THE WIRE Finale, 2

Two great articles appeared during the week after THE WIRE finale. One was in American Spectator, the other in the Wall Street Journal. I've been trying to write this post since then and it just has not gelled for me in any sort of satisfactory fashion until this afternoon. The articles quoted below resonated with me because they highlighted the chameleon-like nature of THE WIRE and its ability to appeal to a broad range of viewers regardless of their ideological positions.

Conor Friedersdorf wrote in "The Wealth of Baltimore" in American Spectator on 12 March:

The Wire is a show that one can throw on after a politically mixed party, confident that Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians nursing nightcaps will all find scenes that seem to them to confirm their worldviews; art that expertly mirrors society reflects its disagreements too.

I argue that this pan-political appeal arises from the fact that the show's creators are old newspapermen from a time when papers -- and the media in general -- despite political allegiances, felt a much stronger obligation to tell the story straight.

Friedersdorf contiuned, that that the liberal press seemed to have misunderstood THE WIRE:

What's bizarre, as the show comes to a close, is the preponderance of commentators who agree that The Wire is a searing attack on capitalism, for that analysis -- echoed in Slate, the New Yorker and the Atlantic, among many other places -- is plainly wrong. The Wire is brutal in its critiques, as any viewer knows. Its most thorough dissections, however, concern the least capitalistic institutions in Baltimore.

Julia Vitullo-Martin wrote in "Urban Decay" in the 14 March WSJ that:

. . . conservatives may see in it a lesson that liberal viewers are unlikely to take to heart. Set, written and produced in Baltimore, "The Wire" aired 60 episodes, with each of its five seasons focused on a different subject -- drug trafficking, the port, local politics, public schools and the city's newspaper. From the series' opening sequences filmed in "The Towers" -- huge public housing projects whose courtyards serve as drug bazaars -- through its depiction of the continuing devastation of neighborhoods by violent crime and unemployment, the Baltimore of "The Wire" becomes the poster child for six decades of failed urban policy.

She quoted disheartening statistics about Baltimore and crime:

. . . Surpassed only by Detroit in CNN/Morgan Quinto's 2006 ranking of the country's most dangerous large cities . . . With 282 homicides last year and a population of about 641,000 . . . a homicide rate six times that of New York and three times that of Los Angeles . . . highest per-capita heroin consumption in the country . . . . public schools deteriorated, graduating less than half their students.

THE WIRE was a work a rare work of art that drew you in, regardless of your viewpoint or politics, compelled you to both watch something that was not pretty and to think about it. What you took away was directly connected to your personal politics/world view, but it started a dialogue amongst its aficionados about causes of the problems that afflict urban America and possible solutions.
It strikes me that season 5 seemed to be screaming the question: What if the modern press just told the story? Erstwhile City Editor, Gus Haynes wanted his writers at the fictionalized Sun to write their stories well, beautifully, tightly, interestingly, and, finally, truthfully. While I and others may not agree with the liberal take-away of the show, and the liberals with mine, at least we're talking about it because we were informed by beautiful, tight, truthful storytelling.

THE WIRE: The Finale

Sunday night marked the series finale of The Wire on HBO. It did not disappoint. They compressed a tremendous amount of action into 90 minutes and tightly, nicely and neatly tied up the story line that had been building all season, but that had really begun 5 seasons ago. There were times this year, I must admit, where I felt that the show had jumped the shark. The whole serial killer story line didn't ring entirely true nor did the fact that McNulty and Freamon could work the system as they did -- though after the plan was hatched and had matured over a couple of episodes it became more plausible.

Last night's episode tied it all together. It ended as I anticipated it had to -- a systematic effort of butt-covering, deal-making and political machinations. It played true and validated the entire season (the whole series, really). Much of what I read about prior to this season said it was all about the media, newspapers in particular. The media, and the Baltimore Sun in particular, played a much larger role in this season and it helped to round out the portrayal of the power-players in the modern urban environment.

Whether depicting street level dealing, working class woe or faltering schools THE WIRE was always about "The System." The way The System works is ugly, and THE WIRE shone a bright light right up its backside. The show never delivered the expected -- in terms of mass-media-entertainment-consumer expectations -- resolution because that would been neither real nor logical. The creators once said in an interview that the logic of the story must be played out; and, it was each week, and brutally so. Favorite characters got done -- both at the business end of a gun and by The System.

