Tapping Into The Wire
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AMONG THE THOUSANDS INSPIRED to enter journalism by the 1972 Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was a young, Bethesda, Maryland, teenager named David Simon. A writer for his high school paper and, later, editor of the Diamondback at the University of Maryland, Simon pursued his dream of becoming a reporter steadily and efficiently. He joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun only ten years later, in 1982. For most of the next thirteen years, he covered the paper's police beat.
As a Maryland native myself, Bethesda is a pretty affluent area, so Simon had the privilege of growing up in a relatively stable neighborhood. He had the ability to finish high school and attend a well-known state school UMD. Simon was born privileged and although he is uncovering the inner social flaws that plague the less fortunate, there is no denying that Simon has a privileged background. Does this at all detract from the authenticity of Simon’s work? Does his background cause him to portray the Wire in a different manner than an impoverished and true Baltimore native would?
I think that it is important to take into account how Simon did not grow up on the streets but rather with a privileged and educated background. On the other hand, he did immerse himself in reporting police work that required him to be face to face with the cops who dealt with these crimes. Because he took on this opportunity from his education, I think his portrayal of The Wire was able to be made more complex and eloquent along with able to cover more variety of crimes as opposed to those central to an area of an impoverished Baltimore native.
I agree with Alison. While Simon did not come from a life on the streets, his immersion with the Baltimore police gave him the opportunity to gain a firsthand understanding of life on the streets. The Wire is definitely improved by this advantage, and Simon’s lack of legitimate street life experience does not take away from the show. If Simon had grown up in a life of poverty, it is highly unlikely that he would have ever been able to create The Wire later in life. While his more affluent background is interesting to consider when watching the show, I don’t think that it detracts from the authenticity of the show.
David Simon’s upbringing can be seen as a positive attribute to his creation of The Wire. I tend to believe the best representatives are those who have experience on both sides of the fence. David Simon grew up privileged, but also dealt directly with inner city police work through his reports. He was able to analyze the institutional failures of many areas, and depict his point of view through The Wire. Simon’s brilliance is highlighted through his decision to focus on institutions rather than individuals. If he were to focus on individuals it would take away from his credibility because of his lack of personal experience with lower class society.
I really agree with everything that’s already been said about how Simon’s background doesn’t hurt the show’s authenticity in any way. He really does have good insight into both worlds, as O’Shea mentioned, so if anything, I’d say he can draw from a lot of meaningful life experiences to make the show as quality as it is.
One thing to note, though, is that I don’t see how it would be feasible, or at least likely, for someone who was raised in inner-city Baltimore to do what Simon did. As the Wilson article explained, most kids that grow up in poor urban settings, as well as later generations of these same families, stay there forever. Thus, they are not making connections with the outside world that would enable them to get any of the training or even name recognition to produce a show like The Wire. We probably wouldn’t even have this kind of show if it weren’t for people like Simon. He is able to give a voice and a representation of inner-city life that people would probably ignore if it came directly from the real-life versions of Namond, Wallace, Avon, etc. Again from the Wilson article, we see that many Americans feel that poor blacks endure the circumstances they do because of their own bad choices, laziness, etc. While I entirely disagree, I am glad that someone like Simon can give a voice to these people so that the larger public may begin to take seriously the problems that The Wire addresses throughout its seasons.
I agree with both Alison and Kristen. If you look at who is behind most media similar to The Wire, not necessarily in content but what The Wire attempts to expose, you will find an affluent human behind it; its vastly the nature of putting together articulate, smart and noteworthy work.
I somewhat agree with this comment, but I have serious issues with it. I think before we impact who produces media similar to The Wire, we must ask who has a voice? Who is allowed to make commentary on many of the issues the Wire attempts to expose? Of course the agency belongs to those that hold power, money and connections. Isn’t that really what the Wire proves to us? How many Bodies or Bubbles actually get to share their story?
The cop shop is not a glamorous reporting assignment. It is safe to say that most reporters who have covered the police department were not sad to leave it behind for something less chaotic and more predictable. The hours are awful, weekend shifts and night shifts are plentiful, and the information surrounding most crime stories is maddeningly difficult to pry loose from suspicious or personality challenged cops.
I am sad to say that over spring break I finished all 5 seasons of The Wire. Off topic but worth mentioning, there should be a 6th season of the show! David Simon’s position as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun must be his inspiration for season five. Before watching this season I was unaware of the challenges associated with covering such news. After watching season 5 I now seek to pay more attention to news that covers police and criminal information. I will not just be looking for the type of story, rather the reporters voice throughout the excerpt. Within the voice I will be looking for whether or not I believe the story emerged from a bit of truth and expanded into more fiction than reality. For those who have not seen season 5, i’d personally say it is one of the best by far.
Simon, however, thrived at it, turning in solid copy marked by numerous inside sources and a gritty, readable style. He earned the trust of enough local cops that the department allowed him to spend a year practically living with the homicide squad while researching a book. When it was published, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets was grabbed up by
Baltimore native Barry Levinson, who turned it into an award-winning TV series with Simon writing many of the scripts.
During his newspaper days, it was clear to the reporters who worked with him-myself included-that Simon was a different breed of journalist. Besides being a tenacious reporter who knew how to get information, he was a writer of evocative prose. Sometimes forgotten is the notion that a journalist is one who strives to master two arts: reporting and writing. Often, those who approach such mastery are known by their passionnot merely for the job, for the career, or even for the paper. Rather, it's a passion for telling a story well. David seemed always ablaze with the righteousness of whatever story he was working on. He would defend his ideas long and hard against editors who thought they could impose their own vision of the story on him.
It could be argued that The Wire is Baltimore solely through David Simon’s eyes. The show seems to be rooted strongly in Simon’s opinions and the depictions of Baltimore’s various institutions demonstrates this.
The idea that Simon likes to tell “his” story makes me wonder about the Wire. Could the Wire present a view of the world that is skewed by David Simon’s opinions? I think this is entirely possible. The overall tone of the Wire is pretty bleak, and I think you could argue that the general condition of the inner city is improving in real life (although I’m not an expert on the topic).
Raymond brings up an interesting point that the author alludes to. Does The Wire portray Baltimore in reality or does it portray David Simon’s view of The Wire? In my opinion, it is nearly impossible to not incorporate some bias into the story that a producer or a journalist tells. However, I do not think that Simon’s view of Baltimore is really that much bleaker than the way Baltimore actually is. As we have discussed in class and read in other pieces, crime in Baltimore (and “the game”) is certainly prevalent. While Simon’s version might be slightly more extreme than the reality might be, I don’t think it affects the impact that the show should have.
In my view, the Baltimore Sun was never a writer's paper. It was not the paper of H. L. Mencken-that was the Evening Sun, the afternoon paper that eventually died or was killed off, depending on how close you were to the body on the sidewalk. The morning paper, simply The Sun, proudly waved the banner of hard, serious news; it stood proud, sometimes to the point of overbearance, behind its laudable record in covering wars and international intrigue. It never quite figured out what it had in Simon or how to deal with his ever-broadening streak of independence. That he would one day leave seemed inevitable to many and became fact in 1995.
That year, Simon teamed up with former Baltimore homicide detective Ed Burns to write The Corner. It's a true-life look at an impoverished family living near the corner of Fayette Street and North Monroe-the heart of the west Baltimore drug world where dealers often sell their goods from street corners. Simon adapted the book into a six part mini-series for HBO. He wrote five of the six scripts and earned a credit as a producer. The series won three Emmy awards.
Simon then conceived the idea for a new HBO series called The Wire and was given the go-ahead to film a pilot. Again, he teamed up with writing partner Ed Burns. The series, which ran for five seasons, premiered on HBO in 2002. It introduced the world not only to Baltimore-its cops, politicians, drug addicts, union leaders, crime lords, and newspaper editors-but also to the state of crime, poverty, official indifference, and general urban decay found in most American cities. Its characters were
“It introduced the world to Baltimore” — Did The Wire actually do this? I have yet to watch an episode which highlights any positive aspects of Baltimore? Yes, Baltimore is heavily composed of the trials and tribulations, per se, exhibited throughout the five seasons of The Wire, but it is more than that. All cities are plagued by the negative aspects that The Wire highlights, but what also makes cities remain viable are their counteracting positive aspects. Why does Simon not highlight any of these positives?
I think Remy raises an interesting point. Beilenson and McGuire go on to argue that the issues addressed in The Wire are found in most American cities, but the show does seem to hit particularly hard on Baltimore. Before I ever watched the series, I knew of its negative connotation of the city—often, when I would mention that I was from Baltimore, people would respond with negative comments about the city, citing The Wire as the source of their information. I know that when the show came out, it was poorly received by several city officials due to its bleak and off-putting representation of Baltimore. Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld bashed the show, arguing that it was a smear on the city, and that it would take years for Baltimore to overcome its effects. However, I don’t know that Simon could accomplish his mission of representing urban social ills while still finding ways to depict the city in positive ways. Is there a way to balance this and to still accomplish this mission without fully bashing the city?
This is a good question, and something I have been pondering as well while watching the seasons. Reading this article though helps me to understand why he did not show or feel the necessity to highlight positive aspects of Baltimore. I believe, ultimately, that Simon used The Wire as his medium to show what the newspapers and what people weren’t talking about. The duty he feels to be a watchdog of society made him want to show the unseen truths of the city, and these are often not positive aspects. Although it would be nice to see some of
the good aspects of Baltimore displayed, when hearing his interviews I believe he had a clear purpose for the show, and this was to reveal the corruption that is often not analyzed.
I think it’s pretty bold and inaccurate to say that The Wire introduced the world to Baltimore. I’ve lived in suburban Maryland 20 minutes from Baltimore my entire life and if I were to describe the city it would not be solely through drug addicts, crime lords, and corrupt politicians. That’s what makes The Wire so good; it exposes parts of Baltimore that even some Baltimore natives wouldn’t have known about otherwise. I think the “general urban decay found in most American cities” line makes up for how bold the beginning of the sentence sounds. Simon and Burns wrote the show based on their experiences with Baltimore police department catching criminals so obviously that’s what the show reflects. Had they been involved with the police department awarding good samaritans then their perspectives would obviously be very different. I don’t think the show would have been as effective if they had tried to balance the positive and negative aspects of Baltimore.
Baltimore is a really interesting setting. It’s one of the larger urban areas in the U.S.(Google tells me it is the 24th largest city in America). It has its own airport, huge sports franchises, major universities. Contrast this to Camden, N.J., which we have also talked about. This is a city that does not have the diverse population or resources that Baltimore has. There is likely nothing nice to say about Camden, whereas I do think that positives of Baltimore are neglected within The Wire. Can we blame this on a really close examination of one microcosm of the city? If so, are we really learning Baltimore, or just several neighborhoods? I would guess that this is where Simon’s “op-ed” comes into play, rather than a documentary.
The only thing I would say about Camden is that it is basically Philadelphia. Meaning to consider Camden to be Philadephia is the geographic equivalent of considering Albemarle to be Charlottesville. So in that way Camden does have its own airport, huge sports franchises (not to mention deplorable fans), major universities, etc. At least in my opinion choosing Camden would have been just as interesting as choosing Baltimore.
Related fun fact about Camden: every major hip-hop tour includes a show there. Rappers get instant street cred for performing in Camden. (Maybe that’s why my rap career never took off.) But seriously, that concept is kinda funny, especially when you consider how it’s very similar (and almost cyclically so) to the whole suburban-white-kids-listening-to-rap cultural phenomenon.
I think the point of The Wire, like Kristen said, is to show the parts of the city that don’t get a lot of media attention normally. At least in my opinion, the show does a good job of balancing how pervasive the issues of the drug traffic are throughout a number of levels in the city, but it doesn’t go so far as so suggest the are the entirety of the city’s composition. That’s not to say that I think it necessarily balances positive and negative aspects, but just that as I watched I didn’t feel like the city was being completely reduced to its drug problems. This might be partly because in my own visits to Baltimore I’ve seen a much different view of it, so maybe if I was watching the show as someone who has never been there that distinction might not be as clear. I think the statement that the show introduces the world to Baltimore should be revised to introducing one part of Baltimore.
FOREWORD
fictional but drawn from the street reality Simon and Burns had observed and interacted with for years as newsman and detective.
Following that success Simon produced and wrote Generation Kill, a six-part HBO series based on a book of the same title by Evan Wright. It told the story of the First Reconnaissance Marine battalion during the 2003 Iraq invasion. His latest work for HBO, a series called Treme, focuses on a group of New Orleans musicians whose lives were dramatically affected by Hurricane Katrina.
In 2009, after Peter Beilenson asked me to join him in writing this book, I suggested that it include the voice of David Simon. In the fall of 2010, I interviewed David at his home in Baltimore's Locust Point. What follows are the highlights of that talk as they relate to the subject of this book: public health imperatives that are at the heart of every episode of the program David Simon called The Wire.
Patrick A. McGuire
Patrick McGuire: A relatively new model of public health is taking hold in many areas of the country. It goes beyond the traditional role of dealing with issues such as immunizations and safe-water initiatives. It views the spillover effects of drug-related chaos in our inner cities as a threat to the health and well-being of all citizens-not just those in certain neighborhoods. The Wire seems to mirror this view in depicting poverty, gun violence, and addiction as unsolved problems of public health and not just criminal justice. Was that an intentional focus?
David Simon: We made those points in The Corner. Since it was nonfiction, we made a much more fundamental argument in that show. The Corner was the reporting, whereas The Wire was like a big op-ed piece.
I remember having lunch with Peter Beilenson and Kurt Schmoke in the late nineties. Schmoke had read The Corner and asked to meet with Ed Burns and me. Schrnoke basically said, "You guys get it. This is why 1 came out for decriminalization:' [ told him he was a prophet without honor in his own country. In many ways Schmoke was a pragmatic man in terms of filling potholes and getting stuff done and getting everyone moving the city forward. A little ethereal. He would have made a great senator. Being mayor is a much more prosaic thing. But as an idea guy he was smart as a whip.
A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID SIMON xi
Schmoke started to sour on the drug war with the killing of narcotics detective Marty Ward in '84. The guy who hit all over him for suggesting a discussion about decriminalization was Congressman Charlie Rangel. He wasn't addressing himself to what Schmoke was saying, which was ab
solutely accurate. He wasn't offering any other solutions and wasn't accepting the notion that the War on Drugs wasn't working. He savaged Schmoke.
