It is rarely appropriate to celebrate a death. All but the most reviled humans in history carry a certain sadness at the news of their passing. When Roger Smith, former Chairman of General Motors, died, however, it felt bittersweet. Michael Moore put Smith on the front page of his website and offered his condolences to Smith’s family. It was an appropriate gesture. However Smith was a man that single-handedly put GM on a path to bankruptcy, destroyed several automaking cities (namely Flint) and with that, destroyed countless thousands of families. So far as I know, Smith never expressed regret or remorse. His passing was not exactly cause for mourning. His genocide of the working class is not lost on anyone.

When I heard of former Flint Mayor James Rutherford’s passing, it also was bittersweet. I knew him mostly as a pizza store owner at the local strip mall near my childhood home on Atherton & Hammerberg Road. I was just a little kid in the early 80′s, and like most kids I liked pizza and video games. Rutherford was always kind to me. It wasn’t until I got older and looked back with adult eyes did I find out that “Mayor Rutherford” should have considered himself lucky to not have spent his twilight years in federal prison.

September, 1979. Michael Moore’s fledgling Flint Voice newspaper is two years old and is doing the kind of muckraking journalism that even today would be considered “controversial.”

Rutherford was using city and federal-funded employees to do his campaigning, as well as “forcing” contributions from them – which is patently illegal. Moore was going to break the story. Upon publication, it ignited a firestorm in Mayor Rutherford’s office. A few months later, in May of 1980, Rutherford sent the Flint police to the Lapeer Press Printing company, which printed the Voice to find out where Moore was getting his inside information from. He wanted to find Moore’s sources. But you see, any government intervention of the freedom of press violates just about every provision of that pesky US Constitution. The founding fathers put up major walls to keep the press and speech free (it is, after all, the FIRST amendment, not the tenth).

The result of this illegal search and seizure was none other than one of the more sensational media stories to emerge on the national scene. The New York Times, CBS, Detroit Free, Press, Detroit News, all ran stories condemning the police and mayor, as well as calling for a federal investigation. The national exposure brought Moore some of his first glimpses of a national audience. Most mayors would have been forced to resign, but arrogant Rutherford stuck it out somehow.

Rutherford was just getting started. In the early 80′s came the laughing-stock disasters that were the Hyatt, Waterstreet Pavillon, Windmill Place, and Autoworld. Shall I go on? By 1983 voters had enough, electing James Sharp, ending Rutherford’s nearly ten year reign. As Flint residents surveyed the city around them, they could see GM was taking its gigantic Flint tax breaks (courtesy of Rutherford) and heading to Mexico. Fisher One gone. Chevrolet, gone. It was all crumbling down on top of us.

All of this made for excellent journalism. The Flint Voice would eventually expand statewide to The Michigan Voice, with Moore leaving in 1986 to helm the national magazine Mother Jones. That didn’t last, and the rest is history. Moore went on to film Roger & Me, and it’s all downhill from there. The young, poor, idealist “Mike Moore” everyone knew in Flint might very well be running yet another bingo game right now if Rutherford had not constantly make the kind of mistakes that provided for great journalism.

So while I struggle to find anything of value Rutherford “accomplished” – the one thing he did do, along with Roger Smith, was create the world’s most revered voice on the left. And I suppose we have to thank him for that.

Rest in Peace, Mayor. I still like pizza.