THE WIRE was a show with a POV -- it was angry, it pulled no punches and it didn't always tell you what you wanted to hear. Unlike most shows it didn't lionize one political party over another; it didn't offer bromides that everyone and everything will be OK if you believe in yourself; it did not get behind one solution over another. It was a show that was descriptive rather prescriptive. As show creator David Simon mentioned in a letter on HBO, dated 10 March, 2008:

We tried to be entertaining, but in no way did we want to be mistaken for entertainment. We tried to provoke, to critique and debate and rant a bit. We wanted an argument. We think a few good arguments are needed still, that there is much more to be said and it is entirely likely that there are better ideas than the ones we offered. But nothing happens unless the shit is stirred. That, for us, was job one.

The problems that grip Baltimore, as depicted in THE WIRE, are the problems that afflict many American cities. The problems appear intractable given the self-sustaining nature of The System and the human beings who comprise it. To truly clean up The System and make things right, would compel the players to give up much of what they have striven for -- corners, donations, stars on collars, literary prizes. Each of these things translate into power, and power is the name of the game within both the world defined by THE WIRE and ours.*

Dealers deal. Police police. Lawyers lawyer. Politicians politic. Media reports. Each feeds off of the others, and requires the others to survive. The System is a system because it perpetuates itself. There will always be someone to fill a void created by the departure of another -- whether mortal, or merely physical. That is why, in the coda, as the theme song played and McNulty gazed out on the Baltimore skyline, Daniels stood as a Public Defender, Pearlman sat in judge's robes, Michael became a stick-up boy, Dookie tightened the strap and loaded his spike, Slim Charles sat with The Greeks, and Bubs . . . Bubs sat at the table with his sister and her child to eat (the only happy ending in the series).**

The episodes always started with a quote and from what I can observe and recall the previous 59 quotes came from the episode itself. The finale's quote came from Baltimore's own H.L. Mencken:

"... the life of kings."

It seems that Mencken is a fitting a patron saint for this show that laid bare the structures of power, money, ambition and ultimately human weakness that shape and mold the modern, American, urban experience. THE WIRE told the story of a great American city, and the people who live in it honestly, openly and with great verve. The characters were human, fallible and venal but they were not all bad even when they were monstrous. They characters knew and played their role in The System, even when it required them to be their worst. Baltimore is any city, and the people who occupy The System live in every city, and the people who stand by and watch live in every city. Never before, and perhaps never again, will we, the TV-watching-public witness such an honest depiction of ourselves.

*See Peggy Noonan's column last week for a related view on power.

**The show synopsis on HBO.com contains a similar litany, I wrote this before I read that -- I was looking for the quote on the wall of the Sun offices that appears when Gus & Alma are speaking as Alma clears out for Carroll County. This may be over-think, but my academic background compels me to credit sources/mention similarities to the thought of others, even on my unread blog.

Omar Got Got

We're very big fans of The Wire on HBO. Without a doubt, it's the best show on television because it is what TV can be at its best: engaging, enraging, entertaining, disheartening, honest, raw and real. The arc of the story lines have been developing for five years, the characters growing, changing and getting more real each season.

There are only two episodes left in the series and last night, Omar (Little) -- the stick up king of West Baltimore, feared, revered and reviled by those in the game, a homosexual, a sociopath but a moralist who never turned his gun on someone not in the game -- one of the best, most charismatic and interesting characters in the show took one in the back of the head while buying a pack of Kools, soft-pack, in a Korean Grocery.

The scene was masterful: Omar hobbled into the store, on a desolate street. There was a sense of dread in the desolation. As Omar bought his smokes, the bell on the store's door rang and he looked at whoever just entered the store, didn't deem that person a threat and went back to his business. Just as my nerves were calming down (jangled by the bells)there was a bang, blood and gore spewed out of the top of Omar's head and onto the bullet proof glass at the checkout counter. The camera cut quickly through the space where Omar once stood to show a little corner boy standing behind Omar, looking terrified and confused. He reached down to touch Omar's body, pointed the gun at the proprietress, dropped the piece and bolted.