At the time I thought, "\'(fow, Schmoke just wants to talk about it but we can't even talk about if' I don't know that I was as confirmed in my belief then that the drug war had to end. I was working on Homi-
cide. I was surrounded by guys who were working drug-related murders. I didn't really start thinking about it until 1993-95 when I was researching The Corner. And then, all of a sudden, what Schmoke had said and done was prescient. In The Corner, we basically said it's an intractable war and unwinnable, it's destroying police
Do we see this resonating in The Wire? I think that Simon tackles this issue, especially through the end of the season montages. Through these montages, I am always impressed how the producers are able to convey the idea that things have changed, but the core is still the same. Part of this includes the war on drugs, which still continues on despite the work of the police force. I think Simon carried this theme over into The Wire and puts it on display. If the drug was is unwinnable, then what is the true answer? Does Simon seem to suggest a way to think about it differently in The Wire?
I totally agree that The Wire shows us that the drug war is always a struggle, no matter how much work the police force exert to tone it down. But I think that when we use a word like Simon’s and say that the war is “unwinnable,” we must consider that if it weren’t for law enforcement, the situation would be drastically worse.
In a course last semester, I read a book by Rebecca Solnit called Hope in the Dark (If you ever want a feel-good, quick inspiration kinda book, I recommend this one.). One of my favorite parts of it was a section in which she discusses the “Angel of Alternate History,” which, in Solnit’s words, tells us that “our acts count, that we are making history all the time, because of what doesn’t happen as well as what does.”
When it comes to social change and movements, I think of that a lot now, that every endeavor makes some kind of difference, even if only a small one. Because we don’t know how much worse inner cities would look without the presence of the police, we should be glad that they are able to do the amount of work that they do.
I think when we discuss the war on drugs, we sometimes do not address alternative courses of actions for addressing drug issues in the United States. For instance, many individuals incarcerated have drug charges and lack completion of a secondary education, however more money is placed within our criminal justice system rather than in school systems. Like Simon I believe the “war on drugs” is not winnable and that our resources need to be targeted in other institutions and not necessarily in the criminal justice system. I believe when federal money is funneled in other areas of public life, then individuals can begin to see positive changes in this “war on drugs.”
I agree, we read an article earlier in which David Simon called the Wire “dissent”. He meant that the institutions that we have, and in their current form, are not effective at carrying out their intended goal. The police force is a great example of this. While there are good people in the police force who try to do good work, in the big picture, not much changes from season to season. The drugs, smuggling, murder, and violence are all still there. In this sense, David Simon makes it clear that the “War on Drugs” is unwinnable if we don’t address the core institutional problems facing society.
Simon is entitled to his opinions, but his experiences have led him to the idea that society is broken in many ways.
I think for the most part, the depth of corruption in bureaucracies and the complexity of the root of the drug problems (e.g. poverty, poor education, inner city culture) make the drug war ‘unwinnable’ per se. But, I think in the last episodes of every season, the institutions are so close to ‘winning’ against the gangs or the failing institutions. Whether it was bringing an end to Barksdale’s crew, saving Namond from the streets, or almost getting the greek, when the police or the school pay attention to the core issues of the problem, like the drug gangs than drug users and individual students than standardized test scores, they get so close to possibly bringing a solution to the issues. I think The Wire is trying to say that the drug war is ‘unwinnable’ in status quo, but if there are changes like the ones that Freamon, Daniels, or Mr. Colby bring in The Wire, there maybe a brighter outlook for a city like Baltimore.
I also agree that The Wire does a very good job of showing its audience that the drug war is a dead end. In every season some of the “bad guys” go to jail but there is always someone else there to take their place. This is especially apparent in the montage we just saw at the end of Season 2. “The Greeks” leave Baltimore, but they have new guys that come in and continue their work selling drugs. We also see in that montage that the sale of prostitutes continues through the port even though many women have been killed in Season 2 because of this practice.
work, destroying health initiatives. It's not succeeding.
PM: The theme of The Wire seems to be the inability of our public institutions to function without corruption, self-interest, or a political motivation behind every turn of a wheel. \Xfhen you initially conceived the idea of The Wire, had you already decided which institutions to go after?
os: First, I needed to see ifHBO liked it. They only asked for the one season. It was entirely possible we would have only one season. I knew that we only had room enough in that one season to start an argument about undoing the drug war. Once they asked us, "Do you want to come back? Do you have more?" we said absolutely.
At that moment we could open it up and go into different things. So then there was a discussion with writers-myself and Ed Burns and later George Pelecanos, who was extremely influential. Richard Price kicked in after Season 3. We threw it open to the idea of what would we need to do
David Simon’s response here interests me because of how his thought process was for each season. Simon’s goal for The Wire was not to make a hitTV show, but to show the world, especially Baltimore reformers, the issues that persisted in the city. The first season is a baseline to introduce the problem, and each season after that shows how deep the problem runs in society (docks in season 2), the issues with attempting to reform (politics in season 3), effects on society (education in season 4), and the public opinion and challenges faced by reform (media in season 5). As interesting as the series is based on characters and plot twists, every aspect of the show is just a tool for Simon to show the needs for reformation and the underlying issues in Baltimore that need ot be shown to the world.
Is showing it to the world enough? Can we stop at critique, or should viable suggestions for solutions have been a larger part of The Wire? I too think that the five institutions that Simon and others chose to focus on for The Wire provided a very coherent snapshot of a city and the forces at play, if not comprehensive. I think that Simon’s discussion of wanting to do a season on immigration also provokes thought about what wasn’t shown in the series- how much more there is to a city and what should take precedence over what in providing an audience with what they may come away thinking is a fair and comprehensive view of a city.
One thing I find so interesting about The Wire and David Simon is that, though he put all of this thought and structure into The Wire, he never expected it to be a success. He says “…somewhere around the end of the 4th season the DVDs began to sell incredibly well… nobody had seen that. I certainly hadn’t. I didn’t know people would want to watch it that way”. I find this so interesting because, for David Simon, The Wire was simply a narrative he felt so strongly that he needed to tell regardless of the attention, success, etc. that it might or might not have received. I think this idea is what makes The Wire resonates because he developed the show how he wanted it to be told and shown without worrying about how to cater it to the audience.
Simon considers himself as a media watchdog, somebody who will remove the wool from covering people’s eyes. Simon doesn’t give a damn about sugar coating reality, he wants to portray inner-city Baltimore in the flesh, as he sees it. He was given a limited budget to create “a hit,” and wasn’t interested in making it a success. Simon was only interested in depicting the systematic and deeply rooted issues in Baltimore Institutions. He did not care to take ratings into consideration and meant to expose the mediocre police work, the corrupt politicians with their hands in everyone’s pockets and the drug trade which permeates the Baltimore streets—he also wanted to develop characters whom the audience could identify with (whether they wanted to admit it to themselves or not). These characters are very unconventional and allow people to explore their stories.
I like that you mentioned why The Wire might have started to resonate with audiences. I agree that Simon’s ability to separate himself from material success and tell the story in a very truthful and gritty way attributed to the show’s likability. Another reason I thought The Wire probably resonates with people is its ability to allow us to sympathize with individuals we normally would not care about. There is no clear “right” and “wrong.” We sometimes feel bad for the criminals in the series. The show illustrates that there is a lot of gray area when dealing with issues such as the ones presented on The Wire, and I think people were interested in this concept because it can be easily related to real life/the decisions individuals make every day. I also think people were intrigued at being able to place themselves in the shoes of individuals they rarely are able to encounter in their daily lives.
Each season highlights the institutional failures and the environment that is created. Baltimore, as shown by Simon, is a city full of institutional failure. Individuals become products of their negative environment and live in an endless cycle of detriment. As Jack demonstrated through the breakdown of each season, Simon attempts to show the real world problems of inner city Baltimore to have a greater effect on how the world views these issues.
xii FOREWORD
._-" -_ .. __ .-
to paint the city. The second season I was adamant about going to the port. Underlying all of that was reforming the underclass, which effectively is the drug war. That needed to be the second season.
The third season needed to introduce the political infrastructure because we needed that in place to speak to reform. We also needed in place somewhere in the series the futility of any attempt to reform the school system or address the school system. You could see the inertia there. And then the last piece had to be the media. Because you basically wanted to say, as a coda to the piece, by the way if you thought any of the problems that we've depicted are going to be addressed, the external watchdog has
We always talk about how the media is the fourth branch of government that has no check or balance, the fear is what happens when the media is out of control, the other issue is what happens when the media doesn’t do its job. Their job is to report the news, is it their duty to be the watch dogs and address these issues? He continues by explain stories about how the wrong people get promoted and how the newspaper doesn’t print these things. You can really hear David Simon’s voice comes out in this statement because of his ever growing frustration with the news and its way of doing things. Simons found himself cause in another system, not unlike the one that was manufacturing bad cops who didn’t know how to make a case. So instead of trying to tackle the game head on through a show, he insists that the point was to tell a good story. “And if something magical happens and they say we all watched the Wire and we’re going to end the drug war because this is a disaster, then great”. So who has the power and responsibility to change things, if it’s not the newspaper or David Simon? Is it all up to us or do we need people like David Simon to prompt us into action?
Ibukun brings up a really good point from this piece. Who has the power to cause change in this battle? I think that our media system has a responsibility to “have teeth” and report things, even if they run against what people want to hear. I think that the media, whether via newspaper or via a television series like The Wire, has the power to at least start a conversation about issues like the drug war. By starting a conversation, the public might become aware of the issue and start a public dialogue. This can then lead to putting people in office who will fight to make the necessary changes. However, it certainly is not an easy process, and as Simon seems to indicate, people aren’t always interested in watching shows about problems like this.
no teeth anymore.
So those were the five seasons, if we got five. We still had to beg. They
gave us two and three pretty easily. We were almost canceled after three. Four was a hard fight. A lot of begging. After four there was talk about canceling the last season. It wasn't a hit. They had a limited production budget. They said, "\Ve'll give you money to try something else, to shoot a pilot." They were looking for another Sopranos, and they said, "Why don't you take another shot at having a hit?" I kept saying, "I don't do hit:' And then it turned out that The Wire became The \.(fire. Somewhere around the end of the fourth season the DVDs began to sell incredibly well. And they continue to sell to this day. Overseas it's huge. Nobody had seen that. I certainly hadn't. I didn't know people would want to watch it that way. Anyway they gave us a fifth season.
It’s interesting David Simon says he never anticipated, or even aimed for, The Wire to become the huge success that is has. He says the show is even popular in Europe and other countries overseas and I question why other countries are so fascinated by a show that is about the American legal system and American institutions, and whether or not they are accepting the flaws of our institutions as reality or fiction, like most cops shows on television? The second part to my question is what exactly made the Wire so popular after the fourth season, which HBO considered a flop and almost cancelled thereafter?
You brought up something interesting that I never thought about before; this question of how The Wire is perceived in other countries? I too wonder what they think of The Wire and the truths it entails about American urban areas. I believe in general the “urban poor” fascinates America, which is evident with the number of books, news coverage, movies, research, studies, etc,. Does the same go for other countries?
Before I read Alison’s comment, I had the same question. It is very interesting to me that The Wire has gained a lot of success overseas. I wonder if it is the story that makes them engaged and see the whole thing as fiction and “good television”. Or perhaps, they have the same reaction as viewers of the states and understand the deeper issues being discussed and feel a relevance to them? I also wonder how citizens of countries who have decriminalized drugs or have legalized drugs would view the drug trade displayed on The Wire? Maybe they laugh at us and the mess of our criminal system?
I believe that for those other countries that have legalized those drugs and who still do watch The Wire don’t look at it quite as a “look at the stupid Americans” moment. Rather I feel that they are forced to look past the drug issue here, which many middle and upper class views may get hung up on and rather are forced to focus on the characters and the process that is going on in the story. Once you take away the drugs the audience is left with the characters and why they do what they must do. Not just the cops but specifically the drug dealers, the innocent bystanders, the, homeless people, the drug addicts. In the world of the wire everyone has a place and a purpose. They don’t all get to decide how they got their or if they can get out but they do what they can do to survive. That is what made people take a deeper look at The Wire in America and I think that can only intensify in a country where those drugs are completely legal and available.
This interview, and this scenario given by David Simon is what makes me respect this show (and HBO) the most. Simon’s motive behind creating the show is truly genuine and it shows in every episode of The Wire. It is due to the fact that he had a first hand account on his subject matter and his interest in critiquing specific institutions which made him more concerned on reaching true fans rather than gaining a large audience. I wonder if more people like Simon, who are truly passionate on a subject matter and are well educated about and have had first hand experience, made shows would television be more meaningful?
I do not watch much TV, but when I do it is all HBO or Showtime shows. I believe this is because the shows on these channels are experimental in their subject matters and content. They can be controversial at times and delve deeper into subject matters than many network cable stations. Although Simon says that HBO offered him another chance at “making a hit”, it was HBO who gave him the opportunity of several seasons to let his show reach more viewers.
If The Wire had as many viewers as it has now, then the show would have been continued by HBO. Personally, I think it would have been interesting to see a season more focused on the public health issue in a poor urban setting, whether it be causes for morbidity or mental illness. What are some other institutions that could have been covered more in depth by extra seasons of The Wire?
I think that a season on public health definitely would have been very interesting. Season 3 touches on that just a bit by showing the declining health of the people in Hamsterdam but does not go very far into it. I think the problem with continuing to examine other institutions, though, is that it would add fuel to the people who already think The Wire has created a bad image of Baltimore. Since one of the themes in every season is the underlying corruption that pervades many aspects of the city, it would be hard for the show to examine any additional institutions without people assuming that it is suggesting this corruption about them as well. That’s not to say that there aren’t other corrupt institutions in Baltimore or anywhere else, but I think viewers and critics might get tired of what they see as the show attacking every aspect of life in Baltimore.
Having the vision to stop a show too early as opposed to letting it keep running past its prime seems like what separates a lot of good series from bad ones, at least in how we remember them. It’s could end up painful, like watching middle-aged MJ running around wearing #45 with the Wizards. When you can go out on top, do it.
Also, according to the article we read at the beginning of the semester about Simon being the angriest man in the business, his show had already started losing its way by the 5th season because he injected his subject matter with too much personal antagonism.
I just saw Channing’s comment and have to say I also completely agree with the fact that it is always better to quit while you’re ahead. While Simon’s personal experience with the Baltimore PD made The Wire (and first, his book The Corner) the incredible show that it is, it also had the potential to be his biggest disadvantage. As the saying goes, “sometimes your greatest strength is your greatest weakness.” As Simon progressed through each season, we see more and more critique that could have ended in an explosive (negative) way, had the show continued for even a few more episodes, let alone an entire season. I also do not think that the show would have had the positive impact that it did on Baltimore, had Simon continued to express his anger through The Wire for an extra season, as people would tire of his implicit ranting.
