Orange Devil posted:

Obama said Omar was his favorite character because he was the biggest badass...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/14/obama-gloves-off/ posted:

“That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/18690/b-s-report-transcript-barack-obama posted:

Bill Simmons: Last question, quick, five seconds.

Obama: Yes.

BS: Settle an office debate. Best Wire character of all time?

Obama: It’s got to be Omar, right? I mean, that guy is unbelievable, right?

BS: We might break this down as like a March Madness bracket, and I think he’s going to be the no. 1 seed. [Laughter.] Everyone is in on Omar, it seems like.

Obama: He’s got to be the no. 1 seed. I mean, what a combination. And that was one of the best shows of all time.

BS: Yes, I agree with you.

Obama: Yes, it was a great show.

BS: Mr. President, thank you for being on the B.S. Report.

Obama: Appreciate you. Thank you.

cletepurcel posted:

Carcetti spends two years in office, we never see him do a single thing to actually improve the city and at the end he's gotten to be Governor on another pile of bullshit and left the city in the hands of a corrupt Royce machine stooge.

Popular Thug Drink posted:

With Chris, we never get many hints about his personality except that he is some kind of demonic human shark, but it makes sense that a killer of his caliber would be Marlo's right hand man. Mouzone just sort of pops up out of nowhere, almost as if from a different show, and asserts his badassedness without any of the 'realistic' mitigating factors that bring him back down to the streets.

cletepurcel posted:

Overall, I feel that the thing killing the newspapers plot is less Gus and more the bosses - I think having the villains be too one dimensional (yes, the only thing they care about is winning awards, but unlike the policy's similar stat games, this isn't put in proper context - it just appears to be two out of touch, privileged white guys and its barely implied who THEY answer to) is a worse crime than having the last doomed Wire hero be too perfect. Put another way, the show might have still worked if McNulty was an actual decent person, but definitely not if Rawls and Burrell appeared just plainly corrupt/incompetent.

cletepurcel posted:

On the other hand, this crucial context is missing with the newspaper bosses. In the next episode (I believe), they announce the big round of layoffs, and one of them mentions that the Internet, as well as the paper's owners in Chicago, are what drives such tough decisions. This is the first and only time this is mentioned or even alluded to; instead, the rest of the time we get stupid scenes like Gus being admonished for swearing too much in the newsroom.

cletepurcel posted:

"The Dickensian Aspect"

quote:

The Wire began syndication in 1846, and was published in 60 installments over the course of six years. Each installment was 30 pages, featuring covers and illustrations by Baxter “Bubz” Black, and selling for one shilling each. After the final installment, The Wire became available in a five volume set, departing from the traditional three.

Bucklesby Ogden himself has most often been compared to Charles Dickens. Both began as journalists, and then branched out with works such as Pickwick Papers and The Corner. While Dickens found popularity and eventual fame in his successive work, Ogden took a darker path.

Dickens’ success for the most part lies in his mastery of the serial format. Other serialized authors were mainly writing episodic sketches linked together only loosely by plot, characters, and a uniformity of style. With Oliver Twist, only his second volume of work, Dickens began to define an altogether new type of novel, one that was more complex, more psychologically and metaphorically contiguous. Despite this, Dickens retained a heightened awareness of his method of publication. Each installment contained a series of elements engineered to give the reader the satisfaction of a complete arc, giving the reader the sense of an episode, complete with a beginning, middle, and end.

[...]

For one thing, The Wire’s treatment of the class system is far more nuanced than that of Dickens. Who could forget “Bubbles”—the lovable drifter, Stringer Bell—the bourgeois merchant with pretentions to aristocracy, or Bodie—who, despite lack of education or Victorian “good breeding”, is seen reading and enjoying the likes of Jane Austen? Yet these portrayals of the “criminal element” always maintain a certain realism. We never descend into the divisions of “loveable rogues” and truly evil villains of which Dickens makes such effective use. Odgen’s Bodie, an adult who uses children to perpetrate criminal activity, is not a caricature of an ethnic minority in the mode of Dickens’ Fagin the Jew.