It was taughtly rendered television -- proving once again that there are no throw-away scenes and details in The Wire, and that your favorite character will buy it rapidly and violently if the logic of the story requires it. Just as the show started last night I told Mrs. Agricola that I had a feeling that Omar was going to get Marlo before the cops did (it's a 2+ season story line), and that all of their hard work was going to be for naught. I guess I was completely wrong.

Omar got got.
No one on the street even knew who got him.
The Baltimore Sun didn't even deem his murder newsworthy.
A county ME saved him from being mis-identified in the morgue.
The episode closed with the body bag being zipped over his face.
Life is tough in West Ballmer.

Some Great Writing/Reporting

Dan Henninger has a terrific column in Today's WSJ (I think that I start a lot of my posts with that phrase). He quotes, at length, the speech that LTG (Ret.) Ricardo Sanchez delivered last week to the Press Corps. The MSM quoted from this speech and trumpeted how courageous Sanchez was to criticize his former boss.

MSM accounts all quoted "incompetence," "nightmare . . . no end in sight . . . " What they neglected to report was that Sanchez savaged the Media for the first half of the speech. When I first heard that he was going after Bush I thought what's his axe? I learned quickly when reports mentioned that Sanchez was the general in charge of the theater when the over-hyped Abu Graib pictures broke. There was his axe, and I must admit that I largely ignored it -- it seemed one more negative, MSM-hyped-Bush-is-stupid-and-Iraq-is-a-failure-kerfuffle.

Then I cam across Michael Yon's dispatch . . . . he published LTG Sanchez's remarks in full. The full story, in context, emerged. LTG Sanchez is critical and rightly so -- he commanded men and women in combat whose lives were endangered by the (treasonous) reporting of the media and the (treasonous) machinations of the incompetents in our congress and the poor PR efforts of the office of the president. It is unsurprising that the media would not report on their own savaging, they have their own narrative to fill out and must help to ensure the defeat of this country -- never let the full story get in the way of that.

Ahmadinejad Review

One of my pet peeves with MSM is its lack of follow-up -- stories are published with a distinct POV and then after the event occurs nothing is ever written again to amend or review the original article in light of following events. While I'm certainly not a reporter, nor a news outlet, I'll follow-up Monday's post about Ahmadinejad 's visit to Columbia University and backtrack a bit on my commentary on Lee Bollinger. I have to hand it Bollinger, he showed some spine by berating Iran's lunatic president. I have no issue with rudeness on this front, and bad form etc. -- as some observers mentioned on Tuesday. That's picayune nonsense.

Bollinger created a tough spot for himself (showing poor judgment with the invitation in the first place). By coming out swinging he showed himself to not be a total intellectual-wimp. He didn't do the diplomatic thing and heap praise on his unworthy speaker. For that, I applaud him. One of the unintended consequences of the event was that Ahmadinejad showed himself to be completely disconnected from reality -- something that should wake up Americans about the nature of our enemies.

How can a supposed world leader stand on a stage, in front of thousands of people, and the world media, and say that his country doesn't have homosexuals? How can we take seriously someone who claims that the Holocaust requires more scientific study to ascertain the veracity of its occurrence? This man is obviously not in touch with rational thought and yet people in certain quarters want us to negotiate with him. What do we think will come of this negotiation? The Iranians will not deal with us in good faith, in fact their definition of good faith probably bears no resemblance to ours so therefore no negotiation is possible.

Bret Stephens had a great piece, Columbia's Conceit, in yesterday's WSJ that said our ideas may be better than those of our enemies, but that won't prevent us from having to defend ourselves from them as they try to kill us. Ahmadinejad's visit proved, as if we needed more proof, what a nutter he is. Based on his performance we need to be prepared to deal with him in a way that may not appeal to rational, Western, liberal, open-minded types. That, however, is reality.

Morningside Heights Low

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is slated to speak today at Columbia University. Many within the student body and Lee Bollinger, the courageous leader of that fine institution, are wrapping themselves in the First Amendment and the "openness" of the American university system to defend their execrable decision to give this maniacal, anti-Semitic hate-monger a pulpit. Will conservative protesters be allowed to contribute their view point to the debate? Because of Columbia's membership in the Ivy League they are now conferring some sort of validity on his views and giving him cover that he does not deserve.

