Conservatives have loved hitting the Obama family for their lifestyle, whether they’re criticizing the price of Michelle Obama’s or running with phony stories about her lingerie shopping. So there was something entertaining about seeing National Review criticize President Obama for an act of personal frugality—it turns out the President and his family haven’t owned or leased a car since 2007.

That’s an entirely sensible decision: when you’re famous enough to need Secret Service protection, you’re famous enough not to be driving yourself. And given the level of racist insanity Obama’s candidacy and presidency unleashed, Obama needs protection more than most candidates. If you’re not going to be driving yourself, and you don’t particularly like driving, there’s no particular reason to keep a car you’re not going to use. Obama’s decision is actually in line with a broad trend in America—car ownership fell for the first time ever in 2009, mostly because the economy encouraged people to cut down on redundant cars. But as conservatives look for ways to pin rising gas prices on Obama, it’s not particularly surprising that someone would make a weak attempt to paint Obama as out of touch because he’s following security protocol and making a reasonable financial decision.

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has been emphasizing his bona fides as a car owner as a way of proving he’s something of a regular Joe—or at least committed to the American auto industry—particularly in advance of the Michigan primary. He attended the Daytona 500 on Sunday, where he was photographed with Lenny Kravitz.

On the campaign trail, Romney’s car-related lines have a way of emphasizing just how distant he is from the average American car enthusiast. In December, Reuters noted how Romney tried to back away from his disastrous offer to bet Rick Perry $10,000 in a debate by suggesting that the amount was too much for him to pay for a Nash Metropolitan he saw while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. And Romney’s talked about wanting to add a Mustang or Corvette to his collection, which already includes a ’62 Rambler, a gift from his son, “some day, when I have time to fuss with it.”

Then, on February 23, Romney said that “I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pick-up truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually. And I used to have a Dodge truck. So I used to have all three covered.” If the sentiment was meant to be a populist one, Romney missed. There’s a difference between supporting local businesses and describing personal car consumption that would be capable of propping up an industry.

I wanted to like Detropia, the new movie from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady about, among other things, the continued move of the American auto industry overseas; the proposed plan to contract Detroit’s footprint to save money on social services and concentrate the city’s residents in viable neighborhoods; and the role of the city’s arts community in its revitalization. All three of those things would make fascinating movies in their own right, and I think Detropia suffers from trying to do all of them at once. And I’m sorry that’s the case, because I would have been particularly curious to see a movie make the argument currently being advanced by the National Endowment for the Arts that investments in art and culture can provide the anchors that help economically revitalize blighted neighborhoods.

The movie looks at two primary examples of the arts in Detroit: the city’s financially struggling opera company, and the influx of young artists who have helped boost the city’s population of young people by 59 percent. In the former case, the opera mostly acts as a barometer in the movie for the difficulties faced by the city’s wealthy, white residents as well as the poor black ones who have been devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs. It’s not surprising to know that the Big Three automakers were largely responsible for the corporate support that long kept the opera company running. But it would have been interesting to know how the automakers made decisions to continue — or cut back — their giving, and to have a few individual donors as part of the story. And the movie ends without telling us the fate of the opera companies, or any details about its budget. It ends up feeling sidelined.

And while it’s nice to know, as one young artist tells us that “I would never be able to own a home as an artist…we can experiment here because if we fail, we haven’t really fallen anywhere.” But the movie isn’t clear about whether the very cheap rents that lure artists to the city are helping revitalize its economy, or establishing market values for real estate and other goods and services at a permanently lower level. And Detropia doesn’t put these young white artists in conversation with the black residents, be they former autoworkers or local political bloggers, who are their new neighbors, or who they’re displacing. That would be a fascinating transitional discussion. But it never happens, and we never learn anything about what sorts of institutions these young people are creating or how they’re interacting with old ones. Detropia has parts of a story, but especially on the arts, the version of it that screened at Sundance feels much more like a first act than a complete story.

This post contains spoilers through the January 17 episode of Justified.

