More On 'The Wire'

Since I've been raving about The Wire on this blog, I'd be remiss if I didn't link to creator David Simon's lengthy interview with Bill Moyers.

After reading that entire transcript, it's abundantly clear that Simon may have nailed the *portrayal* of Big Government wrought urban decay, but he clearly hasn't a clue about *origin* or *prescription*. How anyone can rail so extensively about the slums and underclass culture without mentioning *entitlements*: free housing, welfare, food stamps, free education, free healthcare, free birth control abortions, etc. is beyond me.

DAVID SIMON: Oh, I would decriminalize drugs in a heartbeat. I would put all the interdiction money, all the incarceration money, all the enforcement money, all of the pretrial, all the prep, all of that cash, I would hurl it, as fast as I could, into drug treatment and job training and jobs programs. I would rather turn these neighborhoods inward with jobs programs. Even if it was the equivalent of the urban CCC, if it was New Deal-type logic, it would be doing less damage than creating a war syndrome, where we're basically treating our underclass. The drug war's war on the underclass now. That's all it is. It has no other meaning.

Most ironically, his drug legalization solution is just another *juking of the stats*. Furthermore, how can this guy who for five seasons absolutely nailed the abject failure of large, political institutions possibly think that another massive *jobs program* would be at all efficacious?

See also - Definitely See This One....And Ruminate Upon It

And previous post - The Wire.

Thanks to Taylor for alerting me to this one.