In fact, none of The Wire’s villains have the unadulterated slimy repulsion of David Copperfield’s Uriah Heep, except for perhaps the journalist, Scott Templeton. The final installments of The Wire were sometimes criticized for devolving into Dickensian caricature in regards to the plots surrounding Templeton and The Bodymore Sun. (It is interesting to note first that Dickensian characterizations were Templeton’s number one crime, and second, that these critics of The Wire were for the most part journalists themselves.)

Jerusalem posted:

bucketybuck posted:

I just want to go back to something that has been bugging me a little. Sorry in advance if I don't remember all details here.

When Lester and McNulty need some bodies they go to a patrolman that Lester knew, who contacts them first when a report of a body is called in. Lester tells McNulty the patrolmans story, he used to be a detective until one day he had a crime scene, the district commander tried to take control of it from him and he refused to step aside. A few days later he was busted down. And who was the district commander? Rawls of course, always the rear end in a top hat!

But here's what bugs me, think back to the scene in season one where Kima got shot. Rawls arrived at the scene and took control like a badass and everybody loved it. But Rawls first words at the Kima shooting weren't "I'm in charge now", they were "What do you need?". It was only after Landsman asked him to that he cleared the crime scene.

The Kima shooting scene always showed that although Rawls was an rear end in a top hat, he was also actually good police. But using him in season 5 as the reason the patrolman got busted down takes away from that in my opinion. Not because he wouldn't bust somebody down, but because he wouldn't have created the problem at the crime scene in the first place. The way Lester explained it made it sound like a bumbling Lieutenant messing things up, whereas Rawls was always extremely competent.

Ainsley McTree posted:

I've posted this at least five times by now, but if you want your mind blown...

PostNouveau posted:

It's not the obvious Nation of Islam stuff that makes his character unbelievable for me. The NOI is openly racist and anti-semetic and has a history of violence, but contract killing does not seem like their style at all.

thathonkey posted:

I haven't seen S2 in a while but doesn't the Greek have a very reliable FBI informant too? They probably knew exactly when they could come back safely and resume business-as-usual.

Ainsley McTree posted:

Ehhh, disagree a little bit. That scene is pretty much the only time we ever actually see him show any emotion.

bucketybuck posted:

In that same vein, I always wondered why he didn't make more use of his street persona in his business dealings?

Without overtly threatening any of the businessmen he could easily have made them aware that yes, he was indeed a dangerous criminal with a lot of dangerous men with guns ready to do dangerous things at his command. Even just that reputation could have given the likes of Krawczyk pause in their plans to rip him off. He was the head of Baltimore biggest drugs gang and they were laughing at him, and he was so wrapped up in trying to look like a serious businessman that he forgot they actually had good reason to fear him.

NOTinuyasha posted:

A shitbox teal Cavalier, intentionally rammed into a pillar of cement twice, and it's still drivable and continues to show up scene after scene. I don't understand why that car had to live to see another day but Nick Sobotka's badass post-apocalyptic LeSabre doesn't start one morning and promptly gets replaced with a bro truck. Season 2's most heartbreaking tragedy right there.

Jerusalem posted:

The Lincoln one sounds pretty great too.

freebooter posted:

b) it's not as simple as looking at a dying industry and saying "they can just go get other jobs," because it invalidates their heritage, their culture, and everything their parents and grandparents have built up as a community in this one small trade; it underestimates how important the work aspect is for the working class, how closely their identity and their community is tied to their jobs.

