Detroit Grape City

Now, I'm just a long-term visitor up here in these parts but I've picked up enough to know that there's plenty of reason to feel pessimistic about the future of Detroit: nothing's stopping the auto-industry blood-letting, white people have fled en masse to Birmingham and the Grosse Points, and unemployment abounds as the city infrastucture crumbles. To that littany you can now add this (courtesy of Sugarpockets): thirty-four city schools are being shut down, and what really gets school-board vice-president Joyce Giles's goat is that upon hearing the news a disgruntled parent (pictured) threw a grape at her in protest. What's a histrionic middling bureaucrat to do? Well, press assault charges of course.