Soundtrack to this Entry: Way Down in the Hole
I’ve been reading a piece by Jordan Hoffman about how The Wire anticipated, even partly explained the protests. In it, he quoted Wendell Pierce, who played Detective Bunk, who tweeted about the show’s applicability. Please read the article, published in Vanity Fair. You can read, and let’s face it, they are a published author. So please check it out.
Meanwhile, I’d like to build on it. Other David Simon work echos Hoffman and Pierce’s point. In Treme, one sees the way that institutions, such as the police, politicians, corrections, and the law all failed the poor so catastrophically after the Katrina disaster. Plenty of people profited from real and fraudulent repairs to the devastated city. Meanwhile, musicians, store owners, dentists were left to survive. In far worse cases, innocent people were sometimes killed, accused criminals disappeared, and horrible crimes were committed and never investigated. In any event, the people who needed the help, whose general welfare had been destroyed, were practically ignored
In a similar way, The Deuce portrayed how these same NYC institutions failed the many people who depended on the titular Times Square neighborhood for their livings during the 70’s and 80s. Sure, it got turned into an NYC copy of a suburban strip mall, and a bunch of developers became wealthy. But the prostitutes, pornographers, pimps, bartenders, and various criminals who preyed the areas were helped not at all. They were instead moved elsewhere to continue their existence, and received no aid or practical help.
What can we say when it is all spelled out there, and people still ignore it?
UPDATE: Discussion with David Simon about how to improve American policing.
Bittersweet Abattoir 