Jerome Bettis now shares an honorary distinction with Saddam Hussein

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ts/13759173.htm

Unlikely company for Bettis in Detroit

BY PATRICK MCMANAMON

Knight Ridder Newspapers

DETROIT - The city of Detroit honored one of its own Tuesday when it presented the Key to the City to Jerome Bettis.

The Pittsburgh Steelers running back and Detroit native joined only three other folks to receive the key - and one of them was Saddam Hussein.

You read that right.

Saddam Hussein.

Dictator from Iraq.

Guy who gassed his own citizens.

Murdered many more.

Now on trial after being thrown out by a U.S. invasion.

That's the guy.

And it's tempting to say that this kind of thing could only happen in Detroit, a town with dilapidated old buildings and an empty downtown. A town with a dying economy and too much crime.

A town playing host to the nation's biggest sporting event.

"Well Detroit," read a story in the Detroit News and Free Press on Sunday, "this is it. Gulp."

So the city decides to honor its own in Bettis, one of the NFL's true good guys, and what happens?

The media horde that descends on the city digs up this tie to Hussein.

Seems back in 1980, Hussein was on the side of the good guys, and just after he was "elected" president of Iraq, he became friends with a Rev. Jacob Yasso, who ran Chaldean Sacred Heart church in the Motor City.

Yasso's number is now unlisted, but he told The Associated Press recently that Hussein was "very kind, very generous, very cooperative with the West."

"Money and power changed the person," Yasso added.

Evidently.

Chaldeans are a Catholic group in predominantly Muslim Iraq, and Detroit is a city with a large Muslim population. Hussein donated money to many Chaldean churches, according to the AP, and gave the church in Detroit $250,000.

Yasso then traveled to Iraq, where he gave Hussein a key on behalf of then-mayor Coleman Young.

At that time, Iraq was at war with Iran, which was an enemy of the U.S.

Interesting connection. Donate 250K, get a key.

One can only imagine the snickers and jokes on this one.

"Figures Hussein would get a key; Detroit's about as close to Baghdad as one can get."

But that's too easy, and not fair.

Is it Detroit's fault, after all, that the ailing auto industry has taken so much out of the city's economy?

Is it Detroit's fault that its image is still shaped somewhat by events of 1967, when rioters burned part of the city in a time when turmoil filled the nation? Is it Detroit's fault that it, like many other Midwest cities, has not recovered from the shift of industrial jobs out of the country?

Of course it isn't, no more so than it's Akron's fault that the tire industry largely abandoned town, nor is it Cleveland's fault the steel industry went belly-up to third-world countries.

The media will joke all week about Detroit, but the same media will take Detroit's free food and enjoy its amenities provided for no real reason other than they write and talk about football.

This is more an issue of keys, or a key issue.

For where do we look anymore for folks to honor? And why do we do it? One day's honoree, after all, could be a benefactor of churches one day and a miserable dictator and tyrant the next.

Bettis received his key the same day that Coretta Scott King died.

Is one man's hero another's civil rights worker?

There should be no disparagement of Bettis. He is committed to his hometown, and plans with his company to develop an abandoned, tire-strewn 42 acres on Detroit's riverfront and construct 2,000 townhomes and apartments, a hotel and entertainment complex.

But Bettis was honored Tuesday for his football exploits, for being big and fast and having the good fortune to play his first Super Bowl in his hometown.

He talked about that in beautiful Ford Field, a $300 million edifice built largely with public money that could be the league's nicest facility. But the homeless watch you as you walk to that facility from the media headquarters.

The NFL and the host cities talk all the time about the "economic impact" of the Super Bowl, and it's huge. But that impact doesn't always get to the little guy, which is fitting because the Super Bowl is all about the big guy and the big money and big cars and the big private planes that fly all the big guys and their big money to town.

This week, the big guy in Detroit is Bettis.

Twenty-six years ago it was another guy.

At least Bettis had a sense of humor about it.

"I don't know that I'll be sharing that with Saddam," he said. "I think they canceled his key. They changed the locks on that one."