I completely agree with both of these comments. On the one hand, another season of The Wire, focused specifically on public health could be fascinating. As Katie points out, season 3 does address a little bit of public health in terms of clean needle initiatives started in Hamsterdam by various organizations. The drugs and the crime associated with the drugs (violence) clearly perpetuate serious health issues that naturally impact the public health system in some way. But, as Katie also says, I agree that another season would be too much. The Wire has already devoted seasons to the educational, governmental/political, and law enforcement institutional problems and corruption. Adding another institution might push the show past its level of believability as viewers might not be able to believe that our public institutions are not as heroic as we would like to think. There can be a negative in every institution, but focusing on those could drive the already low viewership of The Wire even lower.
David Mills came in later and said, "Why don't you do something about
the Latinos coming into Upper Fells Point?" Immigration. He was dead right. As soon as he said it I realized it was one that we'd missed. By the time he said it we were gearing up to do season four with the young kids-which also started the rise of Marlo's crew. It was a two year story are, and we'd already planned the ending. Immigration is the one 1 wish we had done.
In the interview David Simon talked about how they and mentioned the impact of Latinos coming in. What do you think a sixth season with immigration could have done for the Wire? Would it have drastically altered what the crew did, would it have just expanded our views of the lower class and gang interactions or was there a subject we just missed entirely with immigration? Is there a hidden layer of the lower class that we just didn’t see or is it just a new perspective to look through?
PM: What advantage did your background as a police reporter give you in writing The Wire?
os: The Sun gave me an opportunity to observe at every level the systemic roots of an issue. I joke that my great success was never having been promoted at the Sun. I was always a police reporter. I covered the same things
I think the most amazing thing about the Wire is the amount of authenticity David Simon expresses in his work. His previous position as a Baltimore Sun reporter allowed to stray away form traditional “police reporting” and this is then depicted in The Wire. He draws on experiences from the Homicide Unit, drug war and many other crime reports. In a sense I feel this metaphorically represents the multi-faceted parts of the Wire, the importance of many different pieces to form a fluid storyline. These pieces together are able to depict a larger institutional issue.
for thirteen years. Most of my shifts were shifts of rewrite and of police. In 1985 they were going to send me to Howard County. I said, don't let them send me out there. I refused, but that's like refusing the way out of the cops beat. Not the best career move. Once you cover counties well, you're maybe asked to be the third guy covering the legislature. Then maybe you work your way up to covering the state house. Maybe you get into the Washington bureau.
The problem with most police reporting is that people want to get off the beat. So, typically, you only cover the beat long enough to have written the usual eighteen-inch stories. Stories about cops showing the dope on the table after a police drug raid. And police reporters would cover it straight-as opposed to saying to themselves, "Wait a second. I've seen this for six or seven years, the drugs on the table. In fact, the corners are only getting worse. Drugs on the table don't matter:'
So readers would get the same institutional dog and pony show and there would never be depth reporting on the drug war. Or what policing had become. Policing was being destroyed. The police department was learning mediocrity and learning stat work because what they were abandoning was police work.
By letting me into the homicide unit for the book Homicide: A Yea ron the Killing Streets, I met three hundred to four hundred cops. I had phone numbers and beeper numbers for half of them. The best of them were being wearied by the transformation in the police department. Not a II of them agreed with me about the drug war, but all of them certainly agreed with me that the level of professionalism was dying. And they couldn't quite understand why. Some of them clearly understood that the easiest thing in the world is a drug arrest. And so you don't need to learn to do police work. Which is exactly what happened in the Baltimore police department. They raised generations of cops who didn't know how to make a case. Because you're not making a case. You're going out on the streets to get stats, whether or not those cases were ever prosecuted-that was not even of interest.
Stan Valchek seems to be a great example of the “level of professionalism…dying” in the Baltimore PD. Rather than making cases based on good police work, we have every inclination that Valchek is personally biased. His protection of Prez is due to their relationship as father- and son-in-law. His eventual promotion in season 4 is due to a (seemingly) long-standing connection with Carcetti.
And it is personal bias that drives his decisions in season 2. A feud with Frank Sobotka over a stained glass window effectively drives all the major events of the season. This seems to be the opposite of professionalism; instead, Valchek engages in intensely personal and narrow-minded policing.
I agree with Anthony’s comment that Valchek, even though he is not the only one, is a great example of how the level of professionalism is dying the BPD. The more important thing to note, however, is that when police do act professionally they are not rewarded and in most cases, they are punished. With this knowledge, many BPD who would act professionally see that becoming corrupt or unprofessional is the only way to get things done- For example Freamon in Season 5 when he sets up the illegal wiretap. I think that this is the true message that Simon and Burns wanted to get across. This notion emphasizes the institutional corruptness of the BPD that forces, otherwise “good” police, to engage in unprofessional activities.
Lester and McNulty are constantly pushing the limits of their good-will within the police department. Both are focused on doing good police work, often at the price of upsetting their superiors. This might be the only way to get stuff done, but hundreds of police officers are satisfied NOT to get stuff done. Santangelo comes to mind, who goes from season 1’s detail back to serving as a standard district officer for the rest of the series. He does menial work for most of the show, but he is happy to be faceless in the department if it means steady, easy work.
I agree with Anthony that there are many police officers satisfied to not get stuff done. I think that a piece of why this is the case is that, as Kiley said, it does take a lot of drive in an individual police officer to get things done (whether that is corrupt action or not), but this drive to do things isn’t present in every police officer. I feel that Lester and McNulty are rare examples of those willing to constantly fight against huge society problems that, ultimately, will not be fixed by two police officers. I think, as The Wire show us, there is a prevalent idea that the problems facing Baltimore are so large that, in order to not always be running into another case that revolves around the same problems (drug trade, turf battles, etc,) or angering the bosses, an option to just get by “faceless in the department” seems to be a much simpler and attractive gig.
Anthony, you make a fantastic point about the well-intentioned characters of McNulty and Lester in regards to their desire to foster quality police work. However, I am conflicted with their behavior in the fifth season. For the first four seasons the audience has been flooded with figures within the police administration who clearly lack professionalism. If it moved them any closer to promotion, they preferred to make an easy arrest and juke the stats than rather build a case. Although Carcetti had promised him otherwise, Daniels is also sucked – to a a degree – into this mess. This brings me to a conflict that I have with the characters of McNulty and Lester in the fifth season. Granted, they are well-intentioned in their creation of a serial killer as they hope it can support and sustain quality police work. However, at what cost does this quality investigative work come? To do so, McNulty and Lester sink to the same lowly – if not lower – level of professionalism. What do you believe Simon’s intentions were in framing a declining professionalism with a further decline in professionalism? Were the efforts of McNulty and Lester worthwhile, or did they merely contribute to the same problem they sought to address?
I think the best example of officers not understanding what constitutes real police work is Colvin’s experiment with drug legalization in season 3. The fundamental job of police officers is to keep the citizens safe who they are serving. Hamsterdam does just this, as we see crime rates in Colvin’s district fall substantially without any juking of the stats. The standard of living in Colvin’s district actually increases while Hamsterdam exists, yet the only thing the police officers working under Colvin want to do is shut it down and go back to busting heads in. The idea that street rips constitute real police work has been so deeply engrained in police officers, such as Herc, that they seem to have forgotten that their actual job is to keep the city safe.
I think that this is a really good discussion about police and Hamsterdam, and I think that a lot of what ties into the police officers, like Herc, struggling with it so much is that their whole careers in Baltimore have revolved around drugs through violence over corners, between crews, selling, addicts, etc. that trying to now “ignore” drugs changes the definition they have developed of what it means to do police work where they are. They now are watching and monitoring what they have fought against for so long that I think many of the officers, like Herc, view it as a defeat for them.
I agree. I think it goes back to the discussion of street level bureaucracies we had, though. The motivation behind these “easy” arrests is to make stats look better and reach arrest rates. While they may not be necessary to ensure safety, the bureaucracy that these officers work within dictates that they have to make these arrests. In this sense, the need to meet these quotas actually undermines the work that needs to be done. It’s less about cops having the idea in their head that they need to arrest whoever they can and more about the pressure they have from their superiors.
Beyond the issue of police becoming conditioned to achieve certain stats instead of making cases, are the devastatingly skewed motivations of elected officials, illustrated by the olive tree analogy. Politicians often are not as willing to help put programs to help issues such as drugs since the results of their labors will not come to fruition until after their term. Instead they devote their time to shorter-term projects to appease the masses into keeping the officials’ political allies in office. In the same vein as police forgetting that their job is ultimately to keep the city safe, many elected officials need to be reminded that they serve to maintain the standard of living of its constituents, and improve it where needed.
I stayed on the beat long enough that they couldn't wheel out the same old bullshit.
PM: The Wire starts out as a police story, but it quickly becomes much
xiv FOR EWOR D
more than that, touching heavily on social issues. How did your social consciousness evolve?
DS: There's an ennobled version of me out there on the Internet that gives me too much credit. To me it's not social conscience. I just don't think of it in those terms. The W'ire was getting all of the stuff you couldn't get into the paper and doing it with narrative forms and fictional storytelling. It's like reporters sitting around complaining about the things you can't get into the newspaper because those things are "editorial" in nature. The kind of stuff you tell each other over lunch. You tell each other the truth about what the mayor's really like or the truth over the flummery of what some institution is claiming as progress. Proving a lot of this stuff, particularly the personal stuff about people-especially the personal ambitions of people-is the hardest thing in journalism.
Simon’s response here is one of the things that probably makes The Wire as interesting to me as it is. Yes, his show does have a sort of editorial nature to it in that it obviously has a bone to pick here and there (media in 5th season, bureaucracy in schools and police, etc.), so I know that this couldn’t fly in a reporter’s story in your average newspaper. And while some have said that his show is too dark because of how he confronts these issues and conflicts, he has the right to take it that route. As a viewer, you must simply take that into account and decide how much you want to go along with Simon’s telling of (t)his story.
That being said, are there many moments in The Wire that people in our class feel are extreme, overly dramatized, or unnecessary? For me, I enjoy that I see someone’s perspective in the show since I don’t have much background or knowledge with the subjects he covers throughout the series. I need the perspective he incorporates. So is what some may even call Simon’s “bias” a bad thing for The Wire?
I found this response from David Simon to be particularly telling. He suggests that the show was “getting all of the stuff you couldn’t get into the paper and doing it with narrative forms and fictional storytelling.” What does this say about the nature of our media system? If issues like those raised in The Wire are often neglected by newspapers, then what does that say about the effectiveness of our media system? To me, this seems to indicate a weakness in our media system.
There was a police commissioner who was a genuinely good soul but who was not equipped to run a police department. And everybody knew he didn't have the acuity to run the police department. To be able to write that in a newspaper story would be epic. Or to write that another commissioner was going senile and would forget where he was and that people covered for him. These stories were throughout the department.
There was a story about these two high-ranking cops who hated each other. They were in competition for rank. One day one of them was the duty officer and he went out and saw that the word "police" was written backwards on the front of an emergency vehicle. And he called up the guy responsible and said, "I got you. You fucked this one up:' That guy told him they write it backwards so that in your rearview mirror it reads frontwards. And the first guy says, "Oh, you got an answer for everything:' That's the guy they made the police commissioner.
There's no way you can put that in the paper. The paper is fearful of being seen as opinionated. Or making a qualitative judgment like saying that the drug war doesn't work. That would be "provocative:' The attitude was "you can't say that:' 1 said, "Well, why not? I've been covering it for ten years:' But you can say it in a TV show.
I am intrigued by Simon’s perspective that the paper is fearful of making qualitative judgments that might be considered “provocative.” Simon raises a good point about what sort of material we have come to expect in news, journalism, and various forms of reporting. While we by and large expect the news to be “objective,” I believe all reporting is nevertheless subject to varying degrees of bias and qualitative judgments. In the newspaper and on television, we expect to be given the stories in terms of hard facts—without interpretive opinions. In this sense, I agree with Simon that a fictional format opens a new realm of possibilities; however, I question if this can be taken as seriously as news itself, regardless of however authentic Simon’s portrayal of Baltimore might be. As a final thought, I believe the participatory nature of the Internet and the multifarious news sources it offers has added a dimension of judgment and interpretation to reporting, and it would be interesting to consider the ways in which various forms of reporting, perhaps even newspapers themselves, have changed as a result.
I think fiction can absolutely be taken as seriously as the news media itself. I think this is evidenced by the fact that top colleges in the country have entire courses around examining The Wire and its presentation of urban America. The Wire is looked upon by many as more than a television show; in some way, it rises above our expectations of fiction. As such, many treat the work’s perspectives as gospel.
To me, this is problematic. Whether or not The Wire is an accurate representation of Baltimore is irrelevant. Any show that claims accuracy in the way The Wire does risks perpetuating stereotypes about the world and coloring people’s perceptions of it. I fear that some individuals do not treat The Wire as a work of fiction. Simon’s harsh and clearly biased portrayal of The Sun in season 5 is evidence that the show can’t be taken at face value. We cannot take the show too seriously, because—like all media, fiction or non-fiction—it cannot give a holistic view of its subject matter.
I agree with you, Anthony, when you say that fictional works can still pose a problem in terms of “coloring people’s perceptions.” For example, the documentary Argo is based on real events but various aspects of the movie (especially the ending) were false or exaggerated. But because the general public believes the notion that the movie, although it is a work of fiction/entertainment, is based in truth, they are likely to believe the movie in its entirety. It would be rare for viewers to research actual events/facts and compare it to the movie. The same goes for The Wire. Even though the show is fictional, people know that it is loosely based on real forces and events concerning Baltimore. I highly doubt the average viewer will take the time to research and find out what is exactly true and what is not. What is more likely is that viewers will come away from the show thinking differently of Baltimore and thinking of the city through the lens of Simon’s portayal.
I agree with you that people watching The Wire need to take into account that it is a work of fiction, and its depiction of Baltimore is certainly not 100% accurate. However, I think what The Wire and some other works of fiction have the potential to do, is to give us a general idea of what the problem is. Before watching The Wire I didn’t realize what a catastrophe the War on Drugs was, or how bad inner city public schools were. Watching 5 seasons of The Wire certainly doesn’t make anyone qualified to go fix these problems, but it at least lets people know that these problems exist. Those who are really interested in these issues can then fill in the details themselves later. Those who are less interested at least realize a problem exists, even if their understanding of the details isn’t entirely accurate.