Before plunging into what looks to be a tremendously exciting season of Justified, a thought: why is it that our great prestige television about cities that aren’t New York, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC has to be about the drug trade? Baltimore is defined by the drug trade in The Wire. We see Albuquerque largely through the lens of people who participate in the meth trade, or who are trying to shut it down in Breaking Bad — the city’s geography is bounded by the houses of the participants, Los Pollos Hermanos, the laundry, and Hank’s office. And Justified gives us a Kentucky populated by a colorful variety of narcotics wranglers. The Sopranos is a notable potential exception, though drugs are certainly part of the mix, and there’s an extent to which the show is about New Jersey’s relationship to New York.

I understand why we tell stories about criminal enterprises in general and drugs in particular. Cops and robbers, chase and race are both classic storytelling models. And the networks and problems of production, trade, and distribution make for fascinating character and power relationships between criminals and present substantial challenges for law enforcement officers. But are drugs really so psychically important to our country that they deserve this level of attention? I know I’m not alone in considering the War on Drugs both an over-investment and a failed strategy. And while I appreciate living in a neighborhood that isn’t blighted by drug-linked crime, I’m also not exceptionally concerned about Marlo Stanfield or Walter White showing up and upsetting that balance. So is this pattern just a result of the structural rewards of telling drug stories? Or do we see something rotten at the heart of America, a blight worse than the troubles we identify in our great cities?

I wanted to start on that note because I appreciate the way the show used Quarles’ arrival in town to set up a running conversation about real estate, and by extension, territory and a sense of home. When he first showed up, I actually assumed he was talking about the city of Detroit, rather than the criminal enterprise based there that he happens to represent. It quickly becomes clear that it’s not, but I like the idea of Detroit as a criminal conspiracy, the city’s profound troubles providing opportunities for men like Quarles to rise. “You picked a shitty time to get into commercial real estate, and now you’re under water. Detroit did not make an investment. It made a loan,” he warns. “Things are getting tough all over. So if you can’t have the money here by tomorrow, I trust you tell me right now.” He makes good on the threat by the end of the episode, but he’s set a theme that persists for the rest of the episode. There’s Boyd and Raylan fighting over Raylan’s broken promise, with Raylan spitting, “You think we’re in the holler? I’m a deputy U.S. Marshal.” Geography will reach out to pull you back, if you let it. And Raylan and Winona, they lie in bed after making love for the first time since Raylan was shot, property and geography become a proxy for talking about commitment. “Maybe we need more room,” Raylan proposes, baby planning. “After all the time I’ve spent redecorating?” Winona asks, a prickliness that’ll come up again when Raylan tentatively proposes naming their baby Felix, like the cat. “It’s sweet. It’s sweet that you think you have a say in the name,” she tells him.

Those twitchy power dynamics are all over the episode, and make for some of its best moments. “Didn’t wear your suit,” Raylan observes as he meets Boyd in the conference room. “Why do you say that as if I’ve only got one suit and not the whole closetful?” Boyd complains. And they poke at each other over the question of asset forfeiture. “How sizeable, Raylan?” Boyd asks.”Well over 10 dollars,” Raylan tells him. “If I had that kind of money, I’d be in Mexico by now,” Boyd tells him. One of the reasons things get so nasty is because the stakes are smaller than they are in Albuquerque, but the people involved need the money and the assertions of power more. When Ava clocks Devil with the frying pan and is told she didn’t have to, she forcefully asserts that it is, “Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.” Duffy slaps back at Raylan by treating him like a low priority, saying, “I would love to be of more help but I’ve got to get back to watching women’s tennis.” And Fletcher Nix, who on another show would be a great season-long villain, projects his air of menace in Raylan’s house in part by playing naive. “I look like I know anything about watches?” he asks Raylan. “I could take those off your hands. Give you $20 a piece for them,” Raylan plays along, a little bit classy and a little bit cheap. But he beats him by playing very, very cool. It’s going to be a terrific season.