Do Other "Truly Great American Cities" Talk About Being "Truly Great" As Often as Dallas?

• "Once you use the word 'liberal' to explain something you disagree with, you've lost all intellectual credibility." I used the word to describe the basis for what you expressed. Politically, there are liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to think conservatives are synonymous with white males and those white males shouldn't have as much power as they do -- which is what you expressed in your original post. btw, I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. That was another "conditioned liberal response" by you.

• I don't have to prove minorities have great influence in Dallas. I never said they did. You must prove your assertion there are no great cities that are not diverse (based on skin color and gender).

• I saw liberalism in your Twitter feed.

• Hilarious. A guy who sees everything in terms of liberalism accusing someone else of not thinking. What are you even doing here, aren't you missing an episode of Limbaugh or something? Once you use the word "liberal" to explain something you disagree with, you've lost all intellectual credibility. Pick up a copy of White Metropolis when you get a chance (even though you sound like one of those types who distrusts any research and higher learning as the machinations of some liberal agenda). Its a very complete history of Dallas and illustrates how power in Dallas has always (and continues to be) allotted according to a sliding scale of "whiteness". John Wiley Price makes a half-hearted attempt at civil rights at best, and always carries the water for the white power elite. If you really think you have a case that minorities in Dallas have meaningful influence, make it. I'm all ears. But just poo-pooing things on the basis of your imaginary liberal white-bashing is not an argument. Let's hear what you got. Examples, please

• We are far from culturally void. Just the opposite. Our asset is that we are exquisitely diverse, go getters and creative but we don't value the diversity and we don't value real artists unless their work is hanging in an expensive building. We don't have leaders who are authentic enough for the arts community and why there is such a disconnect between the community and the arts district. So in answer to the question. Do other cities tout their greatness? Yes they do! The difference is, other cities tour who they are, instead of what they have. They don't feel the need to use words like, "the biggest ever", "the biggest in the country", "the largest in the state". Puuuuuleeeze, that is so last century. Have your board or staff call DCH and we'll help y'all raise the roof. <===shameless plug = go getter. lol

• They have just as much or more influence than they do in most of those cities. What's more, there are "great" cities around the world that are even less diverse than U.S. cities. So it would appear your post was nothing more than a conditioned liberal response to bash white males when given the opportunity. No doubt you thought this demonstrated your enlightened thinking, particularly since you appear to be a white male. But upon closer examination we see you didn't think at all.

• Dallas is essentially bourgeois nouveau riche on the crust. We don't own a cultural identity beyond being known as a business city or where JFK was shot or the Cowboys, instead we purchase our cultural identity from other cities that are centers of cultural production. We are eclectic collectors of identity rather than producers of identity. We get ideas from magazines. We wear masks. We employ facsimile. I suppose this practice actually does “produce” a kind of identity, or identity crisis. There is minimal investment or promotion of Dallas' pockets of indigenous culture or its cultural producers. Most of the real talent moves away. What stays behind is usually ignored because it doesn't fit the shiny mold, or because it holds up a mirror that reflects something other than the innocuous Texas sky. There are many examples of successful, soulless, commerce-based cities like ours in history. It's okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Vegas pushed the concept to such an extreme that it actually did create an identity. Really, it’s okay. We do have a shot of maybe getting a Top Chef Dallas season and that sort of thing.

• I didn't say there weren't very many of them, I said they don't have very much influence

• titty with a lisp?

• here here!

• "The black and ethnic influence is very weak here compared to the great cities." Blacks make up 25% of the population in Dallas. San Diego - 4.7% Portland - 6.6% San Francisco - 7.3% Austin - 7.8% Los Angeles - 8%. Miami 19.5% Boston - 22.4% NYC - 22.8% Houston - 23.7% Kansas City - 30% Chicago - 32% Philadelphia - 44.2%

• Well said Bill. Our non-profits currently set up to promote Dallas would need to expand the gene pool in terms of leadership and people they do business with. So far their board members haven't shown an interest so they continue to hire ex-politicians, their friends, and firms in NY who are clueless to our riches or who have no marketing expertise. Couple that with the fact that many of them are people the general populace simply don't identify with as an authentic authority and you can see why these decisions are hurting some of our brightest assets and our unique business districts from A to V (Arts District to Victory).

• One of our glaring black-eyes is the segregated media. Yes, large cities should have media options based on politics & agendas including race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. However, they should not be segregated BECAUSE of race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Take for example Oak Cliff and East Dallas - both wonderfully professionally diverse, however, when a newcomer picks up the local magazines in those neighborhoods or opens up D Magazine, which supposedly represents professional Dallasites and neighborhoods, one would never guess as much and that is beyond shameful. These tactics have perpetuated the amateurishness of how we promote and market ourselves compared to other major U.S. cities.

• Dallas is an energetic international business city made up of a series of neighborhoods and we always have been. At the turn of the last century there were over over 20 languages spoken here. Today there are several hundred. Unfortunately, our city and neighborhood politicos don't want to accept how their decisions today are affecting the big picture.

