TheComeback- It’s been a bad summer for Cavs owner and real estate mogul Dan Gilbert. While he’s been busy blowing up a potential Cavs dynasty to rival the Warriors, his Detroit real estate company, Bedrock, put out a controversial ad in downtown Detroit that started a public firestorm. According to a 2010 census, 83 percent of Detroit’s population is African-American. Bedrock put out a new ad campaign, captioned “See Detroit Like We Do,” displaying a very different image of the city, in which almost everyone is white...
What else can ya say, really? When you're hot you're hot, and I'll be damned if Dan Gilbert is going to leave a heater. I'm not sure the father-in-law from 'The Hangover' had executive incompetence in mind when he dropped that timeless quote. However, you can bet your sweet ass that the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers has turned up the heat on himself this summer with what can only be considered business so bad that it could masquerade as professional trolling. Honestly, shame on us for thinking that it was impossible to top (well, to be more accurate, bottom out) decision making so poor that it has almost guaranteed the impending departure of the best basketball player on the planet. We should all slap ourselves on the wrist from believing that Dan Gilbert couldn't do worse than somehow getting his All-Star point guard to demand a trade away from LeBron James during his ongoing streak of seven straight NBA Finals appearances. How could we be so dumb? Of course the man who has singlehandedly given morons a reason to believe that they too can beat stupidity's odds and become rich as fuck was capable of signing off on a casually racist advertisement that basically took a predominantly black region of the country and draped it in the country club's most ivory of linens. Say what you want about the absurdity of having a caucasian jazz musician represent Detroit, but don't say that 'Bedrock Real Estate' didn't paint a whitewashed picture so "pure" that it could double as an ad for Benjamin Moore's newest shade of privilege. I mean, if you're going to drastically misrepresent the population of a predominantly African American city then you might as well push your agenda so far that it's impossible to dismiss. Dan Gilbert's might be unfathomably dumb, but you can't say that he doesn't own his absence of a functioning brain through the way he conducts just about all of his business ventures. I don't know if the point was to pander to Klan member clientele, but if it was then he's pretty much begging for his Yelp! reviews to turn into a proverbial torch burning once his customers meet the neighbors. The fact that he apparently views Detroit as whiter than Kyrie Irving's yacht parties is either a testament to the prescription on his billionaire-colored glasses, or a testament to his lack intelligence. Either way, it's so impressively tone deaf that it almost makes you forget that we are talking about the same guy that essentially set the clock on the ticking time bomb that is his own professional sports franchise, and I truly didn't think that was possible.
1 Comment
Lee Curtis
7/25/2017 01:54:43 pm
What these wealthy black athletes need to invest back into their communities. There are so many things they can do
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