In a special "culture" edition of The Table (also a special Yglesias-free edition), Ross Douthat, Mark Bowden, and Jeffrey Goldberg talk about Season Five of The Wire:
A chance to mock someone else's physical appearance for a change.
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Endless Wire Commentary
10 Mar 2008 04:27 pm
Comments (22)
The guy on the left is gently rounded. He has a pleasing plumpness that would qualify him to be an Yglesias room-mate.
Shit -- is that former-IDF-soldier Jeffrey Goldberg? Don't you have to be skinny to run checkpoints in the West Bank? Don't they have a gym at the Atlantic?
Dude, no need to go negative on Ambinder.
Zoolander,
It all cicles back to the Democratic Primary.
Witnessing the Clinton campaign these past few months and the blaise reaction of the media to its hypocrisy and dishonesty, I sympathize with Will Ferrell's Mugatu.
"Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
Ahh, I remember the days when Matt was just "short."
Can I be the first to point out the supreme irony of having Jeffrey "In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality" Goldberg critique The Wire's portrayal of journalistic frauds and charlatans? This is the same Jeffrey Goldberg whose pre-war reporting on Iraq was yet another card to add to the house of "Saddam and Al Qaeda Sittin' in a tree..." (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/feb/09/alqaida.afghanistan or http://www.radaronline.com/features/2007/01/betting_on_iraq_5.php)
His other work on Saddam's gassing of the Kurds was called a "J-School Nightmare" (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0218,trilling,34389,1.html) for it;s use of compromised sources. "It always starts with something true" as someone once said.
To see these guys diss Simon on the sole basis of "Hey I like John Carrol and Bill Marrimow" as if that's some kind of refutation of Simon's thesis, is weak tea indeed. Jeffrey Goldberg is Scott Templeton, no wonder he no likey the fifth season.
Dangit, these guys actually have fairly normal physical appearances (other than Ross of course).
Or the supreme irony of having Mark Bowden--once hired by Bill Marimow, friend of John Carroll, blurbed Jim Haner's book--do the same. Haner was the major template for Templeton.
Goldberg: "The Sopranos is Shakespearean. Although the Wire is Shakespearean too."
What a fucking genius. Are you sure you're paying this guy enough?
But obviously the Wire's problem was its failure to recognize journalists as the glorious mench's that they surely are.
Actually it's quite funny: "Drug dealers and cops laud the Wire for its accuracy." But the journalists and psuedo-journalist sitting on this round-table are left cold.
More confirmation, I guess, that journalists are more ego-maniacal and obtuse, and considerably less self-critical, than drug dealers.
The journalist brain is a thing of horror to behold.
A chance to mock someone else's physical appearance for a change.
If you scratch him, he bleeds.
from the comments at http://www.observer.com/2008/sun-set-over-baltimore-wire-gets-it-right-where-tribune-didnt:
"I have to laugh when I see the comments that Simon's portrayal of The Sun is not credible. I am a former Sun staffer who was hired by Marimow and Carroll. So far, every single newsroom situation is based on a real event that occurred during my time there. In scenes involving the top editors, most of the dialogue is taken practically verbatim from actual newsroom conversations.
I think these commenters have it mostly right. I had worked at a couple of fine newspapers before joining The Sun, and I knew that top editors usually have much higher regard for their own hires than for the existing staff. But Carroll and Marimow took it to extremes. They seemed to have a real blind spot. With just a few exceptions, they were unable to appreciate the abundant talents of the people who were there before they got there.
I joined the paper when CJR, E&P and others were beating the drum about the miraculous turnaround that Marimow and Carroll had pulled off at The Sun - in fact, I came to the paper because I wanted to be part of that. From Day One, it was obvious that some of their young hires were very talented, but most were in jobs that they were not experienced enough to handle. They got very little guidance from the then-metro editor, who mostly worked on whatever big series was in the prize-entry chute. A few of the newcomers were empty shirts, or worse.
The remaining members of the old guard were solid, smart reporters. Many of them could write rings around the new hires. But during my time there, an awful lot of those talented veterans got transferred to the 'burbs, often soon after they violated some unspoken rule of newsroom decorum - excessive cursing, sloppy dress, rejecting some dumb story idea that came from the glass offices, etc."
I think David Simon ought to do an episode of the Wire centering on how professional, SERIOUS journalists relate to the wire.
To illustrate the corruption of a major media institution like, say, The Atlantic, he would have the discussion moderated by a center-right pundit who is actually married to a reporter of the noted newspaper that Simon mocks in The Wire. For absurdism, Simon would have the pundit mention this obvious conflict of interest and then have everyone laugh at the mere thought that his judgment would be clouded because of it.
