Where’s love for Detroit?

After living in Michigan most of my life, I never knew Detroit was a dirty word.

I’ve always driven a Chrysler. I grew up in a house in Warren that is blocks away from a Dodge truck plant and a General Motors powertrain plant. Sometimes when I drive over to my old neighborhood now, I see people crossing the street to go to work.

So you’ll excuse me if I don’t know why the so-called bright minds that drove all those deadly derivatives down Wall Street deserve a bailout far more than the guy or gal who drives a car off the line.

Why should General Motors Corp. be forced to fail? But Bear Stearns and American International Group get rescued?

Each night when I go home and turn on the television, I find myself insulted by the righteous tone on cable or the networks. Look, I’ve always understood that many people do not like American cars or union workers or car company CEOs.

I didn’t know that some really, really hate us — and couldn’t care less if one or two or three Detroit carmakers up and dies. So we’d have hundreds of thousands of people suddenly unemployed. And the response is: Who cares?

One night I got so upset when a reporter on CNBC said automakers don’t deserve a bailout that my 10-year-old marched into the room and said: “I know how to fix this.” And he turned the TV off.

I’ve since tried to remain calmer. I am rarely successful.

I’m not going to defend every clunker that rolled off the line at GM or Ford or Chrysler in the 1970s or ’80s or even ’90s. I had one Chrysler-produced 1997 Eagle Vision that somehow blew through two transmissions in roughly 80,000 miles. I was not happy.

So far, so good with my 2004 Chrysler Pacifica.

There is no defense either, though, for some of these experts. They’re rolling out so many of the tired clich s that applied to the Detroit automakers in the ’70s that I half expect to see these interviews filmed at Studio 54.

It is true that Detroit has not changed quickly enough. Automakers must speed up progress in developing attractively priced, alternative-energy options — fuel-cell, hybrids or plug-in technology.

It is true that even more hard-nosed cost-cutting, including eliminating some brands, must be done. Many bonuses and perks must go.

And it is true that management and labor will need a radical new look, given the fact that automakers want a handout from the federal government to survive.

It is not true that Detroit’s quality across the board remains miserably low. It is not true that Detroit builds only gas guzzlers. It is not true that Toyota Motor Corp., as one woman on television seemed to suggest, does not build big trucks.

Other Detroit-area friends have watched policy wonks discussing the auto industry — and those experts can’t seem to name one model from Ford or GM or Chrysler.

One host, according to a friend, seemed to think that a Chevy Volt was a Ford product.

We’re watching one huge disconnect here.

The fact that we’ve somehow come to a point where the CEOs of the Detroit Three must beg for money in Washington is shocking.

What’s as disturbing, though, is that many outside Michigan — and some even inside Michigan — have reached some point where they just don’t care.

Maybe they don’t care because Detroit’s image was so badly tarnished by all those bad cars years ago. Maybe when you lose somebody’s trust, you never really regain it.

And it’s sad because many people working in the auto industry today are building far better cars than their fathers or mothers ever built.

The Detroit Three employed 239,341 hourly and salaried workers in the United States at the end of 2007, according to the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research. There are far more people working for suppliers and other related industries.

We’re talking about people who won’t be able to pay the mortgage, won’t be able to send their son or daughter to college, won’t be able to easily get back on their feet.

We’re talking about my neighbors — people who could change a tire but cannot fix the financial crisis that is about to run them over.

XSusan Tompor is the personal finance columnist for the Detroit Free Press. She can be reached at stompor@freepress.com.