If Detroit's emergency manager feels a need to do penance, he must know talking into Charlie LeDuff's microphone is an essential stop.
"It's not so much sorry because I don't think they should be taking it that way," Kevyn Orr says of his pounced-on comment to the Wall Street Journal. [Photo/Fox 2]
So that's just what happened Wednesday in Kevyn Orr's latest "what my remark meant" interview explaining this statement: "“For a long time the city was dumb, lazy, happy and rich."
LeDuff: You told the Wall Street Journal we're fat, stupid, lazy. You want to explain?
Orr: That is an idiom or phrase I've used probably a thousand times in past . . . and it usually gets a laugh. So what I said was a long time ago, and I'm talking about the '20s and '30s, that's the time frame, I said the city was dumb, lazy and rich. It was the city. It's not the people.
In my 30 years of practicing, I've never insulted anyone. It's not my style. I don't call people names. I understand how people, if they think someone would say that about them, that's condescending. They'd be upset. But I never said that about anybody, and I wouldn't say that.LeDuff: So if they took it that way, you're sorry about it?
Orr: It's not so much sorry because I don't think they should be taking it that way. It wasn't my intent, but I want everybody to be assured I don't talk of people that way.
LeDuff: What did you mean?
Orr: I just meant that a long time ago we were very flush, and we were very happy, and weren't paying attention. It's a phrase that's generally used to mean people are just happy where they are, and they're not paying attention to things down the road. . . . I could've used another allusion. I just used that phrase.
