Dearborn in the Spotlight: Love it or Hate it?

Dearborn is a city accustomed to being in the national spotlight. Whether for the latest updates on Ford Motor Company or a look at the growth of the Arab American community, seeing west downtown or the on national television is no longer a shock–but is it a good thing?

The debut of the film this fall–followed closely by TLC reality show –has made Dearborn a hot topic in new ways. The lives of a handful of Dearborn's residents are now topics of discussion and debate, from Shadia Amen and Jeff McDermott's wedding to Fouad Zaban's methods of coaching the football team.

A for creative rights to the show, coupled with for pulling their ads, has only amplified the focus.

Residents of Dearborn have given mixed reviews as to the impact the show has had on the city.

"Absolutely ridiculous," wrote Twitter user Alimohamedreda. "This is NOT an accurate representation of Dearborn. Way to take a microcosm of the city and generalize."

Resident Emma Pelker disagreed. "I loved it," she wrote of the show on Facebook. "It’s really great that they're able to show everyone that they're just normal people."

Beyond entertainment, news cameras have been a frequent site in Dearborn with the repeated visits of and political discussion about Sharia Law. The latter was even made the subject of a joke on the Dec. 11 episode of The Simpsons, where a character was shown at the dressed in traditional Muslim garments.

But is all of this attention helping the city?

Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly said earlier this year that he believes the world is sometimes getting an inaccurate picture of what the city is really like.

"If you were to actually take the last 15 years of stories on a national scale that were about Dearborn, you would have thought it was an Arab town," he said in an interview with Dearborn Patch in September. "I have people who come to this town and they’re shocked because there’s all these non-Arabs here. They think everything in Dearborn is Arabic and all the businesses and people are Arabic."

O'Reilly added that the inaccurate image portrayed by many national media outlets isn't usually intended to be hurtful, but that anti-Muslim groups use the image to further their own agendas.

"What (media outlets) don’t realize is that it hurts us," he said. "The people who do have an ulterior motive are served by the people who have no motive except to make that presentation. I don’t think the media has ever connected the fact is what they might be doing is laying the groundwork for people who have a very evil motive."

Share your thoughts with Patch: Do you think media attention on Dearborn has a positive impact on the city?