The Bailey Blog

Michigan’s governor was all over the airwaves recently touting a new package of tax breaks she signed into law that will be used to attract filmmakers to ply their craft in the Great Lakes State.

I won’t debate the merits of offering huge tax breaks to folks willing to come to the state to do business for a while during a time when those already here for the long haul are complaining about having to pay higher taxes – that’s a mixed messaging blog for another day.

No, what got me thinking about mixed messaging for this blog was wondering what those would-be blockbuster directors might find out if they did a Google News search for Michigan stories that have gone national:

We have the mayor of our largest city embattled in a perjury defense – a situation that is now the butt of jokes by Jay Leno about taking any chance you can to get out of Detroit.

We are being lumped in with Florida on election stories – gee, there’s a comparison we want to have hanging around our neck.

We have more than 3,000 students vs. 80 cops in East Lansing turning into a riot, complete with helmeted officers firing tear gas to disperse the crowd – a story that I found on a newswire from China, of all places. (I’m surprised the headline wasn’t, “See, they do it, too!”)

We have a young man facing life in prison for the rape and murder of a fellow student at Eastern Michigan University.

We have the husband of one of our U.S. senators getting busted for spending time with a prostitute – which has proven to be another joke machine for Leno.

And we have strikes underway, strikes in the works and strikeouts by the Tigers as they have raced to a 0-7 season already.

What’s going on people? Why can’t we catch a break?

At this point, I’m not so sure we’ll be seeing movie producers, but I’m sure the reality TV show guys are salivating over the potential series they can find here in the mitten. Everything from “Survivor: Detroit” to “MSU Gone Wild,” and from “The Amazing Race to Self Destruction” to “Field of Broken Dreams.”

Reality is often stranger than fiction – and there are few places in the country right now more than Michigan crying for the slogan: “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.