Lapointe: From a Detroit point of view, the winners and losers of 2023

WINNERS

Shawn Fain, United Auto Workers


After winning election on a union reform platform, the president of the UAW led a significant and successful strike against the Detroit Three of General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. Now, he hopes to organize non-union auto companies under the Solidarity House umbrella. It is too early to tell if Fain’s militant labor movement spreads among those employed in the gig economy or simply those not sharing in the prosperity of the recovery. But when a labor leader wears an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt, it indicates that the mood in the land might be moving toward a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Detroit Lions

Their 10-4 record has inspired wary optimism among the fans of a bedrock NFL franchise that has not won a league championship since 1957, a decade before the Super Bowl era. So they have rewarded their loyal customers with an enormous ticket-price hike (Merry Christmas!) at Ford Field under the current acting owner, Sheila Firestone Ford Hamp. She is the daughter of William Clay Ford the elder. Their coach, Dan Campbell, looks like the bouncer you don’t want to mess with at the nightclub. His gruff charm plays well in this market, where the home team’s uniform collars are a bright hue of blue.

Jim Harbaugh

Speaking of blue, the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines next takes his Big Ten champions to the college football final four in the Rose Bowl against Alabama on January 1. Harbaugh led the Wolverines to an undefeated season of 13-0 despite two suspensions, each of three games, the first at the beginning of the regular schedule from his school, the second at the end of the regular schedule from his conference. (And be sure to read the other half of this listing).

Barbie

The best film of the year is a treat for your grandparents and your grandchildren and everyone in between. They may laugh at different jokes for different reasons at different times because the humor and satire work on multiple levels. Warning: You may have to see this movie more than once because laughing at one gag might make you miss the next one or two. It’s that good.

IndyCars downtown


After too many years on Belle Isle, Detroit’s annual auto race returned downtown, safe and successful, with racers speeding past City Hall at Woodward and Jefferson at close to 200 miles per hour and then turning down toward the Detroit River and around the Renaissance Center. This late-spring event works well in counterpoint to the late-summer Dream Cruise, on the north end of Woodward. It’s all about yin and yang, right?

Karen McDonald

The Oakland County prosecutor recently completed the first part of the mission with the murder conviction of Ethan Crumbley and his sentence of life without parole for the gun massacre of four fellow students at Oxford High School in 2021. The next challenge is to convict his parents of involuntary manslaughter for buying him the gun as an early Christmas gift and training him to use it as if it were a toy despite knowing that their son was a troubled teen.

Taylor Swift

Two sold-out concerts at Ford Field. A record-smashing American tour. A successful concert film for the holidays. Oh, and that romance with that hunky football guy, too. (Come to think of it, “Taylor Swift” also would work well as a football name.)

Major League Baseball

After two decades of decay, the National Pastime finally fixed part of its problem this year with the pitch clock and the banning of the extreme infield shift. The clock knocked 24 minutes off the average game time, dropping the length to a tolerable two hours and 40 minutes. That’s a better tempo. At midsummer, a couple night games at Comerica Park actually ended before the sun set. The ban of the shift means hard-hit balls again find holes for base hits. Now, the next goal should be turning down the volume of the recorded noise which pollutes stadium air with fake enthusiasm so loud you can’t converse with the person next to you.

The Riverwalk


They opened another portion on Detroit’s near east side, this one connecting Belle Isle and its bridge to the walking-running-bicycling path on the waterfront that takes you west to the Renaissance Center, through Downtown and beyond. Soon, more portions on the western side will stretch toward the Ambassador Bridge. A large new sign now shows walkers the way to the Dequindre Cut, which intersects the Riverwalk east of the RenCen. On these interconnected paths, some bicyclists can be rude about sharing space with pedestrians. But, overall, these areas are safe, well-groomed and friendly, a delightful respite within the urban environment.

Works in progress


Their full construction may be delayed, but the Gordie Howe Bridge to Canada and that skyscraper on the old Hudson’s site downtown are a sight to see, even as we witness their infrastructure slowly come together. Detroiters are patient. We can wait. Look how long we’ve waited for “The District Detroit.”