Would Columbia give President Bush a bully-pulpit from which to defend his decisions as the leader of this country? Do I even need to answer that question? The very same people rabidly defending Ahmadinejad's "right" to speak at their institution of higher learning would be the same people laying in front of Bush's motorcade and calling him a fascist murderer for defending this country. If the "logic" on display at Columbia in inviting Ahmadenijad to their campus and then defending his "right" to speak is any indicator of the type of critical reasoning skills being imparted at that school I think I'll stay away from hiring Columbia alumni should our paths ever cross out here in the world. Finally, Ahmadenijad has no rights under our constitution, he's not a citizen of this country. For shame, Columbia, for shame.

Alive Day

Last night I watched Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq on HBO. Hosted and produced by James Gandolfini it was an inspiring, moving, horrifying and ultimately even-handed and unapologetic account of wounded Iraq War Veterans. These soldiers suffered egregious injuries, most as a result of IEDs, and their wounds are horrific. They very bluntly show their stumps, their surgery scars, prosthetic eyes and limbs. While I sometimes wanted to look away I forced myself to watch. These soldiers are fighting in a war that I support and it would have been hypocritical of me to look away.

Like anyone wounded as badly as these people were, the subjects of the show were serious and contemplative. Each is still grappling with their newly defined lives and what their injuries mean for their futures. It was an amazing television experience and Gandolfini was an unobtrusive presence -- asking questions, shaking their hands and hugging the soldiers after the interviews. Many times he was hidden by a cameraman and you rarely saw his face. Their stories were permitted to stand as testimonies to their strength, courage, luck and pluck. I don't think that they were politicized in any way. This lack of politicization, in and of itself, deserves mention in a media landscape where the soldier is a pawn in each side's never ending political chess match.

Many of these soldiers have undergone multiple surgeries -- one, 46 in 16 months -- and the care-level is a testament to the doctors and the medical professionals of this country. Many of these soldiers should, by rights, be dead. The interviewees and all the wounded and fallen soldiers, airmen and sailors deserve our respect, admiration, love and support. They certainly have mine. Everybody, war supporters and non-supporters alike should watch this show. It's important. Also, and finally, make a donation to some of the many charities that support the wounded and their families:

This is a good compendium of charities serving the military and military families. I donate to Fisher House and Operation Homefront each year around Christmas. I'm also going to donate to this organization that I learned about through this program: The Wounded Warrior Project.

God bless the troops -- the ones still in harm's way, and the ones recovering from their injuries.

Cancelling The Times

I canceled The New York Times this morning. I only took the paper on Sundays, and had suspended it for the summer. After receiving yesterday's edition I realized that I had not missed it at all. For a long time I've had no desire to support the paper's editorial mission -- seeing the physical paper back on my property reminded me to drop it. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't do this earlier, but feel unburdened to have finally pulled the plug.

When the customer service representative asked me why I was canceling I told him that I could no longer overlook the paper's rabid anti-American sentiments, nor its support for defeat in Iraq nor its hatred of the president that has infected every section of the paper. He offered me 16 weeks at 50% off, free online subscription etc. etc.. It was a values call. While the writing and editing of the paper is far tighter, and the basic qualities of its articles superior to any that appear in the local Boston papers, I can no longer provide a monthly stipend to support the publication of information with which I fundamentally disagree and which I think is detrimental to this country.

756*

Barrels of ink are being spilled on this, and have been spilled ever since it became apparent that Barry Bonds would break Hank Aaron's Home Run Record. I don't have much to contribute to it except to state my uninterest in the achievement of Bonds. He played longer than Aaron; he used performance enhancers; he is a miserable human being.