Another center-right pundit would also note that he was hired by one of the people Simon mercilessly attacks on the show. The idea that this would cloud the pundit's judgment would also be dismissed.
Finally, everyone would agree that large parts of the professional world are, indeed, corrupt but that the one that isn't is the journalism world. And that that was the main drawback of The Wire. They would also, of course, note that despite Simon's 20-some-years working for a paper, he doesn't really understand what journalism is really like.
This reminds me of the time they replaced Bo (Ambinder) and Luke (Yglesias) Duke with some obscure cousins. Daisy Douhat* remains on the show but it's just not the same.
* - I beg of you, no short shorts
That Observer article (and especially-- remarkably enough-- the comments thread) pointed out by RC is extremely illuminating. So here's the URL again:
http://www.observer.com/2008/sun-set-over-baltimore-wire-gets-it-right-where-tribune-didnt
Definitely check it out if you're interested in the Sun/Carroll/Marimow angle. There are supporters and detractors in the thread, mostly very well-informed and even-handed. Worth a read.
As I posted in last night's thread (though it's more appropriate for here) -- here's the backstory for Bowden's Atlantic article. Here's the story Matt's corporate paymasters won't let him tell you!
Simon: "When all they've got is the ad hominem, then that's all they've got. I'll tell you a little something about [Mark Bowden, the author of the Atlantic's piece on Simon, "The Angriest Man in Television"]. He sent me an unedited version of his story and asked for comment. And my comment to him was, Listen, Mark, I don't care what you say about the show. I don't even care about you calling me angry ... But I do resent you basically declaring -- as he did in the piece that he sent me -- that by criticizing these guys [Carroll and Marimow] for tolerating a fabricator and defending a fabricator long after he'd been caught repeatedly, I have slandered two honorable worthies. You acknowledge that they've been your career-long friends in journalism ... this is really about your loyalty to old friendships.
And so, I then asked him, Given that Bill Marimow has recently hired you for a job, to be a columnist for the [Philadelphia] Inquirer, do you think there's an ethical problem here? And he didn't answer, and in a separate snail-mail letter, I posed the question to [Atlantic editor James Bennet]. I said, I don't care what you write about the show, but the only guy who's being slandered here is me. I never slandered or libeled anybody in hundreds of bylines and a couple of books, and now I'm going to come up to two editors and just claim they did something that they didn't do?
And he responded by saying, Well, I have complete faith in Mark Bowden. And then Bowden, upon finding out that I dared to pose this question to his editor, he took the fact that my response to him was off the record and decided to characterize it [in his Atlantic essay]. Have you ever heard that you can take somebody off the record if they ask your editor an ethical question? I've never heard that. "
Without regard to the specifics of the Sun (real world) situation, it's always been the case that newspapering at the management level was never the 'life of kings', and was, in fact, as likely to be peopled by weasels as, say, a law firm or major corporation.
Many newsrooms (and editorial staffs) have become veritable weasel factories, with caution vying with careerism. Most talented career folks in the game want nothing but out.
Bowden and Goldberg are unselfaware of their own. Not to mention whining a bit.
I've only seen maybe one or two episodes of The Wire, but I know how I would have ended the series: with a kick line. Did the finale have a kick line?
Next up: "The Table" discusses "Robot Love in The Terminator Series"!
Cameron topless and bottomless!
http://www.daemonstv.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/terminator_poster1.jpg
You know, Hack, that car bomb in the season finale could give the producers a lot of leverage over Summer Glau if they didn't sign her to a long contract. They could threaten to have a new actress play her when she gets the new skin she'll need.
Obscure Duke cousins---
that would be Coy and Vance.
Oddly enough, Ross actually looks like a normal guy. His wife must dress him.
Good point, but I doubt they want to dump her. She's almost uniquely suitable to the role, given her ballet training and her application of it to her role in "Serenity". She said in an interview that they were aware of her past work, especially the physical stuff, and that she had the ability to handle the physical stuff. She said that was likely a major reason they picked her.
I was a bit surprised that they did that with Owain Yoeman, however, the original Chromartie. I thought he was pretty good.
And it was a bit of a nightmare to pull off. They had to somehow get him through the time portal. They faked it by saying that the head that came through had some flesh attached to it - which is not the way the story goes - stuff has to be surrounded by living tissue to come through a time portal.
And they had a huge project to somehow get a new face on that head.
I doubt they want to go through all that again with Cameron.
It was easier with the character of Charley Dixon played by Dean Winters. They just had to reshoot the scenes. I suspect they initially didn't intend to have that character be ongoing, but changed their minds.
Comments closed March 24, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
You're ugly and fat! Probably smell bad too!
Posted by Internet Nerd | March 10, 2008 4:48 PM