UPDATE: Martha Reeves Spotted Outside City Endorsing Suburbanite 'We Are All Detroiters' Claim

Detroit City Councilwoman Martha Reeves
sings the national anthem Friday to start
the 240-hour concert at
AJ's Music Café in Ferndale.
(Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News)

It’s not as though I expect consistency, logical or otherwise, from elected officials, especially at the municipal level. And that goes quadruple for Detroit City Council members. But I just don’t get how Martha Reeves can expect to have this thing about who is and isn't Detroit both ways.

Only last week she was declaring the stark impossibility that she could go to Auburn Hills to see Jay Leno’s concert for the unemployed: “I live in Detroit,” she explained, and Auburn Hills, you silly, is not Detroit. And residents of any other locality than Detroit, you see, are not “Detroiters.” ("Detroit: It's a Place, Not Just a State of Mind ").

Now she shows up in Ferndale to sing the National Anthem at a concert for “Detroit” auto workers. (" Concert aims to break record, boost support for U.S. auto industry").

As reported, the event was widely attended by non-Detroiters who work for the auto industry, and the performers all seem to be non-“Detroiters” as well, at least, technically. But the organizer, AJ's Music Café owner, AJ O’Neil, seemed unaware of Ms. Reeves’s strict constructionism of the term "Detroit" when he introduced her to his Ferndale audience:

"Detroit is in all of us. We are all Detroiters, and this marathon is for the industry that made Detroit," O'Neil said just before Motown artist and Detroit City Council member Martha Reeves opened the show with "The Star-Spangled Banner."