The Wire for Conservatives
I have to imagine that David Simon is laughing himself hoarse at Julia Vitullo-Martin's essay in today's Wall Street Journal. (If it's online, I can't find it–find a hard copy of the paper and turn to page W11. Kids, ask your parents to explain what a "hard copy of the paper" is.) The Wire, she argues, is full of good advice for conservatives when it comes to cleaning up cities. "The real lesson of 'The Wire' is what New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton understood from day one: To restore a city and its neighborhoods, fight crime successfully and everything will start to fall into place," she writes. "And don't wait around for federal support. Take whatever money you can find."
Uh, wasn't the whole point of Season Three that the city power structure, particularly as it relates to police work, is so gummed up with what's-in-it-for-me-ism that it's impossible to fight crime successfully? No, wait, sorry–that was the point of the entire series.
As George Pelecanos put it while speaking at Trinity College a week or so back, "We don't think there's big government solutions to this."
6:46 pm
You obviously have not heard Simon talk about stuff like this, because he certainly wouldn't be laughing, he'd be throwing a fit. Most of all, he'd likely point out that Baltimore would be a lot closer to New York if it had the benefit of being the financial capital of the world.
But I agree. That woman completely missed the whole point of the show.
12:41 am
I'm a liberal, but I wouldn't say "The Wire" was all about gummed up politics, or that Julia Martin was wrong in her assessment. The Wire was a compelling look at ALL faucets of American society, and does a spectacular job communicating the many causes of inner-city plight: white flight to the burbs, the "war" on drugs, political corruption, lack of local tax revenue for inner-city schools, jailed/dead/drug-addicted parents, lack of honest work for the uneducated, crony-ism, over-abundance of guns on the streets, etc, etc. Though WAY too simplistic, Julia's suggestion would be a small part of the answer. Conservatives understand guns, force, violence, and authoritarianism. What they don't understand is the need for strong schools, rescue programs, relief agencies, and the need to stop outsourcing good manufacturing jobs to China to increase profits on this year's annual report.