Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [145]
Few foresaw how the taking of just one itsy-bitsy little thread and pulling it out of the middle-class fabric would soon unravel the entire tapestry, leaving everyone struggling in a dog-eat-dog existence, a weekly battle to keep one’s head simply above water. On one level, it was pure political genius, because the electorate, so consumed with its own personal survival, would never be able to find the time or energy to politically organize the workplace, the neighborhood, or the town to revolt against the mad scientists and politicians who had engineered their demise.
In the 1980s, though, it was just that first tiny thread that was being removed—but it was coming out of the place where I lived: Flint, Michigan. The official unemployment rate hit 29 percent. This should have been the canary in the American coal mine. Instead, few noticed. Sure, there were those who cared about our plight and sought to tell its story. There was a solid BBC story about Flint being the jobless capital of America, and then there was the… ah… the… um… Well, OK, that was about it. The BBC. From five thousand miles away. Not many others came to Flint to tell our story. They were too busy talking about the Reagan Revolution and how great it was that some people were prospering with the trickle-down economy. And they were right. Those who did well in the ’80s did very well, and, frankly, there weren’t that many places that looked like Flint, Michigan. Other than the steel towns of the Ohio Valley that had their comeuppance a few years earlier, and the textile mills in the northeast a few years before that, the country was still doing pretty well, a middle class still existed, and nobody paid much attention to the grimy, gritty towns that built their cars. The Brits from the BBC knew what a town on its knees looked like, and their DNA allowed them to not mince many words as to the cause of what was going on when they did their piece on Flint. But who saw that? Oh well, tallyho! Out of sight, out of mind. If you lived in Tampa, in Denver, in Houston, in Seattle, in Vegas, in Charlotte, in Orange County, in New York, Flint’s fate would never be yours! You were doing great and you would continue to do great. Yes, of course, poor Flint. Poor, poor Flint. Pity. Pity. Tsk-tsk.
One day in 1984, I was sitting at my desk at the Flint Voice and there was a knock on the door. Two men who did not look like they were from these parts were standing on the porch, peering through my screen door to see if anyone was home.
“Hi there,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Sure,” said the taller one with the accent. “Is this the Flint Voice?”
“Sure is,” I said. “C’mon in.”
The two of them walked in.
“My name is Ron Shelton,” the American one said. “I’m a screenwriter. I wrote Under Fire. It came out last year.”
We shook hands. “Um, yes, I, I loved the movie,” I said, a bit startled and thinking, Is this guy lost?
“And I’m Roger Donaldson,” the Aussie said.
I knew him, too. “Uh, you didn’t make Smash Palace?” I asked.
“That didn’t play here, did it?” he asked, perplexed that there would be someone in Flint who had seen his indie film from New Zealand.
“No, I drive to Ann Arbor a lot,” I replied.
I was trying to collect myself. What were these guys11 doing in my office? In Flint, Michigan? Not exactly Hollywood. I was in a bit of shock, but trying to stay cool.
“Well, you’re probably wondering what we are doing at the Flint Voice,” Donaldson said.
“Not really,” I responded