Of course, HBO’s “The Wire” only lasted 5 seasons, but David Simon’s post romp as public intellectual to the chattering opinion classes suggests a sixth season: how a paunchy middle class white dude pimped the stories of the Baltimore city streets to a life of wealth, fame and self-appointed status as a de facto translator of black America to the progressive vanguard.
But rest assured, what Simon is saying now—government is just “us” and it’s failings are to be blamed on lack of institutional trust fueled by the evil designs of libertarianism–is not what he said on The Wire.
Granted, what he is saying now may make him the toast of the town on social media and the Washington cocktail circuit, but that jive bullshit would have never been green lighted for television, much less becoming a cult cultural phenomenon, even to the point that it’s sociological lessons are now taught for university course credit. Of course, without the fame of The Wire, no one would care to toast Simon on Twitter or in the halls of the Roosevelt Institute, and he would be just another obscure casualty of a Baltimore Sun layoff.
Then again, perhaps a 6th season of The Wire would be redundant. After all, its lesson would be the same as the first five. Institutions serve themselves and the people who work within them invariably serve the institutions. The Wire’s terminal conclusion was that life simply goes on.
Libérale et libertaire 