Week 1: Baltimore Is No Longer a Viable Enterprise
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
To: David PlotzPosted Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, at 2:14 PM ETJeffrey Goldberg and David Plotz were online on March 6 to chat about The Wire. Read the transcript.
Dear David,
I admit, I wondered whether my reaction to the newsroom scenes was one of contempt born of familiarity. And it's certainly true that I've run into editors who have been monochromatically assholish, and reporters who absolutely burned with ambition. Why, it's even been said that I have, on occasion, burned with ambition. You, too, burn with ambition, but it's not so noticeable, because you're so unambitious about it.
But: I think I know a little bit about cops, being related to cops, and, more to the point, having written about cops, and David Simon's cops generally pass the verisimilitude test, and this newsroom, so far at least, does not. But, as they say on the TV news, only time will tell.
I don't see what you see in Carcetti. He's not shaking anyone down, is he? He's just trying to better his city and himself, which is what you'd expect. And his attack on the scumbag U.S. Attorney seemed motivated by righteous fury. It's no surprise that a sitting mayor would have an appreciation for low crime statistics. I've actually thought that Carcetti was, in a way, a stand-in for David Simon, who is made angry by—well, most everything, as Mark Bowden's new piece in the Atlantic shows—but mostly by the systematic abandonment of urban America. The bleakest moments for me in The Wire have not been the scenes of drug violence (although the harassment of Bubbles last season did break my heart), but those very effective moments, many starring Carcetti, which persuasively show that Baltimore itself is no longer a viable enterprise, and the reason it's not is because it is populated mainly by poor African-Americans, about whom America—Barack Obama notwithstanding—still doesn't give a shit. America's general disinterest in The Wire (and certainly the general disinterest of the people who vote for the Emmys) is a corollary to this larger disinterest, by the way.
Jeff
Week 1: Baltimore Is No Longer a Viable Enterprise
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
To: David PlotzPosted Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, at 2:14 PM ETEmily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX. Andy Bowers is the editor of Slate V. Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for the Atlantic
and the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror
. Melinda Henneberger is a Slate contributor and the author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians To Hear. David Plotz is Slate's editor. He is the author of Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. You can e-mail him at .
John Swansburg is Slate's culture editor. You can e-mail him at and follow him at www.twitter.com/swansburg.
June Thomas is Slate's foreign editor. You can e-mail her at or follow her on Twitter. Entry 1: Photograph of Tristan Wilds by Paul Schiraldi © HBO. Entry 8: Photograph of Clark Johnson, Brandon Young, Michelle Paress, and Tom McCarthy by Paul Schiraldi © HBO. Entry 21: Photograph of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, Jamie Hector, Method Man, and Robert F. Chew by Paul Schiraldi © HBO 2008. Entry 27: Photograph of Lance Reddick by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 42: Still of Wendell Pierce by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 52: Still of Tristan Wilds by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 57: Photograph of Sonja Sohn, Wendell Pierce, and Dominic West by Nicole Rivelli © 2008 HBO. Entry 61: Still of Lance Reddick by Paul Schiraldi © HBO 2008.
Remarks from the Fray:
I hope Goldberg and Plotz move on to discussing the idea that the press is complicit in allowing the inner-city (especially black inner-city) to decay by not paying attention to the problems that caused its sharp decline. Maybe newsroom characters feel cliched, but shouldn't we discuss how they enter into the "War on Drugs"?
--tsell89
(To reply, click here.)
So far as we've seen most of the newspapermen are indeed stock characters, but that's nothing to worry about. Except for a few leads each season, very few characters have conflicting motives. Think Clay Davis, Mayor Royce, Herc, Horse, Burrell, Rawles, Weebay, Chris Partlow, Snoop, the school administrators, even Marlo.
The strength of the show isn't in the complexity of the characters; it's in the multi-layered coherent vision, the way these somewhat two-dimensional characters all affect one another. Granted, that's a formula for pedagogy, but what saves the show (and not only saves it but really does make it the best show ever) is the one thing that fools everyone into thinking that Snoop, with her paucity of lines and sole motivation of kill-everyone-Marlo-tells-me-to, is a great character -- namely, style.
All the characters have great style, great lines. It's what makes the show fun as well as edifying. And from what I can tell, the newspapermen are going to have as much style as anyone. "Stay hungry. Good things come... when they come." C'mon.
--jamessal
(To reply, click here.)
I don't doubt that the busyness of the first episode had a lot to do with the retards at HBO deciding to cut the Wire from 13 episodes to 10 for its final season but I know Simon will make it work in spite of his bosses stupidity.
As far as Jeffrey's weak defense of the Sopranos, give it up man. The show lost its way after 3 seasons, so the claim that the Sopranos was on longer is not much of an excuse. Of course it is probably true that the Sopranos was a victim of its own massive popularity, while the Wire has been able to stay on course precisely because nobody was watching. Maybe if David Simon had gotten all the money and all the ball licking from critics that David Chase received he would have turned into a hack writer as well.
--sir biff
(To reply, click here.)
(1/7)
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Remarks from the Fray:
I hope Goldberg and Plotz move on to discussing the idea that the press is complicit in allowing the inner-city (especially black inner-city) to decay by not paying attention to the problems that caused its sharp decline. Maybe newsroom characters feel cliched, but shouldn't we discuss how they enter into the "War on Drugs"?
--tsell89
(To reply, click here.)
So far as we've seen most of the newspapermen are indeed stock characters, but that's nothing to worry about. Except for a few leads each season, very few characters have conflicting motives. Think Clay Davis, Mayor Royce, Herc, Horse, Burrell, Rawles, Weebay, Chris Partlow, Snoop, the school administrators, even Marlo.
The strength of the show isn't in the complexity of the characters; it's in the multi-layered coherent vision, the way these somewhat two-dimensional characters all affect one another. Granted, that's a formula for pedagogy, but what saves the show (and not only saves it but really does make it the best show ever) is the one thing that fools everyone into thinking that Snoop, with her paucity of lines and sole motivation of kill-everyone-Marlo-tells-me-to, is a great character -- namely, style.
All the characters have great style, great lines. It's what makes the show fun as well as edifying. And from what I can tell, the newspapermen are going to have as much style as anyone. "Stay hungry. Good things come... when they come." C'mon.
--jamessal
(To reply, click here.)
I don't doubt that the busyness of the first episode had a lot to do with the retards at HBO deciding to cut the Wire from 13 episodes to 10 for its final season but I know Simon will make it work in spite of his bosses stupidity.
As far as Jeffrey's weak defense of the Sopranos, give it up man. The show lost its way after 3 seasons, so the claim that the Sopranos was on longer is not much of an excuse. Of course it is probably true that the Sopranos was a victim of its own massive popularity, while the Wire has been able to stay on course precisely because nobody was watching. Maybe if David Simon had gotten all the money and all the ball licking from critics that David Chase received he would have turned into a hack writer as well.
--sir biff
(To reply, click here.)
(1/7)