Bert, I very much agree with you assessment of The Wire. The series’ power lies in its ability to depict major social issues in a way that other forms of media cannot and have not been able to replicate/capture. Though, as you mention, we must recall that this is fictional. Although fictional, it still can give the lay person a better grasp of the issues hampering urban America. Furthermore, I believe that The Wire’s does an excellent job in its depiction of intertwining institutions. For viewers, this magnifies the role and development of public policy. Legislation that alters behavior(s) within the police department, for instance, can ultimately have secondary on the drug trade and tertiary effects on the a youth’s public school education. Thus, Simon’s creation is not only able to reveal social problems in and of themselves, but also captures the far-reaching effects that these problems have on other institutions/urban spheres.
I agree with you and think that you cannot take a TV show for face value. No matter how good a plot is, or the camera work is, you are still filming actors getting paid to demonstrate what they think a character acts like. You have to take into account that the Wire is fiction, and thus not everything actually happens word for word. Scenarios are established to enhance the TV show, whereas in real life, you set up a scene just how you like. Some shows might be extremely accurate, and have significant studying points worthy of a college level course, but this does not remove the fact that it is still in fact a television show, and is geared for entertainment just as much if not more than it is for ideological impact.
Even further than that, I think there is danger in using poverty and discrimination as entertainment. The Wire gives a fairly accurate representation of how difficult life is for many people, but this alone is not enough to help the situation. A good example of something similar is the tours of slums given around the world. Many people from higher socio-economic communities travel to places like Rio de Janeiro and spend an afternoon traveling around of one the favela slums. This type of “poverty porn” can be detrimental and belittling to local communities. In much the same way, I think it can be insensitive to claim that we have an accurate understanding of how life works in inner-city Baltimore just because The Wire does a better job than most of showing it.
I think you raise an important ethical issue, Mattia, with your well-coined phrase “poverty porn” to describe the danger in using a portrayal of inner-city poverty as entertainment. This becomes an issue specifically when considering the variety of readings and interpretations an individual might take on the media text. While the show might be encoded to reflect Simon’s disdain with the shortcomings of American institutions on urban environments and lower-income classes, it will be decoded differently according to audience prejudices and predispositions. That said, I believe the fact that The Wire is not structured according to the “good vs. evil” paradigm redeems it from being solely a form of escapism “entertainment.” While indeed it is enjoyable to watch, I believe much of the enjoyment comes from a pleasure in understanding some of the deeper cultural and economic issues facing our society, not merely stemming out of a sense of stepping into a world that to many people would otherwise be unknown. Therefore, I think while the show raises important ethical issues, the way it is structured prevents it from being a pure form of “poverty porn,” despite the possibility of a variety of readings and decoding of messages.
Jonathan, I agree with your comment. Newspapers are seen as the unbiased source of truth and hard facts. However many times I believe their are stories that need a bias to be communicated in order for the story to resonate with its readership. I believe there is a limitation to how far a story based on purely hard facts can go. By presenting a bias, I believe readers are more intrigued, having a voice with an opinion draws in readers because a reader is able to think in a certain way. People don’t operate on just facts, facts always are constructed into opinions and biases. Simon’s approach to the Wire of having an opinion is what ultimately intrigued viewers. Stories with a particular lens are more often successful than those simply restating the truth.
I agree with you that perhaps The Wire is given too much credibility when it is a fictional story heavily biased by David Simon. It definitely depicts the city in its worst way possible, omitting the descent families and the good people who live in the places like Baltimore with hopes of upward mobility. But I think the most important role of The Wire is to stir a discussion that dives deeper into the issues of inner city than just the crime rate or the mortality rate.It allows people to care, even if it’s from a personal attachment to certain characters. With a face and a personality attached to issues that we see on the newspaper as mere numbers, I think it draws professors and public officials to look deeper into the problem and bring the discussion out in the public.
Everybody grafts onto me a motive because just telling a good story is never enough for people. So I'm either civic minded and socially responsible and passionate about those things (which I don't feel unpassionate
about). But I never expected the world to get fixed. I came from a place where you tell a story and if it's shocking enough they pass a law and they make it worse. Telling a good story is the end in itself. And if something magical happened and they say we all watched The Wire and we're going to end the drug war because this is a disaster, then great. But it's never the expected result and not the intention. It was just a good story.
PM: Our current War on Drugs started out as a national policy. Do you think we'll invent a new national policy to replace it? Can the drug issue be resolved without a national policy?
DS: People are going to have to lead. I don't think there is political leadership. That sounds like pontification. Ed Burns had a great line. In order to lead you need to plant olive trees. You plant olive trees, and seven years later they give you the first crop of olives. There's no incentive if you're a politician on a four year election cycle to do that. Schmoke proved that. He proved there's no incentive. O'Malley learned the lesson well, and he has ascended and everyone who pretends to be tough on crime and tough on drugs has ascended.
I really like the metaphor that Simon attributes to Ed Burns about the olive tree and how much time it takes to lead people in the direction that you want. Despite our pride in our country’s democratic system and overall political institutions, there is a very valid point here that our political cycles allow for very little change. Just as many people complain about nothing efficient happening in Congress right now, not much can happen on state and city sub-levels if everyone is running for office on new platforms every year. The drug war is clearly a major problem in our urban environments, which subsequently affects every other environment in some way or another – yet why is there no real solution yet? And moreover, is Simon right that in trying to fix problems such as the drug trade with more laws, we actually perpetuate the problem and merely challenge the violators to find new ways of doing what they do?
I agree with Simon in that term cycles fundamentally flaws each politician’s aspirations to foster new legalization for the illicit drug trade and drug use. Politicians worry about their chances of being reelected or about a candidate from his or her party winning the next term. To answer Charlotte’s question, I think Simon is right in approaching the drug trade with more laws. One method of combating illicit drug use is legalization. Drugs cannot be legalized without enacting a formal code, a new law. Cracking down on the war on drugs cannot happen without the passing of new policies. Either way, our political system requires laws to be enacted to address the drug trade, as civilians, we can only hope that the policies do not perpetuate the problem of police forces arresting massive numbers of perpetrators.
I had lunch with Senator Jim Webb recently. His son was in Afghanistan, and when he came back he shoved The Wire at his father. Webb has since sponsored legislation trying to rationalize drugs. He's not for decriminalization. But he said we are the jailingest country in the world. \'{/e have put more people in prison and more per capita, more of a percentage of our people than China. More bodies. \V'e're either the most evil people on the planet or something is really, really wrong.
What it is, is a war on the underclass and it will probably require a Republican president to say, "This is dumb. We're going to have jail cells for people we really need them for:' \Vhen you target violent offenders and ignore the drug use, your crime rate goes down. You're taking people off the street who are violent. Most people who have drug problems are not violent. The average heroin user goes to work and cuts meat. At lunchtime he gets paid in cash because his boss knows he's a good meat cutter but has a problem. He gets a shot to maintain and gets paid the rest at the end of the day.
This response from Simon, where he emphasizes the police department’s inclination to arrest and lock up drug offenders rather than violent offenders, heavily relates to the tragic death of Len Bias, Maryland’s star basketball player, who overdosed on cocaine two days after he was drafted second overall to the Boston Celtics in 1984. Immediately afterwards there was a strong effort by Congress to push forward legislation (The Anti-Drug Abuse Act) which emphasized very strict and mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. This war on drugs was inspired by Len Bias, and was an effort by politicians to effectively control the drug trade. However, low levels of drugs were used to issue mandatory minimum prison sentences dealing with drug offenses leaving the higher-level traffickers unscathed. This ushered in a disproportionate level of incarceration for african americans and whites for drug offenses.
I found an interesting statistic online: African “Americans now serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (57.2 months) as whites do for a violent offense (58.8 months).” — http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/len-bias-two-decades-of-destruction/
This trend, which began in the late 80s, serves as inspiration for the corruption that filters through institutions in The Wire. Simon draws heavily on this trend and uses The Wire to tell one part of a much larger story, not only of unjust incarceration rates but the corrupt police department and their emphasis on statistics, their lack of professionalism and lack of acuity for doing proper police work, politicians lack of leadership and their only concern being election or re-election. This is part of the reason that lower level offenders are oftentimes locked up for minimal sentences. We see these opposing views that surface in politics in the interactions between the officers and the prosecutors in The Wire who vigorously fight to link drug traffickers to the larger, more violent game, where they can be put away for life rather than a minimum sentence for a drug offense.
xvi FOREWORD
Heroin users are one of the most docile population groups. The violence is related by and large to the gangsterism that is a direct result of the
illegality, not to the usage. Yes, there
are people who go on a coke binge and end up shooting the mailman. But they're already violent. And I'm not suggesting there are good drugs. They are a disaster for people. But this notion that we are locking them up for drugs ... first of all you can't hold
Before my comment, I would recommend that everyone take a look at incarceration rates in the U.S., which are completely out of control:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
I think Simon makes two good points about the problem with locking people up entirely for using drugs. First, Simon points out that there is not room in the prisons for these people. It took me around 30 seconds to find an article backing this up (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-24/news/29993896_1_california-lockups-prison-justice-kennedy), which shows that prisoners have actually been released due to overcrowding in prisons. On a pragmatic level, we simply cannot lock up people at the rate we have been doing so.
Simon’s second problem with locking up people for drug offenses is that most of them would not engage in criminal behavior otherwise. While some drug users MAY be violent or MAY commit crimes to fund their drug habits, there are also many drug users who commit no crime other than using the drug itself. If we think it is ok to arrest drug users because of the risk of them committing other crimes, then I think it would be equally acceptable to arrest people who post suspicious things on message boards or who have recently watched a lot of disturbing movies on Netflix. The point being that no one should be arrested for actions that indicate a potential for violent behavior, but only for the behavior itself.
I think a big part of the issue is that people do associate drugs and crime together. I don’t think The Wire does much to dispel this belief. Wherever corners are concerned, violence eventually occurs. While drug users (like Bubbles) may not be directly involved in such violence, they are encouraging its existence by purchasing in the first place.
This strong association that people make between drugs and violent behaviors has now been written into law. There are now incredibly harsh drug penalties in the United States. Mandatory minimums are an example of an unreasonable policy that target drug offenders precisely BECAUSE some people think that they are likely to engage in criminal behavior. I suspect that the mentality is, in keeping these individuals off the streets, others left there are better off.
I agree that drug users are being arrested and imprisoned for the potential to commit violent behavior. The problem is that now this suspicion that drug users will engage in criminal behavior has been written into law. Not only is drug use criminal, but it is dealt with harshly by the federal penal system. And removing this association between drugs and violence from the legal statutes of our country will be very difficult.
Although, I do not completely agree with Anthony’s statement “drug users may not be directly involved in such violence, but are encouraging its existence.” I find that that correlation is not consistent enough to cement its legitimacy. I do not believe that drug abusers and addicts are violent offenders. Simon illustrates this through the design of Bubbles, who is not a violent person, but a bottom feeder—feeding off the money given to him by the BPD. Although the majority of addicts are not violent, I do believe that there is potential for them to BECOME violent, but then again, don’t all people have the potential to become violent?
Bert mentioned earlier that some drug users may commit violent crimes and others may not. This is a perfectly reasonable statement. However, we have to consider that nearly all of the drug addicts depicted in The Wire are severely dysfunctional people. Take Bubbles for example. He may not be violent, but he is always stealing, he is incredibly unhealthy, and he lives a undeniably terrible lifestyle.
One of the roles of government (I guess this is an opinion) is to protect its citizens from harm. This type of harm doesn’t necessarily need to be related to violent crime. Drugs, monetary Fraud, and illegal immigration all result in legal sanctions, but may not necessarily cause direct harm to anyone other than the criminal. In this sense drugs are illegal because they represent a threat to the user’s and often other’s lives. This may not always be the case, as Bert said, but we need to have some kind of consistency in upholding the law.
The data Bert posted exemplifies the point Simon makes that the incarceration system cannot hold every drug user. The incarceration rates in this country are already extremely high and I feel that the only way to combat drug use, police force corruption, and the drug trade is to make more effort to consider possibilities of legalization for some drugs. I do not agree with Bert in that he said people should not be held for the risk of committing other crimes. Being intoxicated in public is illegal and one may be potentially arrested and jailed overnight. That individual will be held against his will because he poses threats to himself and others. Drug users present similar threats as they are not in a clear state of mind. And the use of the drug is illegal, which is already punishable by law. If drugs, such as marijuana, are legalized, the country can tax it as a luxury good and can more easily control the flow of the good in and out of the country. It would decrease policie force corruption and boost the economy.
them for drugs, because there's no room for them. If you lock up ten drug
users, you'll get seven genuinely nonviolent people. Maybe two and a half people who can make a car radio disappear in a heartbeat and maybe half
a soul who'll take a gun to sornebody's head.
When somebody finds a way out, or someone takes pity on someone and
gives them a job, that person is held up as "See you can get out, look at this guy who got out:' But the validation of anybody as a human being allows you to be inhuman to everybody else. It's the moral equivalent to saying, "Some of my best friends are black:' Or "There's a black family down the street and my kids play with their kids:' We're past race-well, not everyone-but not past class. Class is huge. It's not that they're born black in the inner city; it's that they're being born poor. And white kids in Pigtown, they're as fundamentally extraneous and irrelevant as the black kids.
I think this paragraph is particularly interesting as David Simon almost predicts the cultural and societal landscape of our future, while addressing fallacies in arguments often made that discount the problems with the socioeconomic and racial sphere that we live in. Saying “see you can get out, look at this guy who did” or “some of my best friends are black” is almost like juking the stats. It is using one example to misrepresent a larger problem at hand, acting as a bandaid to prove that everything is functioning… that because one innercity black kid left the streets for college means that all of them can do it- without addressing the socioeconomic, subcultural, historic issues at play that are masked by the stats (or in this case, words of justification). As Simon alludes to, the pity behind someone unlikely getting a job may be more important than the fact that the person has a job at all, but this is not what is talked about in conversations like the one cited in this paragraph. Instead of focusing on the fact that one kid was able to get out, could it be more important to look at why/how the kid got out, and if there are problems or value with the method? Finally, I think David Simon’s claim that race is no longer the issue but instead is socioeconomic class and that this is now what determines the projection of one’s life is fundamental in looking at the inequity in our society and how problems will be perpetuated going forward. I think that as race was the “issue” of decades past, socioeconomic inequality has become our burden and is is the main factor in shaping the future of societies and individuals everyday.