• Probably in change.

• Why anyone would vote for Natinsky is beyond me. He voted against the parking lot boot ban in Deep Ellum. I bet his parking lot/towing company buddies paid him big for that vote.

• You can't engineer greatness. But working strongly against us, IMO, is the lack of real diversity. I can't think of a single "great" American city that isn't stuffed to the gills with the influences of all kinds of different folks. Dallas is still basically a city identified by its whiteness and, secondarily, its maleness. The black and ethnic influence is very weak here compared to the great cities. As long as Dallas insists on power controlled almost exclusively by white males, we can never be great. Greatness requires genuine diversity.

• We need to install alcohol vending machines like they do in Japan. But then I guess we would be a truly great Japanese city. Damn, this is hard!

• To be fair, every big city in America is a shithole. Some are just better at it than others.

• Now, now children, I think that all Bill said was that Seattle is famous for its coffee shops. On the same note Dallas is famous for big hair and http://dubsism.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/rich-texan.jpg

• Oh the irony. Having a Dallas mayoral candidate debate in another city. THAT'S what makes Dallas Grrrrreat!

• Thank you for your tacit admission that I am correct.

• Better, why don't you name me a city where the bus stop near the downtown McDonalds is where anyone really wants to be on a Friday or Saturday night?

• Whoops typo. Meant to write "on 3rd between pike & pine"

• Go hang out alone and unarmed on a Friday or Saturday night by the bus stop & mcdonalds at pike & pine if I'm so wrong then.

• I also lived there for years and go there on business routinely. I guess you are too much of a dipshit knuckle-dragger to enjoy what that city has to offer.....

• You are obviously ignorant of the definition of the word "ignorant". Ignorant means "not knowing" and I am the exact opposite of "ignorant" when it comes to Seattle because I lived there for years and thus KNOW ALL ABOUT IT. I bet you have NEVER EVEN ACTUALLY BEEN THERE AT ALL, or you only went for 3 days in the summer and stayed in the downtown tourist areas.

• Sorry, I accidentally "liked" your comment, but I meant to say say that you are a completely ignorant jackass.

• Answer...questions like this.

• thanks Bill, I would also like to add that Dallas is (nearly) a great City despite, not because of, the Ruling Class.

• @scottslittlemerkin Because Dallas is stuck in the sink hole of "monumentalism", instead of building infrastructure and schools that attract people. You can see the remnants of it all over the city from the last 50 years.

• Can someone please ask Natinsky what a "thity" is?

• Seattle is a dirty shithole full of wimpy politically correct emasculated "men" and "It's Pat!"-type of "women", full of heroin junkies, crack addicts, violent black gangs that are coddled by the white "progressive" wimps, and it rains for nine months straight. Anyone who thinks Seattle is not a shithole has never actually lived there for a significant amount of time.

• The answer would be Dallas IS a truly great city and people who say otherwise lack the vision to lead this truly great city. Now, vote for me for mayor.

• The question is biased. To answer it--without addressing the inherent flaws of its structure-- means the person answering it has agreed with the premise: Dallas is not a truly great American city and there is a definable impediment to success. Politicians are awful at slowing things down to point out the fallacies in a question; they most often times are focused on pushing out their pre-packaged message with little regard to what is really being ask. The mind-set behind the formation of the question, and ones like them, should be challenged.

• Bill Holsten for Mayor - you got my vote!

• no

• Wanting too much to be a great american city is what is standing in the way of being a great american city. Dallas tries to hard to buy that title rather than organically grow into that title. Its like leasing a Bimmer when buying a Honda will do. We dont need to spend hundreds of millions on signature bridges, when regular bridges with some architecture would do. Its like window dressing on our city, we are putting up bridges, hotels and parks in a ring around downtown to say look here, and please ignore our shitty downtown.

• But the convention center hotel was supposed to make us a great city. And before that AAC was going to make us a great city. Before that, just about every sink of tax money was going to make us great. I think 'make us great' is the equivalent of boogie man to scare us in a certain direction or a 'race card' played to make us prove we can be 'great'. Meanwhile the non great stuff like pot holes, bad traffic flows, and things like building new parks but not having the money to water the new grass have moved Dallas from 'great' to 'grating'.

• Robert, you ask a really good question. Dallas does seem to suffer from a real inferiority complex. We lack an identity and seem on a constant quest to be respected. There's so much I love about this city, and almost all of that is due to the really great people I've met in the grass roots arts, human rights and environmental communities here. We are not New York, but we are an international city. Ethiopians, Eritreans, Pakistanis, Cambodians.... all make their home here. We are not Denver, but we have lovely forests, meadows and trails all around us. We are not Seattle, but we've got some great local coffee places. Some one wrote once that we are a city of business and actually I think that's true. We were created for commerce and that's much of what our identity is. Still, there's much here to celebrate and I'd love to see us expand on those things more and more. Those big bridges do nothing towards that end in my opinion.

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