Hank Aaron still holds the record in my book, even after his classy, videotaped concession speech. Will Bonds be as classy when A-Rod breaks his record in six or seven years? Bonds is a truly, and supremely gifted ball player. His involvement in the madness of steroids basically destroyed his name and forever cast a shadow over his accomplishments and the game. The real tragedy of the 756, however, is not that the record was broken -- records are meant to fall. The real tragedy is that one of the truly great records in all of sports was broken in a way that doesn't jibe with most people's notions of fair play. As a result, something that should be celebrated has bred further cynicism in the public. We're all a little worse off today, now that Hank Aaron is number two on the all time home run list than we were on 7 August, 2007 at 8:50 PM PDT.

Two Good Posts

Two good posts from Michael Yon -- a freelance journalist in Iraq (former Special forces guy too).

Be Not Afraid
Operation Arrowhead Ripper Day One

Obviously the main stream media missed this buildup because, the war is, you know, lost.

God Bless our troops.

Happy hunting.

On-Demand Fiasco

The Sopranos ended its run this past weekend.

I still have yet to see it.

Sunday night I was exiled to my basement by a hen party held by Mrs. Agricola. I'm not sure why it happened when it happened but there was some complex algorithm of other Sunday night, all-female get togethers at which neighbor-ladies gather to watch the execrable Desperate Housewives over the past two years which we have never hosted . . . I can't pretend to understand.

I didn't mind too much however because I knew that I'd catch the finale On-Demand, Monday night. Except that I didn't. RCN -- stellar cable provider that it is -- was unable to deliver HD HBO and On-Demand on Monday night. After several abortive attempts to get On-Demand to work I spent 30 minutes on hold before connecting with a service rep.

The guy was very nice but he, and, so he said, the entire organization didn't know why the outage was happening. Ninety percent of his calls dealt with the same issue last night. It appears everybody was trying to catch the Sopranos finale On-Demand and the RCN system couldn't handle the load. He also posited that a Saturday night firmware update may have been responsible, but no one knew for sure. RCN seems to have a tremendous IT department -- a system wide firmware update and/or high traffic basically crippled their system on a pair of nights that they should have known would have been very high traffic nights.

Last night's call was our third in two weeks for poor On-Demand performance, and our patience is wearing thin with RCN. That they are IT-incompetent should not surprise me because RCN sends monthly bills every other month, and they never once reached me when I'd established email billing. For this service I pay $137 each month.

Peggy Noonan on "The Sopranos"

Peggy Noonan has a great piece in The Wall Street Journal this morning about "The Sopranos." That Peggy Noonan watches Tony, Carm and all the other paisans surprises me, a bit. She is one of the best writers out there today, and writes with such tremendous grace, intelligence and elegance that I find it somewhat jarring that she sits there on Sunday nights and watches the Brutes of Jersey, just like I do. That she writes about the show with such spot-on insight is not at all surprising. I read her observations and wish I could even make half of them. She's terrific. My favorite line in the piece is this classic:

. . . everyone's a gangster as long as he can find a gang. Those who don't are freelancers.

I was a freelancer for a long time, perhaps that's why this line resonates with me so much. But, more so, it resonates because we all want to be a part of a gang. I have long thought that the Sopranos masterfully tapped into that sense of loss and disconnection that is so prevalent in our world today and that is a central reality of the modern American Experience. In essence, this blog, and maybe all blogs, is about this grappling.

Chronicling the mundane events of life, the seasonal changes, the work that goes into maintaining a home, a piece of property and ultimately a family and sharing it with the world is a way to contextualize and understand our world as it it exists, in the here and now. This is another strength of the Sopranos. Tony lives in a world which is a sub-world of the one most suburbanites occupy. Despite the anarchy of infidelity, murder and greed that fill it, Tony's world -- at least the one in which he was raised as the son of a boss, and which he struggles to maintain -- is governed by rules.

These rules, relics of a collective past are being eroded at every turn and he has lost his moorings. At many points throughout the run of the show the characters talk of the rules, of being made, of doing time to legitimize their stature. Just this year Michael, before his murder, spoke of Ommerta -- which he violates with "Cleaver;" and, Phil Leotardo said they "make guys without the blood and the sword and the cross." As a viewer I often got the feeling that the characters were pretending to be gangsters, and modeled themselves on TV gangsters. Somewhere, the transfer of the knowledge of what made a gangster was ruptured. Most likely this was caused by depictions of the Mafia on TV and in movies -- both of which serve as peripheral, silent characters throughout the run of the show. Just as media transforms and distorts the relationships within a more "traditional" family so it did within Tony's crew.

