tension.

Soon our Paul Bunyan hearts will no longer beat the drums of Lake Superior with the irreplaceable compassion that fueled the first Model T. A city once known as the “Paris of the Midwest” is being seized from right under the tip of our thumb by cash mongering , non-American driving east and west coasters. And because statistics never lie, according a Wayne State University Study, of the 19 million people who attended marquee events in downtown Detroit in 2003, only 19 serious crimes occurred per 100,000 people. Chomp on that David Zucker.

While gluttonous stock market of the early 1900s dealers bartered our country into a great depression on the east coast and the embryo of artificial breasts, childhood actors turned drug addicts and Paris Hiltons were being viewed on ultra sounds in the west coast, Michigan was diligently creating industry. The State of Five Lakes was producing the assembly line and assembling factories that were essential in coming years. The Automotive State was manufacturing automotive products.

Michigan may be known as the Automotive State, but contrary to what the prehistoric Tinsel Town executives imply in their “films,” the soul of Michigan encompasses far more than Big Three auto companies that we never received due appreciation for. The Big Three auto companies that our fellow American colleagues repudiated while plunging a manually serrated foreign gear shift into the back of our hand.

Michiganders DO NOT consummate our relationship with a significant other in the sanctity of the factory like that ruffian B-Rabbit in “8 Mile.”
We do not crack quirky quips towards the affluent that drive luxurious foreign cars like the coward Martin Blank in “Gross Point Blank.” We chastise them and cease if and only if they resolve to drive American.

What Michiganders do is sail on the lakes, the warm wind blowing against our boat hats as we nip an elegant local Red Wine. We rap the puck about the frozen pond in the winter, and we fire rifles at animals for population regulation purposes in the fall. We barbeque meat in the summer and perhaps listen to the smooth stylings of fellow Great Lakesmen Bob Seger and Ted Nugent while perhaps sipping on a beer at night.

So Mr. Big Shot Studio Executive with your Crisco greasy hair and your designer suit with a price tag higher than Michigan’s average annual income. If you intend to erect your elaborate studios and continue to exploit our great home for capital. If you intend to continue to disregard the entirety of our beloved glove then you and your Hollywood frivolities can remain on the west coast. Us Michiganders will scrub away the filmy layer of filth left by auto companies by ourselves, as we have been for over a century.