George Will Knows Who To Blame For Detroit Bankruptcy, And It Is 'Single Moms' Of Course

Your browser does not support the video tag.Walking Ambien tablet George Will has a creative explanation for Detroit's bankruptcy: It's not about factories closing or jobs moving overseas or a declining tax base or anything to do with economics, really. Detroit is a basket case because "their problems are cultural." Marvel at his impressive code-word gymnastics in this clip from ABC's This Week, where Will manages to avoid saying "black" even once.

In response to former Obama administration official Steve Rattner's suggestion that a relatively modest federal investment could help the city and relieve the restructuring plan's burden on retirees and city workers, Will replies,

"You can’t solve the problems, because their problems are cultural.”

“You have a city, 139 square miles, you can graze cattle in vast portions of it, dangerous herds of feral dogs roam in there. You have three percent of fourth graders reading at the national math standards, 47 percent of Detroit residents are functionally illiterate, 79 percent of Detroit children are born to unmarried mothers.”

“They don’t have a fiscal problem, Steve, they have a cultural collapse."

Will did not explain how exactly the marriage habits of Detroit women caused auto manufacturers to close plants and move overseas, but we're sure he'd have gotten to it if The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel hadn't interrupted him to call his analysis "insulting to the people of Detroit" and to talk about "market forces," which only affect job creators anyway, while poor people bring their problems on themselves.

Will went on to explain that the people of Detroit pretty much deserve what they got, since they continued to live in Detroit and vote for leaders who didn't make the jobs come back. Rattner then asked Will what he thought the solution should be -- some combination of federal/state assistance, or just "leave them all sit with feral dogs"? Unfortunately, the program cut to a commercial before Will could explain that maybe being eaten by a feral dog would teach those people a lesson about getting a ring on their finger before having babies and hurting the auto industry some more. Also, bonus points for Vanden Heuvel's last-second shout-out to "Hobbesian anarchy," which we think is when Calvin pees on your Ford.

[ RawStory ]