I thought your comment about needing to look at the “why” an individual was able to “get out,” rather than solely focusing on the fact that they got out, is an excellent observation. Namond was able to get out as a result of financial support and Bunny Colvin taking interest in the young man; the same could not be said for Dookie, Michael or Randy, who seem to exemplify the more traditional route for black youth born into inner-city poverty without the resources to escape. Even when Prez takes an interest in Dookie, he is unable to escape because he lacks the environment to succeed. The fact that Namond got out actually disadvantages other black inner-city youths because it creates the illusion of progress and allows for the “juked stats” to pass and for no further assistance to be offered to students who are unable to escape. The issue with the juked stats is that politicians, other citizens, want to believe that there is progress, and if the problem does not directly touch your life you’d prefer it be good rather than troubling. Until there is structural change to how we present urban education and societal/economic advancement the problems will fly under the radar, unaddressed and unsolved.
This is about class. In 1980 we started believing that if it makes money it's good. If it doesn't make money, why is government doing it? And that is a perfectly good way to maximize short-term profit. But it's not a good
way to build a just society.
David Simon’s response brings up very interesting systemic issues that I wish The Wire would have touched on. Locking up non-violent drug users just over saturates the jail capacity and David Simon highlights the importance of these effects very well. Why couldn’t The Wire incorporate these realities into the plot as well? David Simon seems very knowledgeable about these larger issues so, as a journalist, why did he omit this from his reporting? The Wire is purely journalistic but how would the show be affected if it also highlighted the larger national issue caused by the police activity it describes?
Although sending non-violent drug users to jail has a lasting impact on our penal institutions, I don’t believe the issue is more important than the violent drug gangs that operate in the inner-cities. I agree with Andrea that the capacity problem is one that deserves attention, but I am not sure if it is as pressing and/or interesting to the public. The violent drug trade is an issue that is very observable and has a noticeable impact on the greater community. The over-capacity issue is mostly out of sight and hence not as important.
PM: Why did you cast Kurt Schmoke as the public health commissioner on The Wire?
DS: It was honoring Schmoke as a prophet. We were doing Hamsterdam and focusing on the idea of harm reduction. Schmoke's character was arguing that if we're gonna do this, let's put the health department into that area and do a needle exchange. Do outreach, so if people want to come
off corners for treatment we can help them. It was the argument for harm reduction. I guess that was Beilenson's great ambition: to rationalize the reality, to make it coherent with what was possible and what was not.
PM: Among all the lines you wrote for The Wire, which is your favorite?
DS: My favorite line was something in Season 5 that, when I saw how good the director had set up a shot, I wrote it right on the set. The camera was panning these people who had been arrested. And they're all waiting on the bench to be processed. The camera is following Wendell Pierce, who plays Detective Bunk Moreland. And you see Squeak, this woman harridan. She was the one who was driving around to buy the cell phones with her boyfriend Bernard. And you see her on camera saying to Bernard, "You are the dumbest rnotherfucker" Originally that was the only scripted line. But on the day of shooting, I said once the camera is off Bernard, I want to hear him say, "I can't wait to go to jail." When we were editing it, I just laughed out loud. And then we brought Squeak back in and we had her say, "You did not just say what I thought you did:'
In terms of a dramatic line that speaks to the whole theme: in Season 2 there's a scene where Frank Sobatka is talking to the lobbyist he bribed to get a measure passed in the state legislature. This is when Sobatka's learning that his ambitions are not going to get to the legislature. He says, "We used to make shit in this country. We use to build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket:'
This quote from Frank Sobatka sparks many interesting questions about bribery – and its implications – elsewhere within The Wire. How important of a role do you think bribery plays in the overall decline of the institutions depicted by Simon? What greater message, if any, do you think Simon wanted to communicate about bribery. Like the state legislator mentioned who spoke with Sobatka, the character of Clay Davis is also heavily involved with bribery. In bleeding both Stringer Bell and Carcetti, Davis seeks to enhance his political clout. However, in the case of Nerese Campbell refusing to help Davis with his indictment, Simon depicts bribery as having its limitations. Thoughts on bribery and its implications in The Wire?
I view bribery in the world of The Wire as another aspect of corruption in the political world and dishonesty in the drug world; in other words, an accepted component of “The Game” through which one might assert power and use their dominate position to their tactical advantage. Davis, for instance, in toying with String and bleeding his wallet, uses his cultural capital and superior “rank” in society to his benefit, fully aware that despite Stringer’s violent background, he is safe so long as he can continue to tempt Stringer down a path of future promise. I think bribery is included in The Wire because it effectively demonstrates the way in which incentives drive the world, and are not necessarily achieved by playing by the rules. While it certainly might have its limitations, it is a reality we must deal with so long as the world continues to turn.
When we wrote that, the WorldCom scandal had just happened. I was writing a sort of generalist feeling about the unease with the economy. We wrote that scene two years before the collapse of the economy. Looking at what the mortgage bubble was and what Wall Street did to the world economy, that line makes us sound smarter than we are.
THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
WALLACE'S WORLD
McKEAN AVENUE IS ONE OF BALTIMORE'S shorter streets, only four blocks long. It is sandwiched between two busy thoroughfares, a block east of North Monroe Street and just one block west of North Fulton Avenue. For decades in the early 1900s, Fulton was the westernmost border of a legally sanctioned zone of segregation-the only area in the city where blacks were allowed to live.
I thought this bit of history was particularly pertinent to our study of the Wire. One aspect of the Wire doesn’t examine closely is the history of the city—how it has become the way it is. This background knowledge can be especially useful in contextualizing the development of neighborhoods and institutions within the city. Had there not been a legal mandate for this segregated area do you think the geographical racial divisions in Baltimore would still be as stark as they are today? What other factors contribute to this?
Though Baltimore's segregation laws were overturned long ago, an un-
official discrimination continued well into the twentieth century. By the 1930s, blacks represented one-fifth of the city's population, but they were confined to 2 percent of the city's area. After World War II, thousands of blacks migrated north from southern states and settled in the city to look for work. Black neighborhoods, already overcrowded, began a slow expansion in all directions as more and more families, mostly white, moved to the suburbs. Despite these changes, the heart of those old zones of segregation became the place where federal money built high-rise towers and low-rise, low-income housing projects. By the end of the last century, the only things that really thrived in those neighborhoods were poverty and
drug addiction.
3
It may give you some sense of the saturation level of drug dealing in Baltimore to know that, in the first years of the new millennium, a drug gang led by a fourteen-year-old boy named Corey did not even control all four blocks of McKean Avenue. Yet the gang proudly laid claim to its small piece of turf with a name of almost innocent bravado: the Top of McKean Avenue Boys.
Those were the days when drug runners communicated with each other by pager, a system that soon evolved to using cell phones. Once the police proved capable of wiretapping even those, gangs moved to disposable cell phones, or "burners;' which are much more difficult to trace. Corey, though, carried his pager proudly, and, caught up in running his gang, he skipped school 90 percent of the time. He lived in a dilapidated row house with his younger half-brother and his maternal grandmother. In the chill of November, the electricity had been turned off because they couldn't pay the bill. A space heater provided the only warmth, run with an extension cord that snaked out the front door of Corey's row house to an outlet in the equally seedy house next door.
Hopelessly ensnared in the often violent drug culture that pervaded Baltimore's inner city, Corey had a rap sheet that contained more than a dozen arrests. Corey's mother was long dead of AIDS, and his father was in prison in South Carolina on a drug charge. The grandmother he lived with was a heavy using, long-term heroin addict. As Corey's legal guardian, she was the beneficiary of a monthly social services check to cover the boys' needs. Most of that check went to support grandma's heroin habit.
My path first crossed with Corey's in 2002, my tenth year as Baltimore's commissioner of health. It was also the year that an HBO- TV series called The Wire began filming and showing its brutally realistic drama about Baltimore's drug culture. Not being an HBO subscriber, I knew the show only by the furor it caused in city hall, where its depiction of Baltimore's drug problem was viewed as a political negative.
The issue subtly hinted at in this sentence is one that is examined thoroughly throughout The Wire, although in particular the third season onward. The issue is that when a problem is so pernicious, so obviously in need of a solution, it is not the obligation to “right a wrong” or make society better that influences if the problem will be addressed; it is the effect a solution might have on the political capital of those who have the power to make change. So many times in the show do problems have obvious “ethical” solutions which are ignored so that characters can retain their position (or even just have a favor from someone higher up the chain). How can we expect to have real, positive change when those in power are focused almost solely on political capital?
I finally got around to watching the DVDs of The Wire a year after the show ceased production. I realized then that it was a perfect crystallization of all of the public health and social problems I had faced in real-life Baltimore during my thirteen years as health commissioner.
For instance, in the fall of 2002 the city's statistics for Corey's age group were alarming. The police had investigated thirty-two murders of
4 TAPPING INTO THE WIRE
It may give you some sense of the saturation level of drug dealing in Baltimore to know that, in the first years of the new millennium, a drug gang led by a fourteen-year-old boy named Corey did not even control all four blocks of McKean Avenue. Yet the gang proudly laid claim to its small piece of turf with a name of almost innocent bravado: the Top of McKean Avenue Boys.
Those were the days when drug runners communicated with each other by pager, a system that soon evolved to using cell phones. Once the police proved capable of wiretapping even those, gangs moved to disposable cell phones, or "burners;' which are much more difficult to trace. Corey, though, carried his pager proudly, and, caught up in running his gang, he skipped school 90 percent of the time. He lived in a dilapidated row house with his younger half-brother and his maternal grandmother. In the chill of November, the electricity had been turned off because they couldn't pay the bill. A space heater provided the only warmth, run with an extension cord that snaked out the front door of Corey's row house to an outlet in the equally seedy house next door.
I believe this is an interesting paragraph because it covers many different themes we have discussed in class thus far.
The first theme that is addressed is the idea that The Wire is very realistic in its portrayal of crime in Baltimore. Even the smallest details are taken into account. When the paragraph mentions the transition of communication from pagers to cell phones to burners, I realized that we witness this transition on screen without even really paying attention to it. This shows how attentive the show actual is to the crime environment.
Another theme that is addressed is the idea of respect, which we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Corey chooses to continue carrying his pager even though they are no longer safe to use because they can be tracked easily. He uses this action to gain the respect of his crew and show that he is not afraid of anyone, even the police.
Finally, the paragraph addresses the conflict between the streets and the classroom. Corey skips school the majority of the time. This shows that it is impossible to be truly successful in both the “street” world and the classroom. Children start getting accumulated to the streets at a very young age, and as we see in the show, there is generally a point of no return. Once they fully accept their street status, students can rarely be salvaged.
Hopelessly ensnared in the often violent drug culture that pervaded Baltimore's inner city, Corey had a rap sheet that contained more than a dozen arrests. Corey's mother was long dead of AIDS, and his father was in prison in South Carolina on a drug charge. The grandmother he lived with was a heavy using, long-term heroin addict. As Corey's legal guardian, she was the beneficiary of a monthly social services check to cover the boys' needs. Most of that check went to support grandma's heroin habit.
My path first crossed with Corey's in 2002, my tenth year as Baltimore's commissioner of health. It was also the year that an HBO- TV series called The Wire began filming and showing its brutally realistic drama about Baltimore's drug culture. Not being an HBO subscriber, I knew the show only by the furor it caused in city hall, where its depiction of Baltimore's drug problem was viewed as a political negative.
I finally got around to watching the DVDs of The Wire a year after the show ceased production. I realized then that it was a perfect crystallization of all of the public health and social problems I had faced in real-life Baltimore during my thirteen years as health commissioner.
For instance, in the fall of 2002 the city's statistics for Corey's age group were alarming. The police had investigated thirty-two murders of
4 TAPPING INTO THE WIRE
juveniles, earning Baltimore the unenviable reputation as the city with the highest juvenile homicide rate in the country. Looking for ways to intervene, the Baltimore City Health Department reviewed everyone of those homicide reports. \XThat we found, while disturbing, was almost predictable. Of those thirty-two murders, all were committed with a gun. Among the victims, twenty-eight were boys and four were girls. All of the girls had been innocent bystanders, hit by errant bullets. All of the boys had multiple arrests for drug distribu-
Can’t believe I’m about to write about this considering it’s usually associated with trying (but failing!) to ruin sports for me.
Is the drug trade one of the most conservative industries in America? Think about it- everybody pauses on Sundays in observance of the Lord’s Day. That is incredibly old school. But more importantly, it’s a super boy’s club. We don’t assess how few women are involved; we scoff at the idea of them getting involved whatsoever. In a very odd way, the drug trade actually follows really traditional values to an impressive degree. I mean, even Augusta National just let in their first female members…
tion and handgun violations. All of them had been shot at close range with largebore weapons that imprinted the body with burn marks from the muzzle flash. Clearly, these murders were hits ordered by drug gang leaders.
In response, we started a program whose goal, I thought, was modest. As an urgent matter of public health, we set out to find the next thirty-two juvenile
homicide victims in Baltimore-before
they became victims. I would soon learn just how monumentally ambitious that idea was. Later, when I began watching The Wire, I realized that its producers, directors, and writers already knew that. And although those people had never met Corey, many of the characters portrayed on The Wire were very young teens, almost duplicate fictional versions of kids
exactly like him.
UTTER THE WORDS "PUBLIC HEALTH" to almost anyone and watch their eyes glaze over. That's not the reaction you get when you talk about The Wire, which holds a viewer's attention as if at gunpoint. But this was not just a crime drama. In addition to portraying violence and drug dealing, it also concentrated on drug addiction and poverty with the kind of depth and realism that leaves stippling marks on the soul.
The Wire lays out social and environmental problems like an oil spill. \Vhat you see on the surface is the sheen from the underlying problems gushing upward and contaminating every aspect of civic life. In episode after brilliantly staged episode one sees instances of disintegrating families, unchecked teen pregnancy, single-parent child rearing, homeless heroin addicts spreading AIDS through dirty needles, concentrated poverty, endless violence, the failure of schools, and the inability of the police to stop the drug trafficking.
Referring to social and environmental problems in The Wire as an oil spill is quite an appropriate depiction of the issues present within the show. Through simply the structure of The Wire, we see, thanks to Simon, how he builds each season upon the next by looking at the whole picture of what he wants to show, creating the timeline into one he wants, and disregarding what the audience or a “typical” TV show might do. This is evident, the focus on building the show in the proper way, in his talk about how the 2nd season must revolve around the port – “underlying all of that [painting the city] was reforming the underclass, which effectively is the drug way… needed to be the second season”. Because of Simon’s attention to the foundation of what the show needed in order to present the narrative he desired, the audience is able to see the “oil spill” idea of the problems come to life. We see this because, through being presented to the higher ups in the police department (season 2), for example, we are able to more critically analyze their actions and see that, ultimately, many of the actions being demanded won’t really fix the underlying problems. Those in charge would rather skim a little off the top of the spill and make things look a bit more presentable then dive deeper down and try and fix the problem from the bottom – which is a much more daunting task – and the result is not much change.
