The Tyranny Is Real

For God's sakes read this article:
 David Simon in The Marshall Project.

The Q doesn't do serial TV. I was asked recently how I have time for full-time job, family of small children requiring absurd bedtime rituals, daily blog-writing and community meetings up the wazoo. Simple. I don't watch TV. Or read fiction. That's two big chunks of people's lives I do without. Plus I don't need a ton of sleep, haven't gotten drunk in more than a decade, and am completely uninterested in contemporary food culture. My favorite meal is grilled cheese with tater tots. Priorities, I guess they say.

Serial TV - from Breaking Mad Men to House of Thrones to Orange Is the New Good Wife, it's all brilliant and life-changing I'm sure. But if the shows have true merit, which I highly doubt, there'll be time to settle into my comfiest chair after my infirmity begins and watch a baker's dozen of episodes in a row between changes of Depends. I'm pretty confident I'm missing nothing but a crick in my neck at this point, though I have my guilty pleasures too though I insist they don't take too long.

And then, there's The Wire, the only show I regret not having spent more time with, given its relevance to the New Jim Crow and the seemingly endless string of Rodney King commemorations taking place in pretty much every corner of the nation 24 hours a day in towns where significant numbers of black people live, which is to say pretty much every major City except Portland, OR, which is to say every City in the country that matters.

Half a dozen people I respect have sent me this extraordinary interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, wherein he goes into devastating detail about Baltimore's descent into police state madness through the years. If even half of what he says were true, wouldn't it be fair to say that we're suffering from a massive Drug War hangover in this country that's bound to tear us apart, even more than we're already being torn apart? Put another way, is the Constitution meant only for people who live in the right neighborhoods?

What we desperately need is leadership. Who speaks with authority and has the balls to put his legacy on the line? Mr. President, I believe your date with destiny has just arrived. Please don't wait til you're out of office and haven't the power of the pulpit and the interpretation of the law at your command. If one president started this nonsense, surely another can put an end to it.

Remember your campaign that gave you the keys to the White House? Don't let it be an empty promise. Right now, we could really use some of this, because otherwise things might get a lot worse before they get better.

As I said before, for God's sakes read this article  David Simon in The Marshall Project.