The Smithian

[Martin] O’Malley, who is fifty and handsome in a Kennedy sort of way, has made a career out of all the politician stuff, chomping his way up the political food chain like a man hungry for more than a deli sandwich. After serving as a Baltimore city councilman in the 1990s, he was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999 and then governor of Maryland seven years later, where he’ll remain until 2015. Because of term limits, he can’t run again. Every pundit in America has predicted he’s going to run for president in 2016, and O’Malley has done everything he can to encourage that speculation, short of outright admitting it’s true.

more.

‘A drug arrest does not require anything other than getting out of your radio car and jacking people up against the side of the liquor store. The problem is that that cop that made that cheap drug arrest, he’s going to get paid. He’s going to get the hours of overtime for taking the drugs down to…[the evidence control unit]. He’s going to get paid for processing the prisoner down at central booking. He’s going to get paid for sitting back at his desk and writing the paperwork for a couple hours. Then the case is going to get called to court and a prosecutor’s going to sign his overtime slip for two, three hours to show up for a case that’s probably going to be stetted [dropped] because it’s unconstitutional. And he’s going to do that 40, 50, 60 times a month. So his base pay might end up being half of what he’s actually paid as a police officer. Meanwhile…In Baltimore, the clearance rates—our percentage of arrests for felonies—for rape, murder, robbery, auto theft, for the things that make a city unlivable—are half of what they once were. Our drug arrest stats are twice what they once were. That makes a city unlivable. It creates a criminal atmosphere that has no deterrent. It makes a police department where nobody can solve a fucking crime.’

more, from David Simon of The Wire regarding a new documentary.

[look of the hour]

Robert F. Chew, a Baltimore actor and teacher who portrayed the drug kingpin Proposition Joe on HBO’s “The Wire,” died Jan. 17 of an apparent heart ailment at his home in Baltimore…He was 52.

RIP.

The development process took time. And chemicals. It also took a dedicated space where the work could safely unfold. That space was called a darkroom.

more.

We probably won’t realize what saved or killed Detroit, Gary, Baltimore, or, really, America, until it’s already happened. Can you live with that?

more.

The only time I ever considered suicide was when, unexpectedly, mom informed me and baby bro Carlos that we were moving from Harlem to Baltimore. It was the summer of ’78, and I had just turned 16. We were transported by Greyhound bus to the sinister city where, I had read, a drunken Edgar Allan Poe died in the gutter and hophead Billie Holiday flopped.

more, from “Memoir of a Black Punk,” here.

Even Phylicia Barnes’ mother, Janice Sallis, who arrived in Baltimore, after calling to check on Phylicia and finding out that she couldn’t be found, was steeling herself for the worst. I remember watching [Sallis] on the local news, commenting on how despicable it was for whoever had taken her [daughter] — she was certain [Phylicia] hadn’t run away or wandered off alone— to take advantage of the young girl. “If she’s alive,” [Sallis] said, “she’s scared to death.” The “if” was significant; Sallis knew the odds…Still, the Barnes case had its distinctions from other missing persons cases in Baltimore.

heartbreaking on too many levels to calculate. more, here.

Meet Kevin Clash. As an average teenager growing up in Baltimore in the 1970s, Kevin had very different aspirations from his classmates—he wanted to be a puppeteer. More specifically, he wanted to be part of Jim Henson’s team of Muppeteers, the creative force responsible for delivering the magic of Sesame Street on a daily basis. With a supportive family behind him every step of the way, Kevin made those dreams come true.

more, here.

[look of the hour]

The most intriguing phrase Simon has used regarding The Wire is to say that it is about “the death of work.” By this he means not just the loss of jobs, though there certainly is that, but the loss of integrity within our systems of work, the “juking of stats,” the speaking of truth to power having been replaced with speaking what is most self-serving and pleasing to the higher-ups. In a poker game with the mayor, one folds on a flush to allow the mayor to win. (As opposed to the freelance stickup man Omar, who, beholden to no one, shows up at at a kingpin’s poker night with two pistols and the Dennis Lehane line “I believe these four 5s beat your full house.”) Police departments manipulate their stats for the politicians; schools do the same; newspapers fake stories with their eye on prizes and stockholders. Moreover, in the world of The Wire almost everyone who tries to buck the system and do right is punished, often severely and grotesquely and heartbreakingly. Accommodation is survival at the most basic level, although it is also lethal to the soul.

yes. want this book.

oh and this one, too.

they’re both mentioned in the above-linked “review” which is really a phenomenal essay about The Wire written by Lorrie Moore, who has written many fine things, including one of my favorite short stories (link is an abstract, so don’t click if you hate spoilers).