If nothing else, The Wire is a microcosm of all the consequences of our country's failed War on Drugs: deep poverty and hopelessness and very little access to good jobs or a good education. When people don't have those things, they turn to drugs-either as users or dealers-and chaos follows. By the time I had seen the last episode, I knew The Wire was a perfect tool for changing perceptions and misconceptions about the deadly connections between drugs, crime, and poverty-as well as the role of public health in addressing them.
I think the statement, “…The Wire is a microcosm for all the consequences of our country’s failed War on Drugs: deep poverty and hopelessness and very little access to good jobs or good education” is too simplified. Of course these are significant themes of The Wire, but for me the bigger question is why there is deep poverty, very little access to good jobs and good education. Therefore, the real achievement of The Wire is its revealing focus on the corruption of institutions (eg. the school system, politics) that perpetuate these circumstances.
I agree. I think that we have all concluded that one of The Wire’s greatest strengths is its analysis of systems and institutions in perpetuating circumstances such as poverty, access to good jobs, and education that are examined throughout the show. Like so many others I’m sure, after finishing the series I feel as though I have a deeper understanding of the things that are wrong with a city and its systems and institutions and just general outrage at our how our society can be doing this- and start to feel passionate about the need for change. However, in its deep critique, does The Wire provide solutions or suggestions? Is having a an understanding and awareness of the problems in society an end within itself? If instead it is the means, what does The Wire- or others who passionately believe in the ideas/critiques put forth by The Wire- suggest is an end?
I agree with Kiley’s comment that failed War on Drugs explains the hopelessness and deep poverty of the nation. The Wire examines many facets that all help to explain the source of poverty in inner city Baltimore. As well I agree with Jacqueline’s questions that the Wire explains all the institutional failures however as a viewer a felt just left it there. There was no suggestions on how to battle the problems, only the constant theme of sameness. It my opinion I found this reoccurring message very dismal and off-putting. If there is no way to solve these issues why does the Wire continue to hone on these points? I believe that although Simon does not want to be the fairy tale ending show writer, he must give a little and portray some sort of light at the end of the tunnel for viewers to have some faith in humanity and institutions.
I agree. I don’t even think it has to be a light at the end of the tunnel like you said, but at least some avenue for reform. Earlier in the interview, he says season three is important to show what that stage looks like, but instead we see self-interested political figures who don’t really care about changing it. I think The Wire would be more powerful if there was some suggestion of what can be done, if anything, to stop issues like the war on drugs and poor public education. Are these things just unsolvable? I think that is the conclusion that someone would draw if their only exposure to these issues was The Wire.
The role taken by The Wire was not to solve the problems that plague Baltimore, and large cities more generally. Rather it was to highlight the problems. This being said, I think The Wire would have been too preachy if it had made an attempt to solve the problems. I think the power of The Wire lies in the fact that we are now informed and talking about these problems and attempting to rationalize them and possible solutions.
I agree with you that the role of The Wire is to highlight the problems. As we have mentioned in class on several occasions, the one reason why The Wire stands out from any other cop/drama show is because it focuses on the structures that negatively affect people’s outcomes and doesn’t solely blame the victim. I think The Wire’s approach to poverty, drugs, education, politics, and the media already is monumental in TV drama. With offering up solutions or giving viewers some hope in humanity, I think it would actually cause The Wire to lose some of its authenticity towards these issues. These problems really exist in some areas in America and solutions really do not seem or are not tangible.
Vicky, I agree with you comments that The Wire does in fact examine many facets that do help explain the source of poverty in inner city Baltimore. The Wire does more to explain the institutional corruption that leads to poverty, and I would agree with Kiley that it is too simplified to say that this failed War on Drugs can explain the homelessness and poverty we have seen throughout the show. However, to answer your question Vicky, I think the reason Simon continues to hone in on these points is to stress the importance of the corruption he sees plaguing our society. Perhaps the very point of The Wire was to show no light at the end of the tunnel and to leave viewers feeling like you felt and how I’m sure many other viewers have felt. Simon may think that by leaving us with the feeling of little faith in humanity and with the constant reoccurring message of institutional corruption, that he may be able to raise awareness and hope for change in the future.
I disagree with some of what has been said in this thread about The Wire not providing any solutions. In fact I think it implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) suggests potential changes. For the War on Drugs, an obvious solution is to decriminalize drugs and treat addicts as patients rather than criminals. Schools (and police departments) should not rely on statistics as a measure of progress and should take into account the context of situations rather than treating each student (or criminal) with the same ineffective approach.
True, The Wire does not lay out exactly how these problems will be solved, nor claim to have all the answers. However a TV show alone cannot change the fact that self-interested narcissists (and sometimes sociopaths) are the ones who have the real power to make change, nor the myriad other problems inherent in the institutions it portrays. But by its very examination I think The Wire suggests logical and sound ways that some of these problems can be solved.
I think the idea that people turn to drugs only when there isn’t access to education or jobs is too simple. I think Cutty is a good example of how someone with other opportunities (albeit difficult ones) can still be seduced by what the drug trade has to offer. Cutty left prison determined to play it straight but eventually made it back to the game. I think one of the most telling scenes of this is when Cutty goes to a party where he is surrounded by people drinking, smoking, and hooking up. It is evidence that there are serious social benefits to being in the game that the outside world can’t offer as easily. Eventually, Cutty decided the game is no longer for him, but that scene in particular demonstrates how difficult it can be to turn away from.
I agree with your idea that this is a bit oversimplified. Cutty was one of my favorite characters because he deviated from the norm. He is one of the very few characters that you see break free from the game and to me, that was a breath of fresh air. However, from observing the middle school boys in Season 4, I came to understand that they are trapped by their institutions and are stuck in the game even though they don’t want to resort to the street. Michael must become involved with the wrong people to earn money to care for his brother. Duquan’s family gets evicted far too often and he tries to get a job at a fast food restaurant and a foot locker that does not hire him because he is under qualified and is devastated to resort to the streets. And Randy will be constantly harassed for being a snitch and talking to the police just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Do you think The Wire is “a perfect tool for changing perceptions and misconceptions” about urban America, the drug culture, poverty, etc? I think it can be used as a tool to show how social structures can produce an environment that keeps poor, urban men and women suppressed. However, do you think the typical average HBO viewer watches The Wire and intentionally reflects on the realities and oppressive forces that exist in places like Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit? Or do you think The Wire can be used as a “tool for changing perceptions and misconceptions” only when studied in a academic setting?
I believe that The Wire can be used as a “tool for changing perceptions and misconceptions” when studied in an academic setting and viewers reflect on the realities of the cities. When watching the show, you get so caught up in it that you start to think these are the types of things happening all the time. It is only when you take a step back and recap what actually happened do you start to see the bigger picture. I did not start to see the true value of the show until we brought it up in discussion. As much as people want to think that the cities of Baltimore and Chicago are really like that all over, many viewers have been to at least one “dangerous” city to realize that there are decent parts to it. Watching The Wire opens peoples eyes to what goes on but it takes a scholarly setting and discussion to find out why it happens and to help mold peoples perception.
I knew very little about public health when I got out of medical school in the early 1990s. If I'd been asked to define it, I probably would have said it had to do with controlling diseases, providing immunizations, and safeguarding the food and water supply. Some public health officials today refuse to let go of that restrictive view. Certainly in the pecking order within the medical world, all rights to glamour and prestige (not to mention the lion's share of funding) go to those who provide specialized care to individuals-not to those who deal with the collective health of diverse populations.
Although it's not surprising that someone would have a limited view of public health, I do think that in today's world it's a mistake. My own definition-and that of many others tuned to the inevitable changes, both good and bad, that were wrought by twenty-first-century progressincorporates social and environmental elements with traditional clinical health.
The guiding principles of public health are to promote health and to prevent unnecessary illness, injury, and death. If you look at it in terms of years of potential life lost, this construct begins to make sense. For instance, the average life expectancy in the United States in 2010 is just shy of seventy-eight years. But if you live in the inner city and die of AIDS at thirty-eight, that's forty years of potential life lost to you, your family, and society. That's not just theory. There are some parts of Baltimore's poverty-ridden inner city that statistically show a twenty-year lower life expectancy than in an upscale neighborhood such as Roland Park, just a
This paragraph recalls the moment in season four when the classroom of problem students is asked where they see themselves in ten years, and several say “dead,” an answer that was guessed even by the teacher. There is awareness among the young boys in these communities that the life expectancy is different than it is several zip codes away. The author presents these scenarios as facts—- “not just theory.” If these are facts, and it is a reality to The Wire’s diegesis, where is the theory? I’d theorize that life expectancy in these terms is another area overlooked by most media and policymakers, though it plagues many inner- city neighborhoods. It was also mentioned in this reading that The Wire gave a visual to many people who have no idea what public health is or can look like. Again, I think The Wire toes the line between fact and theory when it takes a real problem and dramatizes it to be digested for a public.
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couple of zip codes away. This new rationale of public health argues that attempting to modify social and environmental conditions to prevent early morbidity (the onset of significant illness or injury) and mortality (death) is as important to keeping people healthier and alive over the long run as promoting flu shots or treating wastewater to prevent typhoid.
AMERICA RISES AND FALLS with the health of its big cities. Although this country began as a predominantly agrarian society, it was only with the development of its large urban centers and their respective economic engines that the United States emerged as a major global economic and
political power.
Even with today's suburbanization of America, the success of our
large metropolitan areas hinges largely on the strength of the major cities they are centered on. Thus, metropolitan areas like those in northwest Washington state and eastern Massachusetts are doing well because of the generally sound economic and social health of Seattle and Boston, respectively. Other metropolitan areas, like those in south-central Michigan and northern New Jersey, have significant problems because of the economic and social challenges facing Detroit and Newark.
What many people do not realize is how much the economic and social strength of our major cities depends on the health of their citizens. But health can be broadly defined. Of course it includes the burden of chronic diseases and conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity that can limit the ability of individuals to be fully employed, pay taxes, and function effectively in society. Those conditions also trigger the need for more local social and clinical services for the individuals afflicted.
But while violence, drug addiction, homelessness, and like conditions are not always viewed broadly as public health issues, their existence directly affects everything from the way a city is perceived nationally (cities with high crime rates are constantly held up as examples of failing urban areas), to the quality of its public schools (high rates of substance-abusing parents or school violence lead to middle-class flight from the school system), to its economic vitality (businesses and families are less likely to relocate to a city with substantial public health problems).
The authors make a critical statistical and topical observation in this paragraph when they describe the correlation between poor public health standards (which are more broadly defined here than they are in statistical reporting) and economic and social progress as a result of a longer and more healthy life. It is absolutely essential that we realize that this issue starts, in many cases, before inner-city youths enter high school, and thus the target of our outreach needs to be younger populations in situations where they may be in a position to slip through the cracks of the system (out of school, to the corners, etc.). In The Wire, we see a strong public health outreach in Hamsterdam, but it is only temporary, and targets an older than ideal population. Finally, this paragraph shows that adults practicing poor health habits affect youths that should be in school, and thus these individuals in impressionable roles with children should be the second target. It is interesting that public health is so under-emphasized in The Wire with the exception of the Hamsterdam outreach; I’m not sure if this is the case in the real world or if this is a hyperbolic representation in our failing to look after the health of poor inner-city inhabitants.
How a city addresses these major public health issues can make a big difference in its chances to successfully compete in challenging times as
THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS 7
well as to improve the daily lives of its citizens. Since the early 1900s. it has been the role of local public health agencies to take on this challenge. In the first half of the twentieth century, significant strides were made in public health-including widespread immunization and vastly improved sanitation practices-that have led to a dramatic increase in the average American's life expectancy.
In 1900, a baby born in the United States could expect to live to the age of forty-seven; a baby born in 1950 could expect to live to sixty-eight. And, as noted earlier, by 2010, life expectancy for an American baby had increased to seventy-eight years. Although such a phenomenal jump is unlikely to be repeated over a similar period of time, there is much we can do to improve the health of our citizens by using the first half of the twenty-first century to address a host of new public health challenges.
That is why drug abuse and the despair and violence it spawns are as much a health issue as the flu. Drug addiction isa chronic disease. It's not unlike high blood pressure or diabetes: you have it for a lifetime, you have relapses, your behavior is impacted, and ongoing treatment is needed. But there's a lot more stigma attached to being a substance abuser than to being a diabetic. Oddly, if you look at it in terms of an individual's compliance with treatment measures-drug abusers versus diabetics or those with high blood pressure-the substance abusers do better.
Should drug addicts, who are not involved in gang activities, even be a responsibility of the police department? If we get rid of the stigma that comes with drug addiction, then perhaps a wrong institution is approaching the problem. Drug addiction should be treated as a public health issue more so than a criminal issue. When the police department starts locking up the drug addicts on the street for few days at a time, it only continues a perpetual cycle of overflowing jails and growing number of unsolved gang-related drug trade, because the police do not solve their addiction problems. In order to truly fix the problem from the roots, the drug addicts should be provided effective treatment, a responsibility that should be put on the public health office than a police unit. People can be genetically and environmentally predisposed to drug addiction as much any chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension. So I think it’s less of a question of whether we should be arresting drug addicts on the street, but rather how the resources that have been poured into the police department to solve the issue should be re-allocated to a different bureaucracy. This solution is a far better way to approach the drug addiction, since a treated drug addict can be another resource to rebuild the economy in the city.
Logically, of course, you are absolutely correct. The ethically sound decision, which would benefit society as a whole, would be to treat drug addicts as patients instead of locking them up.
However police departments and other institutions have a huge incentive to maintain the status quo. Drug arrests make for easy crime statistics, which are ultimately a huge factor when it comes time to determine a given department’s budget. Drug users as a whole are not particularly popular with the public, who see erroneously see them only as leeches on society who are solely responsible for their own situation. Thus it is politically expedient to fight a “War on Drugs” (although becoming less so as that phrase becomes increasingly stigmatized).
The benefactors of the War on Drugs are numerous. Private prisons, a booming but rarely discussed industry, directly profit from locking up prisoners. And it’s very easy to lock up a drug user. Large pharmaceutical companies would not be pleased when alternatives to “approved” medicines (such as marijuana or opiates) are legally available (not to say that heroin should be in place of prescriptions, but pharmaceutical companies don’t want this to even be an option).
It's hard to argue against the main theme of The Wire that drug abuse and the violence it engenders foster serious social consequences. If a city doesn't deal with them effectively, it won't be long before related problems join them-absenteeism from work, kids not being ready to learn, and kids dropping out of school and causing violence.
