The Scene and Herd

The Wire’s got a hold on me. We finished the entire series on Sunday and I’ve been depressed since. I feel like I just broke up with someone… luckily, ironically, I don’t have to go through this alone…

But I see the face of The Wire everywhere I look.

1. My friend Nyron’s facebook has a picture of him in new glasses, to which his friend refers to as “The brother Mouzone” shot.

2. An article about the Michelle Obama homeless man cellphone debacle (in which right-wingers get upset that a guy with a cell phone goes to a soup kitchen…rich people that have obviously had ZERO contact with ANY poor people) refers to the disposable cell phone trend that we should all be aware of via The Wire.

3. A Macleans article that talks about gang violence in Canada and how Stephen Harper did an oddly humane and decent thing by holding a closed meeting with regional police chiefs and family members of gang murder victims and saying, “You’ve all got five minutes to tell me how to help.”

And Johnnie says “That’s what Carcetti should have done.”

This end is painful but I really learned a lot. My life and soul have been enriched and I am most certainly different.

I’m reminded of a Chuck Klosterman article in which he writes that when the Harry Potter demographic grows up they will dominate pop culture and constantly reference Harry Potter and he won’t even know it. And he won’t even know that he won’t know it.

In two decades, I will not be alienated or confused by passing references to Harry Potter; very often, I will be unaware that any reference has even been made. I will not know what I am missing. I’ll just feel bored, and I won’t know why.

Based on all the references to The Wire I’ve experienced in one short week, I was almost certainly bored before this wicked awesome series came into my life.

So some adjustment are at hand, but I’ve only well wishes. Go with God. I’m glad I knew ya.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20G17K_0ghU]

Allow me, for a moment, to make a metaphor using my favourite TV show at the moment; The Wire. For those of you unawares, The Wire is a wicked awesome show about Baltimore, corruption, cops and drugs.

There is this scene that stays with me: Carver pulls a corner boy (For those of you that are not from Bramps, a “corner boy” is a kid that stands on a corner selling drugs) down to the precinct and is questioning him, playing “good cop.” Carver is trying to get Bodie to spill it. “You remind me of me,” he says.

“Oh yeah,” says Bodie, “you came up hard?”

This is a game you play with delinquents. To gain their trust, you make them believe that you braved the projects, “the low rises,” if you will. 

This is a game that (some of) the Canadian people are trying to play with Ignatieff.

A google news search of Ignatieff turns up a raging plethora of rants and raves (some of them completely embarrassing). Americans like him (ignore the weird graph). It’s patronizing, the way they express it, but they like the guy. 

And yet this persistent trend over here, this bizarre demand for someone “down to earth.”

Okay, can I blame Orillia for a little while?

All this news over the weekend that Orillia really likes Iggy, “standing room only” etc. But what does Orillia have to say?  They like him… because… brace yourselves,

“the former Harvard professor was more like a cross between a folksy preacher and sympathetic high-school guidance counsellor.”

This is what impressed The Orillia Packet.

Shouldn’t The Orillia Packet be saying, “What the hell? I thought you were a Harvard professor. You sound more like a high-school guidance councellor.”

Points to Igntieff for his apt performance, but Orillia (among others) needs to get a grip. Iggy did not come up hard. And he’s not like you, thankfully.

Now stop acting like a bunch of needy delinquents.