Update: After watching tonight's Real Time with Bill Maher, I realized a couple of things. First, the phrase 'mouth breather' has been making a serious comeback these days. I love this. I feel like this is one of the most underused phrases in the American lexicon, which is especially shameful since there are more mouth breathers in this country than probably any other. These guys know what I'm talking about:
Secondly, through a confluence of events, I have been mostly away from the internet over the last week and a half. And boy have things been awful! Attempting to defund Planned Parenthood? President Obama unilaterally attacking a nation in the Middle East (even if it MAY have been the right thing to do, the unilateral part was textbook Dubya)? The removal of a mural depicting workers of different ages, genders, and races in the Department of Labor (!) in Maine because it was perceived as being "anti-business"?!?!?! Snoop from The Wire was arrested?!
About that last one, when asked for comment by Slate, David Simon (creator of and show runner for The Wire, your favorite show ever, duh) had this to say:
"This young lady has, from her earliest moments, had one of the hardest lives imaginable. And whatever good fortune came from her role in The Wire seems, in retrospect, limited to that project. She worked hard as an actor and was entirely professional, but the entertainment industry as a whole does not offer a great many roles for those who can portray people from the other America. There are, in fact, relatively few stories told about the other America."
"In an essay published two years ago in Time magazine, the writers of The Wire made the argument that we believe the war on drugs has devolved into a war on the underclass, that in places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral. And we said then that if asked to serve on any jury considering a non-violent drug offense, we would move to nullify that jury's verdict and vote to acquit. Regardless of the defendant, I still believe such a course of action would be just in any case in which drug offenses—absent proof of violent acts—are alleged.
"Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers. But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter."
"Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers. But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter."
If you haven't read that essay linked to in the quote, you really should. Also, because David Simon is the best and why not, here's an interview he did with Newsweek before the premiere of the final season of The Wire, in which his response to the interviewer's first question led with the sentence "I disagree in all respects with the premise [of the question]," and ends with this exchange, which is a mild spoiler if you haven't seen The Wire, in which case I don't want to be your friend:
"When a friend who loves the show asked me to describe the fifth season so far, I told him "Everyone pretty much goes nuts." It's a flip summary, for sure, but is it accurate?
I think it's flip, sorry. The season is about how far individuals and institutions and society in general can go on a lie. And if you think that theme is hyperbolic and that lies as big as manufactured serial killers and hyped newspaper copies are too big and too outrageous to sustain themselves, I'd simply point to this ugly mess of a war we are in, why we are in it, what was printed and broadcast and declared by the nation's elite and its top media outlets. You look at Iraq and how we got there and McNulty and Templeton are pikers by comparison. The season is about the chasm between perception and reality in American life and how we are increasingly without the tools that allow us to recognize our true problems, much less begin to solve them. Everybody goes crazy? Who? McNulty? Freamon? They quit playing by the rules in a rigged game. That's almost a form of sanity, self-destructive as it might turn out to be."
I think it's flip, sorry. The season is about how far individuals and institutions and society in general can go on a lie. And if you think that theme is hyperbolic and that lies as big as manufactured serial killers and hyped newspaper copies are too big and too outrageous to sustain themselves, I'd simply point to this ugly mess of a war we are in, why we are in it, what was printed and broadcast and declared by the nation's elite and its top media outlets. You look at Iraq and how we got there and McNulty and Templeton are pikers by comparison. The season is about the chasm between perception and reality in American life and how we are increasingly without the tools that allow us to recognize our true problems, much less begin to solve them. Everybody goes crazy? Who? McNulty? Freamon? They quit playing by the rules in a rigged game. That's almost a form of sanity, self-destructive as it might turn out to be."
So, yeah, read the interview for more trademarked Simon's Gold.
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