Ithaqua posted:

I'm just finishing up season 2 on my HD rewatch so this isn't exactly fresh, but I remember it being a bit more nuanced than that. He gradually found some common ground and ways to reach out to the kids and put the material he was teaching in terms that made sense to them, and also became better at making due with the resources he had available. Very similar in some regards to Wallace with the young kid in season 1, where the kids can't handle a simple addition/subtraction word problem when it's in terms of passengers getting on and off a bus, but is able to do the exact same thing easily when it's put in terms of keeping the count of drugs right.

"If you mess up the count, they gently caress you up"

Basebf555 posted:

You aren't condoning the hurting of others but you are saying that peaceful protests don't work. So what are you saying?

quote:

BALTIMORE—Calling it an emergency measure designed to ensure public safety and order, Baltimore officials held a press conference Wednesday urging all residents to stay indoors until the natural evolution of social progress takes shape over the next century. “Given the ongoing situation in our city, we ask that everyone remain within their homes for the next 10 or 12 decades while the various barriers to equality and opportunity for all people are slowly chipped away,” said Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, adding that, in addition to shutting down public schools and the transportation system, the city had canceled work for all nonessential government employees while they wait for the arrival of fully protected civil rights and liberties expected sometime in the 22nd century. “As we continue to incrementally evolve into a completely free and fair society over the next 100 years, please do not venture outside unless it is absolutely necessary. Those who go out onto our streets before our social, economic, and political structures have undergone gradual reform over the course of several generations are doing so at their own risk.” Rawlings-Blake then encouraged residents to visit the city’s website for further information regarding what to do as they await the year 2115.

Basebf555 posted:

Yea its a good thing guys like MLK Jr., Gandi, and Mandela knew how to kick some rear end when necessary, otherwise they wouldn't have accomplished anything.

Skeesix posted:

The invocation of Mandela here is interesting because he was a saboteur who destroyed property while taking care not to kill anyone. So far that seems to be the end result of the Baltimore unrest.

Nelson Mandela posted:

At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force.

This conclusion was not easily arrived at. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe. We did so not because we desired such a course, but solely because the government had left us with no other choice. In the Manifesto of Umkhonto published on 16 December 1961, which is exhibit AD, we said:

The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices – submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom.

[...]

The avoidance of civil war had dominated our thinking for many years, but when we decided to adopt violence as part of our policy, we realized that we might one day have to face the prospect of such a war. This had to be taken into account in formulating our plans. We required a plan which was flexible and which permitted us to act in accordance with the needs of the times; above all, the plan had to be one which recognized civil war as the last resort, and left the decision on this question to the future. We did not want to be committed to civil war, but we wanted to be ready if it became inevitable.

Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first method and to exhaust it before taking any other decision.

In the light of our political background the choice was a logical one. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality. This is what we felt at the time, and this is what we said in our Manifesto (Exhibit AD):

"We of Umkhonto we Sizwe have always sought to achieve liberation without bloodshed and civil clash. We hope, even at this late hour, that our first actions will awaken everyone to a realization of the disastrous situation to which the Nationalist policy is leading. We hope that we will bring the Government and its supporters to their senses before it is too late, so that both the Government and its policies can be changed before matters reach the desperate state of civil war."

The initial plan was based on a careful analysis of the political and economic situation of our country. We believed that South Africa depended to a large extent on foreign capital and foreign trade. We felt that planned destruction of power plants, and interference with rail and telephone communications, would tend to scare away capital from the country, make it more difficult for goods from the industrial areas to reach the seaports on schedule, and would in the long run be a heavy drain on the economic life of the country, thus compelling the voters of the country to reconsider their position.

Attacks on the economic life lines of the country were to be linked with sabotage on Government buildings and other symbols of apartheid. These attacks would serve as a source of inspiration to our people. In addition, they would provide an outlet for those people who were urging the adoption of violent methods and would enable us to give concrete proof to our followers that we had adopted a stronger line and were fighting back against Government violence.

feedmegin posted:

Bear in mind the timing. This came out in 2003. The FBI is after specific terrorists, i.e. al Quaeda, because everyone's worried there could be another 9/11.