Attention fans of The Wire -- Read this David Simon interview

That was great. Thanks for the heads-up DD.

 

But isn't that essentially the theme of this season? (I admit, I haven't been watching it, no HBO in my house, but I've seen 1 and 2 and half of 3 and been reading about 4 here and elsewhere). That where you wind up usually depends on where you start? And if you start on the streets of West Baltimore, you probably wind up there no matter how sweet a kid you are. And if you start the son of a President, well then you might well wind up in the White House.
Maybe it's survival of the best-equipped. And if you start out lacking key equipment (a dad, say, or a safe street to grow up on, or schools that give a damn), good luck pulling yourself up by the old bootstraps in today's America. Ironically, capitalism, which is at least somewhat based on the idea of social mobility, is destroying the reality of that idea.

 

This thread is a prime example of what gives this place value. You have to weed through a lot of garbage, but sometimes we have intelligent conversations, sometimes the stuff in here reminds me that many of us can find common ground.

"The Wire: The most important TV show since Roots."

I was glad to hear David Simon talk about writing this show with a predominantly white crew. That has always blown me away because the show is so colorblind and fair. It's filled with all sorts of subtle messages about race. Take Herc and Carver. They grew up together on the force. Herc scored higher on the SGT's examine, but the test score didn't have a damn thing to do with him developing into a good cop. Meanwhile, Carver is developing into good po-lice. Simon doesn't beat you over the head with this stuff. He just lets it happen and maybe you catch it and maybe you don't. After Carcetti spent the day with mostly black cops in the Eastern District doing street buy-busts, Rawls preached to him about the ills of affirmative action. Within minutes, Simon showed Herc and his mostly white crew in the Western doing dumb crap with Marlo.

Bureaucracy and politics are the real villains, not race. It's too bad we let our racial hangups fuel some of the bureaucracy and politics.

 

I was all set to write something similar, but Ragu put it better than I could.

I should also point out that the idea that poor people are doomed to be poor isn't at all true, no matter what color they are or where they live. It's always been easier to get rich if you're born rich and harder to get rich if you're born poor. But it's not impossible to rise, no matter how self-importantly liberals claim the opposite is true.

 

Jason,

I was thinking a lot about this after the episode where the superintendent of schools tells Bunny and the U fo Maryland prof that they're going to have to kill their program unless the mayor signs off on it. If the supterintendent had been white, I thought to myself, I would have been far more likely to chalk it up as another instance where a white person in power makes a dumb decision because they cannot understand the realities for black kids in places like West Baltimore. The fact that the superintendent was a black woman made me think a lot more about the situation, and realize it was the intitution, and the bureaucracy, that was the problem. This show has really opened my eyes in a lot of ways, and I'm a better person for it. How often can you really say that about a television show?

As for the stuff about Deadwood, and how he could admire it without watching it, I've read in another interview where he said he watched several episodes of Deadwood, but stopped because he didn't want to let its style subconciously leek into his own. He liked it so much, he didn't want to start copying it, conciously or unconciously. He said once The Wire is finished, he plans to watch all the Sopranos and all of Deadwood as a fan. So I think by "watch" he meant he doesn't tune in each week to see it. I think The Office on NBC is hilarious. And I've seen two episodes in my entire life. I certainly don't "watch" it, but that doesn't mean I don't know the kind of thing they do.

 

Right. Let's get out our Horatio Alger books and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.

Wingman, no one every claimed that poor can't get rich but that's beside the point. They've got the deck stacked against them before they start. Part of the job of government is to establish programs and policies that provide equal opportunities for all members of society.

The alternative is to let predestination run its course and allow the rich and the entitled to run things as they see fit.

The result? Fredo, who would have a hard time getting a job as a Wal-Mart greeter if he hadn't been born into privilege.

 

JR,

I think what Simon's talking about in this interview -- as opposed to what he depicts on the show -- is a little more than "the deck is stacked" against the poor.

And Horatio Alger gibes aside, the fact is we live in a socially mobile society. And capitalism deserves the credit for that mobility, not blame for the fact poverty still exists.

Nice Bush joke, though.

 

JR..what about Clinton? He wasn't born into privilege.

And the government does provide programs and policies to help equal the playing the field for all members of society. IMO, the problem isn't that there aren't any policies, it's the policies they've established.

 

Guys, we're more in agreement than you think.

I'm not an anti-business person whatever impression you may have. I co-owned a successfull business for 14 years, one that I'm proud to say is still thriving after 35 years.

But Simon's point is, I think, that people no longer have any intrinsic value as citizens, but they're worth what they bring to the economic table. And in the case of the disenfranchised, it's not a helluva lot.

Ragu, I understand what you're saying about the drug trade--the war on drugs has been one long farce but the fact that Stringer tried to pay off the politicians to ensure his success is in fact one of capitalism's dirty little secrets. Pure capitalism--as you envision it--has never, doesn't now and will never exist, any more than a society based on Marxism ever will.

 

"No longer have any intrinsic value as citizens?"

If what you're saying is that today, businesses see people as a source of profit, what's so new about that?

And I don't think that's particularly dehumanizing...It's absurd to define yourself or someone else by how they're perceived by the market, and the only person who does so is David Simon. And, apparently, some of the folks who thought this interview was something other than a smug -- though brilliant -- writer getting fellated in a Q&A.