LOSERS

Jim Harbaugh


The Michigan football coach jerked around his bosses again last winter with another flirtation with the National Football League. Since then, Harbaugh has served two suspensions. Several staff members have departed for various violations of team, school or Big Ten policies. Rarely does a coach enjoy such success while degrading the reputation and image of his school to the extent that Harbaugh has done in Ann Arbor. For these contradictory reasons, Harbaugh makes both lists as both a winner and a loser for 2023. His departure would not be mourned. He wears people out.

Michigan’s Republican Party

They screech at each other in public settings and exchange shoves at GOP meetings. They purge their enemies within the party. They close their Lansing office and wonder why the money spigot drips dry. They are the Michigan Republican Party, under the leadership of Kristina Karamo, a Trumpist and election denier who, according to Bridge, recently killed “a controversial conflict resolution panel she said had ‘turned into a massive conflict itself’” within the state party. Despite this mess, Michigan will elect a U.S. Senator to a vacant seat in 2024. Despite its self-destructive tendencies, the red team might score a victory here.

Speaker Johnson

For taking bribes as head of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Licensing Board from 2017 through 2019, the former Republican Michigan House Speaker Rick Johnson was sentenced to 55 months in a federal prison. The judge told him: “You did all (this) to pad your pockets, feast on free meals and satisfy your sexual desires.” Johnson was allegedly known to sex workers by the code name “Batman.”

Detroit Pistons

Is this the worst team ever in the history of professional sports? A 26-game losing streak is the biggest blot thus far in the 13-year ownership of Tom Gores. Last season, they were the worst team in the National Basketball Association with 17 victories. This season, they may struggle to reach even that level of success. Gores bought the team in 2011. In the intervening years, the franchise has regressed, despite his active participation and best intentions. The decline has accelerated in the four seasons with Troy Weaver as the general manager. According to Forbes, the Pistons are worth $3.08 billion. That is not bad, but it is only 23rd in a 30-team league, less than half of the Golden State Warriors value of $7.7 billion.

The Crumbleys

Now that their son has been convicted of mass murder, James and Jennifer Crumbley of Oakland County will next face separate trials for involuntary manslaughter because they were their son’s gun groomers. Convictions would break new legal ground in the fight for gun safety because direct blame for shooting massacres would extend beyond the trigger-pullers. If the parents get part of the blame, what about the people who sold the gun and those who made it? A hand-held murder machine collects plenty of fingerprints.

Asphalt contractors


Next time a wheel on your car gets ruined in a pothole, consider this. In a federal antitrust case involving bids of $25.3 million, federal prosecutors have charged four Michigan executives in what the Detroit News reported as an “on-going investigation of bid-rigging and corruption within Michigan’s asphalt paving industry.” Stuff like this is not the only reason Michigan has some of the worst roads in the nation. But it is part of the problem when it discourages new investors and citizens.

Charlie LeDuff


The Detroit News didn’t fire this veteran journalist from his weekly column for his recent rightward drift. That’s just fine for an op-ed at the News. They dumped LeDuff for using a social media post to insult Attorney General Dana Nessel with a sexist slur. Then things got worse. Perhaps he will use his podcast (No BS News Hour with Charlie LeDuff) to explain last week’s misdemeanor charge of domestic violence in Oakland County for a disagreement with his wife. Curiously, until Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News Channel, LeDuff had become a regular guest at the right-wing propaganda factory.

Tucker Carlson


Brother Tucker was the biggest mouth on Fox, spreading false conspiracy theories, cozying up to foreign dictators, sucking up to former President Donald Trump, and giggling like a little child at inappropriate moments into an open microphone. Then he got fired for reasons that remain vague shortly after Fox paid off a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems ($787.5 million).

WJR Radio (760-AM)


Once dominant on the Detroit dial, the “conservative” radio station rests in 16th place in the Nielsens with a news-talk format that ranges from Far Right to Right Lite. The recent layoff of Sean Baligian could be a hint of what is to come for a station in transition. With Paul W. Smith shoved from morning drive time to a less consequential segment in the afternoon, you have to wonder about who gets moved next in the next round of shuffles.

Michigan State University


The year began with a gun massacre on campus and ended with a protracted board battle over the hiring of yet another school president. In between, the head football coach got fired after allegations of a sexual nature voiced by a woman who counsels athletes against rape. All this amid residual shockwaves resulting from the serial sexual molestations of Dr. Larry Nassar.