Like the paragraph states, it is very hard to argue with the main theme of The Wire. Drugs and violence can ruin anybody’s life and with children getting in “the game” their lives are effected before they even have a chance to do something with it. This paragraph makes it seem as if all the weight is placed on the shoulders of the city to make changes but is it all up to them? Does parenting not have anything to do with the outcome of their children? There surely has to be other ways to rid the violence and drug problems in the city.
I definitely agree with Marcus’ comment here. The paragraph clearly puts all of the responsibility of extinguishing drug and violence in Baltimore. I do agree that certain institutions within Baltimore such as the police, education and courts are integral components necessary to combat the pejorative trends. However, is it really fair to overlook the parent’s role in their children s’ lives. I believe that first and foremost the parents must do every thing within their power to ensure a good future for their kdis. The problem here is that many times families in Baltimore are single parent family in which the parent is away working in order to provide. There needs to be a way to fill the void for the children and save them from the streets.
Those who hold this broader view believe that practitioners and policy makers should cast a wide net to encompass the different aspects of pu blic health. For example, racial relations become relevant and determine people's outcomes in life-not just vocational outcomes but their health. Another example of the expanded view of public health is taking into account the disparity in access to health care between the poorest and everyone else. That is why public health must be viewed as writ large rather than follow the circumscribed, old-fashioned model of standard communicable disease control.
8 TAPPING INTO THE WIRE
ON THE SURFACE, CHARACTERS IN The Wire like Johnny and Bubs, Stringer and Avon, Bodie and Poot are fictions drawn from the imaginations of the program's creators. But the firsthand street experience of writers David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun police reporter, and Ed Burns, an ex-city school teacher and homicide detective, make it clear that the names of their characters are the only real fiction in the story.
When I watched the first season, I was particularly taken by the story of \1ifallace, one of the young teenage boys pushing heroin in the courtyard of the city's old low-income housing projects. He is portrayed as an innocent, a boy who grew into his teen years without parents, emerging into the only life he had ever known-the world of drugs. But his heart isn't in it, and he certainly isn't a good fit in this world. And that lands him in trouble.
There's a poignant scene in Episode 6, Season 1, in which Wallace wakes up one morning in a derelict row house surrounded by a passel of sleeping kids. They are much younger than he but, like him, they are kids without mothers or fathers. The scene opens with the camera following a very long electric cable that snakes across the backyards of other row houses and into Wallace's bedroom. This, we realize, is the only source of power in the house. As Wallace gets the younger kids ready for school, giving each a bag of chips and a juice box, police outside are examining the body of a man tortured to death by drug lords.
In a subsequent episode, after \xrallace hides out on Maryland's rural Eastern Shore, he returns to his old city haunts. He is asked by a friend why he came back. I had to laugh at hearing this question, as you might as well ask Wallace why he couldn't have simply said no to drugs, gotten a job, worked hard, and gone to Harvard to become a brain surgeon. Wallace says something to the effect that this is his home; he is a corner boy, not a country boy, and that's who he will always be.
We know he speaks the truth, for at that young age, bereft of education,
Wallace’s death has always been one of the most troubling plot event of The Wire to me – as far as specific scenes go – because I felt he was cut short. He was so young, took care of others, and had such a lost puppy attitude about him. Comparing Wallace to Corey’s end brings up the harsh reality about the permanence of the trajectory of life for a poor, inner-city black male. Even when Corey had all of these incredible resources at his disposal, one trip across to the West side cost him his life. While the discussion about the importance of public health to improve overall quality of life is essential to progress, it makes me pessimistic about long-term, effective change. McGuire mentions how they changed the lives of a hundred other children successfully – but what did they go on to do? Are the politicians and employees of the state only concerned with improving statistics? What is the point of diminishing marginal return about improving quality of life for human beings?
guidance, and opportunity, his future has been sealed irrevocably. At the end of the episode Wallace is murdered by two of his fellow crew members, both close friends who rationalize the killing by noting that Wallace had simply paid the price for screwing up.
During those episodes, 1 was struck by the eerie similarities between Wallace and the boy I've called Corey. Confidentiality laws prohibit me
from using his real name and so, like Simon and Burns, 1 have made one up. Bear in mind, however, that Corey is a real boy who lived in a surreal world that few who live outside of it can imagine. And that's what jolted me. Watching The Wire, I realized Corey's story could easily have fit in as one of the many subplots of the series.
THE PLAN WE LAUNCHED IN 2002 was called Operation Safe Kids and was modeled after a similar program in Boston. The idea wasn't just to get kids treatment or counseling or a helping hand. \Xfhat the thirty-two boys-whose names we did not yet know-needed went beyond normal interventions. Unless some big changes were made in their lives, each was a statistic waiting to be counted.
The plan called for an extraordinary level of cooperation across many city and state agencies. It required meaningful input from police, social services, the school system, the criminal justice system, and others. I think what ultimately made it successful was not simply getting such agencies to work together but getting high level leaders of each agency to sit together at a table once a week and, with no nonsense, work out a unique plan for each boy.
That we were able to convince those leaders to attend meetings every week had much to do with the ignominy of Baltimore's reputation regarding juvenile murder. But it also had a lot to do with helping each leader to see the value in this unusual plan. We could lower our homicide rate, yes, but literally we could save and rebuild the lives of severely troubled kids who were considered beyond help.
We started working with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) to establish criteria for exactly which teenage boys we were targeting. Then DJS, with the public defender's office and the Baltimore Police Department, identified juveniles who matched our criteria. Basically, we were seeking kids with multiple arrests for drug distribution and a history of handgun violence.
Corey was literally the first kid in the program. His case was presented to our group of agency leaders by a DJS probation officer and then turned over to one of our case managers.
We made it a point of recruiting our case managers from the very inner city communities we were targeting. We had learned, sometimes the hard
10 TAPPING INTO THE WIRE
UBLIC HEALTH CRISIS 11
way, that assuming people would trust counselors from outside their world was a formula for failure. At the same time, it was a disheartening fact of inner city life that many adults from those neighborhoods died prematurely in their fifties, often of cancer or diabetes. I remember particularly one of our case managers, a mother whose own child had been shot and killed on inner city streets. She was extremely effective as a case manager, but when she died suddenly at forty-nine, she looked sixty-five. Without doubt, there's a connection between shortened life expectancy, poverty, and difficult life circumstances.
This paragraph reminds me of the child being asked his plans for 10 years from now and responding that he might be dead. This shortened life expectancy is something I think is very real to individuals living in poverty but is not something others are likely to take into account when making judgments about why they aren’t doing more to educate themselves or find job opportunities. Poor living circumstances such as overcrowding, bad ventilation, and a lack of nutritious food combined with the incredibly high costs of proper medical care make the chances of living to see your 60 or 70th birthday very slim, and that isn’t even taking drugs or street violence into consideration. I think The Wire does a good job of showing this fact to audiences who have probably never considered it.
The first thing our leadership group did was review Corey's immediate needs. We got the electricity in his house turned on. We got him food through various emergency programs. Still, his set-up was far from ideal. He wasn't going to school, and his grandmother needed treatment for her drug problem.
Corey's case manager offered the grandmother entry into a residential
drug treatment program, but she refused. It turned out she was afraid of losing the money sent to her each month by social services for the guardianship of Corey. In the meantime we got Corey moved to a new home. He was taken in by his paternal, working-class grandparents. They were solid citizens and a courageous, remarkable couple. They lived in a wellkept row house in Fort Washington on the east side of Baltimore. They had never met Corey's maternal grandmother or his mother. But since Corey's father was their son who had fallen off the deep end, they were willing to take in not only Corey but the grandmother-if she got clean.
After two weeks of wrangling with Corey's grandmother, she agreed to enter a treatment program for heroin addiction. \Ve worked it out with social services that she could keep getting the guardianship money for the time being. The result was that Corey got away from the people, places, and things on the west side of town that got him into trouble.ln Baltimore, Charles Street separates the east and west sides of the city and is viewed with trepidation by drug gangs as the line of demarcation. The traditionan outgrowth of the parochial nature of the city-held that corner boys from one side of the city never set foot on the other side. Thus, moving Corey across Charles Street to the east side was almost like sending him to a new country for a fresh start.
Things went well for a time. Corey was willing to take part in the pro-
gram (his younger half-brother stayed on the west side with the boy's birth father). The city school system got Corey placed in a Fort Washington middle school. He was out of the drug trade. His grandmother eventually got clean and moved in with him and his other grandparents.
The city's police commissioner, Ed Norris (who later played a detective by the same name on The Wire), had given me a police pager so I could be notified of major crimes as they occurred. I didn't see any real use for it and mostly thought of it as a curious perk of the job. But one night three months later, in February 2003, I got a jolting page. A fourteen-year-old black male juvenile had been found shot to death on the west side. At first I breathed a sigh of relief because we didn't have many fourteen- year-olds in the program on that side of town. It didn't sound like any of our boys. Then I got a call from the woman who supervised our case managers. The dead boy was Corey.
We found out later that Corey had gone back to the west side to attend the birthday party for his half-brother. A thirteen-year-old boy who'd had a beef with Corey months back during his Top of McKean Avenue days saw him on the street and promptly shot him in the back.
Corey's death was tragic and discouraging. My immediate thought, beyond grief at the loss of another young life, was: here was a very expensive program with lots of high-level officials, from the police homicide division to the chief juvenile public defender, the chief of the juvenile division of the states attorney's office, the director for Region I of the Department of Juvenile Services, and more. Together we provided all of the services that a typical kid in trouble would not normally get to help solve his family problems. And yet with all of that, this tragedy still happened.
Several of us from the health department attended Corey's wake, held in a funeral home in a west side row house. As a city official, I'd attended quite a number of wakes and funerals, often witnessing spontaneous and understandable emotion. But not at this one.
When we arrived we found Corey's grandmother sitting on the front steps drinking out of a paper bag. With Corey dead, she had lost her principal source of income. Inside, the majority of the people in the crowded viewing room were teenage girls carrying babies. Most wore tee shirts that said "R.I.P. Corey" and listed his date of birth and death. It occurred to me that someone out there was making those tee shirts because there was a
12 TAPPING INTO THE WIRE
market for them and that this was not the first time such shirts had been ordered and worn. Nor would it be the last.
The dozens of teens making up the mourners chattered on cheerfully like it was a high school lunch hour-as if this wake was a common occurrence. Noone seemed to be paying any attention to Corey, who lay in an open casket looking like a sweet, sleeping fourteen-year-old kid. A couple of boys trying to look tough stood in a corner dressed in trench coats and saying nothing. I wouldn't have been surprised at all to find out
they were armed.
I remember projecting my own feelings of distress onto what I felt
was a surreal experience. When I was eight years old, my fourteen-yearold neighbor died of leukemia, and it was a huge blow to me. It actually changed my life and made me want to go into medicine. I wondered how I would react had I been fourteen and Corey was my friend who'd been shot and killed. I knew I'd be devastated. Yet here, none of the mourners seemed devastated or even upset. This is exactly the dead-end atmosphere so honestly, and heartbreakingly, portrayed in The Wire.
While we were there, a pastor spoke, and then the funeral director.
Finally a man who identified himself as Corey's father, freshly released from prison in South Carolina on a drug conviction, stood up. His first words were painful to hear. "I never met my son;' he said, "but if I had, this
is what I'd say to him .. :'
Sadly, this was a reality all too common. My thoughts went immedi-
ately to a study we had conducted sometime earlier. A striking number of the men in neighborhoods like Corey's who had fathered a child were at least ten to fifteen years older than the fourteen- to fifteen-year-old mothers-to-be. Plenty of them were twenty to thirty, even forty years older, men who obviously had taken advantage of these girls before disappearing from their lives. Another study showed that a stunning percentage of teenage mothers not only didn't know the fathers before becoming pregnant by them but never saw them after the birth, as was the case with Corey's
parents.
Corey's father ended his brief remarks by calling for those present to
spread the word: avenging Corey's death with more violence would solve nothing. "Please don't retaliate;' he said. But only a couple of days later, the thirteen-year-old boy arrested for Corey's murder and then surpris-
THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS 13
market for them and that this was not the first time such shirts had been ordered and worn. Nor would it be the last.
The dozens of teens making up the mourners chattered on cheerfully like it was a high school lunch hour-as if this wake was a common occurrence. No one seemed to be paying any attention to Corey, who lay in an open casket looking like a sweet, sleeping fourteen-year-old kid. A couple of boys trying to look tough stood in a corner dressed in trench coats and saying nothing. I wouldn't have been surprised at all to find out they were armed.
I remember projecting my own feelings of distress onto what I felt was a surreal experience. When I was eight years old, my fourteen-yearold neighbor died of leukemia, and it was a huge blow to me. It actually changed my life and made me want to go into medicine. I wondered how I would react had I been fourteen and Corey was my friend who'd been shot and killed. I knew I'd be devastated. Yet here, none of the mourners seemed devastated or even upset. This is exactly the dead-end atmosphere so honestly, and heartbreakingly, portrayed in The Wire.
While we were there, a pastor spoke, and then the funeral director.
Finally a man who identified himself as Corey's father, freshly released from prison in South Carolina on a drug conviction, stood up. His first words were painful to hear. "I never met my son;' he said, "but if I had, this is what I'd say to him .. "
Sadly, this was a reality all too common. My thoughts went immediately to a study we had conducted sometime earlier. A striking number of the men in neighborhoods like Corey's who had fathered a child were at least ten to fifteen years older than the fourteen- to fifteen-year-old mothers-to-be. Plenty of them were twenty to thirty, even forty years older, men who obviously had taken advantage of these girls before disappearing from their lives. Another study showed that a stunning percentage of teenage mothers not only didn't know the fathers before becoming pregnant by them but never saw them after the birth, as was the case with Corey's parents.
Corey's father ended his brief remarks by calling for those present to spread the word: avenging Corey's death with more violence would solve nothing. "Please don't retaliate;' he said. But only a couple of days later, the thirteen-year-old boy arrested for Corey's murder and then surpris-
THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS 13
ingly released on bail was shot dead. His killers were Corey's cousin and a second boy. Not long after that, both of Corey's avengers were shot and the boy with the cousin that day was killed.
At that point, four months into Operation Safe Kids, we had identified and intervened-mostly successfully-in the lives of many boys like Corey. We would eventually top one hundred success stories before I left the city health department in 2005. Corey's would be the only instance of a tragic return to violence, and the memory of it still hurts.
