Eminem: We’re the Motor City; This is What We Do!

And in the same way that Jack Ingram’s H.E.B. Super Bowl commercial sang the praises of Texas, I thought Eminem’s Chrysler ad probably did as much to positively promote Detroit as anything the Detroit Chamber of Commerce or Tourism Board has ever been able to do.

And the Chrysler 200 is a pretty nice looking car, too. But that doesn’t excuse this: Chrysler releases $9m Super Bowl ad while requesting more taxpayer dollars.

Great. Which means they’ll probably get it, too.

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UPDATE:

I said I liked the ad. And I think it’s a good PR piece for the city of Detroit.

I didn’t say it was grounded in any kind of truth, however. I’m not naive enough to forget that Detroit is not a city that has “rebuilt.” Rather it is one of the the worst cities in all of America. And that is not soon to change, no matter how many cool ads hometown heroes like Marshall Mathers make.

J. P. Freire expounds on this, and lists a few things missing from the ad:

One: Chrysler didn’t go through the hottest fires. Unless, of course, “hottest fires” means “skipping bankruptcy” and asking for a handout to protect union pensions, which it got. And when Fiat was able to take control of Chrysler, it was because of a heavily politicized deal facilitated by the president’s auto task force. It even got $6.6 billion in exit financing by Uncle Sam. Most failing businesses have trouble finding buyers. Not Chrysler.

Two: Detroit may have been through a self-imposed over-taxed, over-regulated hell, but it certainly hasn’t come back. Budget numbers still show Detroit’s books in the red, despite Mayor Dave Bing’s best efforts to rein in spending. And Pew reveals that Detroit residents spend more for their municipal legislature than any other major city in the U.S. Heck, even its library is facing a dire fiscal crisis.

Three: We know what Detroit is capable of because we saw it in the 1960s. We still see potential, too — Michigan economist David Littman told The Examiner last year that there was plenty of reason to be optimistic:

“We’re not even on the map,” Littman notes. But the opportunity is there. “We have bargain basement prices on everything — from water properties, which are a hallmark of growth, to infrastructure. And this is tied together with a large and progressive highway system. We also have the largest underground gas reserves in the nation.”Chrysler must have found the investment worthwhile, using the opportunity of the new Chrysler model to plug Detroit’s tough “know-how.” Fox was charging approximately $2.8 to $3 million per 30-second slot.

This ad doesn’t reveal how tough and competent Detroit is. It shows how the federal government picks winners and losers. Guess which part the taxpayers play?