He, like us, is struggling with this world in which not much seems to make sense, in which our foundations are assaulted at every step by the various forces that wish to topple the traditional edifice in which most of us were raised. Tony is us, without morals, without scruples and with blood on our hands. His struggles with the modern world reflect our own.

Virginia Tech

What does one say when confronted with events such as transpired today in Blacksburg, VA?

As a cynic we await the coming media-coverage onslaught. The media has already written much about this event and created multi-media content in their coverage. More will follow, no doubt, until every conceivable angle will have been covered, uncovered, dissected and reassembled until some other horrible event yanks away the media's attention. Liberals will also use this as one more opportunity to confiscate guns (we don't own a gun, the highest power in our land, Mrs. Agricola, won't permit it, so, we comply).

As a blogger we are fascinated by the user generated content especially the video phone footage, camera phone stills and the story of the journalism class that posted from inside of Norris Hall during the attack.

As a father, a husband, a brother and a human being we acknowledge the terror and the tragedy of this event. We can only imagine the pain of the parents who have suffered the greatest loss imaginable, and offer the families and friends of the victims our deepest condolences and sincerest prayers.

Following-up a Couple of Posts

We've written a couple of posts recently about public service and taxation at the local level.

We found a great link over on Newmark's Door to an article in City Journal by Theodore Dalrymple that chronicles the degradation of the British system of public service. It rings true for us, and like Dalrymple we think it bespeaks a larger issue in society at large.

Newmark also pointed us to a terrific article by Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post & Gazette about 300 that is definitely worth a read.

Athlete-Media-Relations 2.0

Regardless of where you stand on Curt Schilling, he is a unique talent both on and off the field. While he rubs many the wrong way -- esp. The Boston Globe's curmudgeonly Dan Shaughnessy -- as a self-promoter, he is redefining the way athletes relate to the media and the fans.

We happen to think Schilling is terrific and we look forward to his weekly chats with Dennis and Callahan -- the morning drive guys on Boston's sports-radio-giant WEEI. He always sheds great light on the game, and provides terrific insight into how it's played at the highest level -- at least in his POV.

Schilling has long been an active participant on the Boston Dirt Dogs and Sons of Sam Horn bulletin boards. He's also known around these parts to sports radio listeners as "Curt in the Car." This spring Schilling launched his own blog, 38 Pitches. It must be a nightmare for team-management to have a guy as savvy, intelligent and opinionated as Schilling out and about, opining and talking about whatever he wants.
This is a perfect example of the issue of how brand owners are losing control of their brand. Ownership, understandably, wants to control, what their employees say, but they have to be even-handed and judicious in how hard, and when or if, they come down on a player such as Schilling. We think that ownership understands that they would surely lose in any war of words with Schilling. This new foray into the blogoshpere is certainly forcing them to walk a razor thin line.

For now, ownership of the Sox is showing forbearance and continuing to permit Schilling to be visible and opinionated. It will be interesting to see how long they permit this, especially as the season progresses and Schilling draws nearer to free agency. Like the Sox, Schilling also has a brand to maintain and he does so by being open and pushing his message across multiple channels. There have been athlete blogs in the past -- ESPN has contracted with marginal players to chronicle a season -- but this is about as high-a-profile a player as we know of to go the route of the personal blog.

We'd love to hear and see more players go this route as well. It will radically change the relationship between player and fans as well as player and major media outlets. Part of this, no doubt, lies at the root of the issues between Shaughnessy and Schilling. In Shaughnessy's world, the player is supposed to sit there, give good quotes to the grizzled, old-media pro and allow the latter to control the message. Alas, the days of the gate-keeping, myth-making, and mythical reporter as major arbiter of player access are numbered.

Welcome to Athlete-Media-Relations 2.0. People like Schilling are helping to change the field of play (so to speak). The ballpark scribes now need to compete with the athletes themselves for the scoop. As long as this foray into the brave-new-world of DIY news production, brand management and self promotion doesn't distract too much from on-field performance -- Schilling got lit up on Opening Day by Kansas City -- we are all for it and look forward to the evolution.