I THINI( AN INEVITABLE QUESTION one asks after viewing The Wire is, what would I have done? Had I grown up in that environment without parents, without knowing I'd have food every day, without the chance of a decent education, without knowing basic truths about the world around me (a Wire episode has corner boys marveling at the invention of Chicken McNuggets), without a guiding hand to point me in the right direction and advise me on right and wrong, with violence and fear being common occurrences, would I not seek out whatever support system was available that could provide for me? And if that support system was involved in the selling of drugs or killing those who stood in my way, and if I expected to be dead by twenty-five anyway (as so many corner boys casually predict of themselves), what realistic chance would I have of escaping that life?
I think that Beilenson and McGuire’s statement about inevitable questions that The Wire raises is very interesting. Those of us who were fortunate enough to live a life out of the streets rarely stop to contemplate how life would be on the other side. I live in a rural area in Baltimore County, only twenty-five minutes from the city. However, I have found that I rarely consider the lives of my inner-city peers. The Wire challenges viewers to question the opportunities and advantages that they have been given, and the show emphasizes the fact that social and institutional ills reproduce the disadvantages of the less fortunate. Beilenson and McGuire go on to argue that people throughout the Baltimore area should take an interest in the achievements of inner-city children. While this is a seemingly practical solution, how realistic is it? In the modern American society, would more well-to-do residents of suburban areas really be likely or willing to sacrifice their own comforts in order to help inner-city residents prosper?
Sadly, I think the answer to your question is no. Although The Wire does challenge viewers to think about those in less fortunate situations, I highly doubt that the feelings of empathy derived from watching the show amount to any sort of real action. Simon himself in this article admits that he didn’t take on this show with the hopes of creating significant social change. Humans are wired to care about themselves and those close to them. We simply aren’t wired to care too deeply about strangers. There are of course exceptions, but unless there are high-profile events that capture people’s fleeting and short-lived attention (ex. Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Sandy, etc), the average person is not going to sacrifice their time, money, or effort to help people they have never met.
What can produce meaningful change, though, is when policy makers like Jim Webb (mentioned in this article) watch The Wire, read an op-ed, or watch an investigative report and then act on their newfound knowledge/realization. I think The Wire does a great job in at least opening viewers’ eyes to life in the inner-city. It may not always result in practical, tangible changes, but it’s a good first step.
I agree with you because it is difficult for suburban and rural families to want to help the inner-city people. I don’t think it is because suburban people don’t want inner city people to suffer and struggle, it is more that, suburbanites were able to separate themselves from inner city problems, and if they get involved with helping inner city issues, they effectively place themselves right back into the world in which they are trying to avoid. They way in which suburbanites can help inner city people is through politics, and elections, because by voting for representatives, suburbanites can let those representatives attempt to make change. This makes helping inner city people and solving their problems a very convoluted process, and I believe this is why there are so many issues with getting reform taken care of.
I also think that city residents removed from the tribulations of inner-city life will not take any particular interest remedying those situations. While aid programs may arise here and there, there has not been any sort of mass movement to help, and I do not anticipate there will be. As McGuire states earlier, we’re not past class. People with different lifestyles do not see a connection with each other. In the case of those of higher classes, the lack of connection derides a mandate for their assistance to those struggling in lower classes. McGuire describes these groups as “fundamentally extraneous” to each other, at least on the surface. The Wire, however, shows us how different worlds intersect, especially though its portrayal of “the game” infiltrating various walks of life. Through narratives like this society can gain a better understanding of how all classes intersect.
The issue of generating larger community involvement I think can be brought back to the problem of responsibility diffusion. While residents of the suburbs are struggling with their – albeit less severe – problems of education, city amenities, and community concerns. I think there needs to be more focus on bringing to light exactly how these inner-city issues have a ripple effect on the entire county, city, state, etc. Everyone has “problems” – so it’s going to take a lot more than a quality television series to spur action on behalf of people who have set up mental boundaries between “their problems” and “our problems.” With the conceptualization of abundant resources for citizens to get help and the fact that there will always be people who are relatively better off than others makes it more difficult to convince suburbanites that they have a semblance of duty to help out.
Kristen, I think you hit the nail on the head when you used the word “practical.” Giving back locally to inner-city youth seems like such a practical and feasible solution. I’m sure there are an array of reasons and motivations for why a solution like this does not work in reality. Another theory I have is that the problem is just too large. Consider the “oil spill” analogy in this reading—- there are many problems going on here. Someone like Bunny Colvin is helping by adopting Namond, but that is just one kid. It simultaneously solves the problem, and doesn’t solve the problem at all. I think a lot of the problems public school teachers face are burning out when they see their classes as a room full of lost causes. However, it is the addition of those single “wins” that can help to turn these communities around over time.
There are many lessons to be learned from The Wire, and ever since viewing it I have sought to work those points home in the courses I teach at the Johns Hopkins University. It's not that The Wire presents solutions. The crime, poverty, and social chaos it depicts in Baltimore haven't gone away. In fact, many in Baltimore regard The Wire the way the city's mayor angrily responded during a cabinet meeting I attended in 2003. Martin O'Malley believed The Wire was a terrible program because, he said, as he was trying to make changes and improvements in the city, all that people anywhere knew about Baltimore was its drug problem.
Another take, however, is that because of its honesty and popularity The Wire has focused a bright light on serious problems-not just in Baltimore but any city with rampant poverty and drug-related crime. As long as that light is on (and fortunately The Wire continues to sell well in DVD long after its last episode was shown on HBO), an opportunity exists to use it to help change preconceived notions about poverty and drugs.
14 TAPPING INTO THE WIRE
People do get it that crime is related to drugs and that we should provide treatment to nonviolent addicts. At the same time a prevailing attitude seems to be this: "Not in my backyard; get these people away from us; and do something about the crime:' But no plan can expect much success
without, at the very least, a begrudging awareness that stuffing prisons full of low-level drug users or dealers, almost all of them nonviolent of-
fenders, has not worked.
A more realistic solution would be in everybody's best interest, but very few people have really thought about the benefits of a more practical approach. If you live in Baltimore's surrounding suburbs, then in order for the state to have the best economic engine it can have, you need to care that Baltimore City kids are
achieving. At rock bottom it makes a real financial difference to you, so it's in your self-interest to want good city schools.
A large percentage of suburban dwellers in the Baltimore area-both black and white-came originally from the city. Among them I believe there remains a significant number who regard people like Corey, his grandmother, his murderer, and others like them with the complaint, "We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, why can't they?" Yet many of these same people diminish the importance of the strong family support systems that provided them their bootstraps to begin with. Antagonism toward those who need help spends a lot of energy but doesn't address the real problems, tending instead to demonize people and polarize the discussion.
People like Corey and Wallace are ignored by the mainstream media and the general public. If they aren’t being ignored, they are often despised or judged negatively by outsiders. It’s easy to view Corey and Wallace as drug dealing, stupid, violent teenagers. What others don’t know is that drug dealing is all they’ve known and all they have to earn money. Others don’t know that the reason they’re failing out of school is because their parents are dead or addicted to drugs and they have 4 siblings to look after. Others don’t know that these young teens have been arrested for gun violence because failing to retaliate on orders means their own lives are in danger. Just because someone succeeds in pulling themselves up by their bootstraps doesn’t mean that it is equally as easy for people like Wallace and Core to do so as well. All odds are against them. I feel like the long-standing idea of “The American Dream” is true only up to a short extent. But many people still believe that it is relatively easy in America to move up the ranks out of poverty (compared to other nations) if you just try hard enough. To many, those who continue to live in poverty aren’t trying hard enough. The Wire attempts to give those living in inner-city poverty a voice. I’m curious to know if any of you have changed your views about people like Wallace and Corey after watching this show. Also, have you thought any differently about the idea of the American Dream?
Rose, this comment piqued my interest. At the start of the The Wire, I was thrown off by how differently the characters were portrayed. I was completely taken aback when Wallace was shown to be the primary caretaker, to the audience’s knowledge, of his many family members. I have never seen a show display the intricate inner workings of people like Wallace. I find it to be Simon’s way of showing the aspects of the poor and inner-city people’s lives, which all of mainstream middle and upper class America turn a blind eye too. Although ignorance is bliss, The Wire gives the inner-city a voice and a platform to show that they are not simply one-dimensional characters that mainstream media paint them to be. I have completely changed my view of people like Wallace and nearly cried when he begged for his life. I have been accustomed to believe that these people are no more than what’s on the surface but The Wire has been a determining factor in my changing beliefs.
I think we hear or read of the kids like Wallace or Corey out of context in the news. What I mean by ‘out of context’ is hearing about their death or crimes without much understanding of their culture that cultivates their inevitable future. I can’t even imagine telling kids like Wallace, who does not have parental guidance or even a steady source of life’s basic necessities, that if he works hard at school, he can go to college and become an integral part of the society. He doesn’t have the opportunity or the leisure to even dream of a future. At a young age, he is so preoccupied with just surviving day by day, he doesn’t know life outside of Baltimore. To expect the same standards as kids with a stable home from kids like Wallace now seem a bit absurd after getting a glimpse of their environment.
I HOPE THAT IN THIS BOOK The Wire can be a road map for exploring the real-life connections between inner city poverty and drug-related violence. With a firm grip on the hard truths one can then take part in the serious
dialogue that will lead to solutions.
Solutions, by the way, are not as simple as identifying what needs to
be done. In my lectures I speak of the four-legged stool formula for a sue-
F NFW PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS 15
cessful city. Such a city must have decent, affordable housing; available jobs with benefits that pay a livable wage; a more than adequate education system; and accessible health care and healthy food. The daunting task is negotiating the particular mechanics in politics and government for achieving each of those conditions. Even so, nothing will ever happen until misconceptions are replaced by understanding.
In a 2008 TV Guide interview, Michael Kenneth Williams, the actor who played the shotgun toting Omar Little, said, "I hope some kid in the 'hood will see The Wire and take a different turn. It isn't a white or black story. It isn't a Baltimore story. It's an American story. It's a social problem that's been going on in our country-though the country may not realize it:'
So even though this roadmap bears the name of Baltimore and will focus on these problems in terms of our successes and failures in Baltimore, I tend to view the larger picture in terms of Everycity. In other words, in terms of public health, the city behind The Wire is whatever city you're in or near right now as you read this.
General Document Comments 0
Simon’s comments on “The War on Drugs” saying “What it is, is a war on the underclass…” raises many provoking thoughts and questions. The War on Drugs has been advertised as a national problem, yet many times in the media, it seems the only individuals placed in a negative light regarding drugs are the underclass. The Wire demonstrates the complexities of the war on the underclass and how the war on drugs has become centered around disenfranchising the underclass rather than solving a critical issue.
I agree that The Wire does a good job in demonstrating the complexities of the war on the underclass. I think the best demonstration of this is the Barksdale organization in Season 1 and 2. For the most part, it was a war on the underclass in which the BPD preyed on the lower level, corner boys by doing rip and runs. However, when the BPD started to wiretap the leaders of the organization, they realized they were not dealing with the underclass. For example, after Stringer was killed, the BPD was shocked to search his apartment and discover the personal life of Stringer- all the books, etc. I think that the media more often then not chooses to focus on disenfranchising the underclass because that is what America expects- Many people do not envision a drug organization leader reading The Wealth of Nations and trying to better himself.
I feel like it has less to do with how the media portrays the situation and more to do with how the situation actually is. Drug addiction and the War on Drugs affects the underclass more because they tend to be the majority of users. You rarely see details about Stringer Bell-esque players simply because there aren’t nearly as many people like him. I can understand how the media plays a role in continuing the cycle by largely defining societal views on drugs and drug users, but in terms of simply reporting on events, it’s just a numbers game.
I think saying “the War on Drugs affects the underclass more because they tend to be the majority of users” is a very broad generalization. I believe the majority of individuals incarcerated for drug use are in the underclass, but not necessarily the majority of users are themselves in the underclass. I believe drugs are a universal issues that cross class lines. Drugs such as crack-cocaine may be more accessible to lower income individuals than drugs like straight cocaine, but both drugs are still in wide use. I think it’s important we do not generalize the underclass as the majority of drug users. Drugs cross all socioeconomic groups.
I would think that Stringer was an exception to the rule, rather than the rule, but nonetheless he was the target of the BPD while they had little comprehension of his personal life. I find it interesting that what is viewed as good police work in The Wire means targeting the people, not the drugs. The war on drugs is really not undertaken in The Wire, rather it is a war on the people with the drugs; rather than taking away these individuals source of income or power (and the cause of so much violence and wanton death) the police take away the individuals, assuming this will lead to progress. Even more interesting is the idea of following the money as good police work, relative to simply putting dope on the table, which is what the brass want to see. In the war on drugs, there are varying motives at different levels, but it all stems from the product being sold, which is targeted less than the people or the money as part of the so-called “war on drugs.”
I think The Wire HAS to focus on the need to target people and not target the drugs because – as evidenced in Season 2 – the supply can come from just about anywhere. While specific gangs might take some losses and deal with those individuals responsible for making the mistake, the current police work that shows “drugs on the table” is not making long-term changes. Acquiring the drugs does relatively nothing to make a significant impact, rather it is simply physical evidence to appease a public that the situation is being “handled.” The beauty of The Wire is that it demonstrates not only the importance of the moving beyond the street-level people, but how resilient the upper level police chiefs and even federal players are to pursuing men like Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale when those players don’t affect their area of interest or help boost their statistics.
It’s interesting that you say underclass but not uneducated- I say this because the systematized way that the Barksdale Empire works seems so complex that I know there is a level of knowledge and competence needed to understand the distribution in the drug trade. Like Kiley said, many people do not envision a drug organization leader trying to better himself, but just because most dealers are portrayed as less educated and very poor by other television series does not mean that they are all this way. Part of the reason I think the Barksdale Empire lasts as long as it does is because there are leaders like Stringer Bell who have an expansive knowledge of how to run dealing drugs as an organized and multi-tiered business.
This is a very interesting point you’re making. and I think I think that you are right. That many people never really think about how the drug empires in play today grew to the level of complexity that they have today much live the Barksdale empire, but what I would like to add to that is the question of where these heads of the drug empires, pretty much the board of directors and the CEOs of these drug enterprises. Where did they get their knowledge from? For Stringer Bell we can see that he goes to school, he is a smart guy, In a different city, doing something different Stringer probably could have been a very successful man. But the question is where did that knowledge come from? Stringer used his knowledge to organize gangsters the city but was he an exception? Was he the only one who looked past the street culture, the shooting and killing for the sake of a name or a beef that was left unresolved? Or are there more like him who look at the drug game as a business, a very profitable enterprise that if run like a business could yield great dividends so that even though they lack the legitimacy and social status of a legal company, they can make that up with sheer wealth, the universal language.
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