Politics aside
We just finished the fourth season of the Wire and like the seasons before this one, there are indelible images now fixed in my mind about local and state politics. I think through four seasons of the Wire I’ve learned that life in the projects is bleaker than I imagined, inner city children need a strong parent to survive in the most challenging conditions, the school system run by the government, any government, is FUBR (fucked up beyond recognition), local and state politics are so much about power struggles than even the ones with good intentions are reduced to nubs in no time, and it’s not black or white, each race portrayed in this program is portrayed as equally avaricious, power thirsty, myopic, and those who could and would serve are spitting in the wind.
We have one season to go and I can’t wait – why? – because the show has been so compelling but honestly after four seasons of this world view, I feel wary, dark, and hopeless that change is afoot. So when my brother writes me to tell me that Obama is an idiot and he is going to go down in flames, my stomach lurches because it’s these polarizing views that are keep us a people, as a nation, from making any progress whatsoever. What if we all wanted Obama to succeed? What if we all put our energies into making him succeed?
September 16th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
…because if Obama actually succeeds, it’ll just prove they were wrong all along. I lived in the south long enough to know that no one could stand it if a colored man managed to do better than the white one previously there. Don’t know about all those teaparty yankees.
September 17th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Sad state of affairs indeed. I just keep going back to the things that are good – like here we had the levee failure and the BP oil spill, but the Saints won the Superbowl, and we had eight years of Bush and he was so bad that America was willing to elect a black president so all that suffering was worth it! Also I think that we are living through some amazing times and yet the old adage that the more things change the more they stay the same still holds water.