Blought #42: The Wire Pt. 3
Here we are, the final installment of my The Wire Blought Series. I’ve dug into the issues that surround organized crime, family structures, education, and even public service workers. Today we take a look at the politics of the inner city and how the news media can play a small but impactful role.
Apart from the depictions of violence and drug dealing in HBO’s The Wire one of my favorite narratives on the show was that of the political arena. David Simon’s background as a journalist is without a doubt the backbone of the series. He and his staff found ways to peel back layers of inner city Black life that no other show in my opinion has been able to do, at least authentically. One of the key players fans got to know from the start was state senator Clay Davis.
Clay Davis was a witty and slick talking politician who used his government connections as well as his relationships in the streets to turn a profit for his personal financial gain. He pocketed bribes from Stringer Bell in a shady building development on Baltimore’s shore line throughout Season 3. Davis also took “political contributions” from Frank Sabotka, with Sabotka hoping to get a levy passed that would have helped the docks secure more incoming cargo shipments resulting in more work.
Instead of improving his community Davis focused on his career and pockets. His political and business aspirations trumped his civil service duty. A real life example of this is councilman TJ Dow of Cleveland’s seventh ward. Dow has tried to block projects that promote economic growth in his ward which also happens to be the very ward I grew up in and lived in for most of my life. Dow has even skated around paying property taxes on his home for several years.
School administrators have also been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Barbara Byrd Bennett used to be the Cleveland Schools CEO. After running the school district into the ground in the 90’s and early 2000’s she left for Chicago where she did the same thing.
In 2016 Byrd-Bennett was found guilty of taking bribes and kickbacks while costing the Chicago Public Schools over $20 million. Detroit, another predominantly black city was also steeped in the midst of a corruption scandal. In 2014 Carolyn Starkey-Darden, the city’s former director of grant development and her husband Anthony Darden stole a reported $6.17 million in federally subsidized money.
What sticks out the most about Byrd-Bennett, Dow, Darden and even the fictional Clay Davis is the fact that they are all black politicians who serve predominantly black constituents.
On The Wire the mayor of Baltimore is Clarence Royce. In season four Royce is running for re-election against councilman Tommy Carcetti. Carcetti’s largest hurdle in the mayoral race was the fact that he was white. In 2010 Baltimore was over 60% black. A majority black city is almost always going to side with the candidate who looks most like them. I don’t need statistics for this one, I’m Black. That could explain why people like Byrd-Bennett and Dow can get over on the people that they swear to serve.
The dilemma for inner city Black voters is whether to vote for a white politician when the history of white politicians and black voters isn’t the prettiest, or vote for a black politician who could be crooked.
Without a second guess Mayor Royce pulled his political race card. Who better to serve blacks than a black mayor right? Royce was more concerned about courting developers and hiding his buddy Clay Davis’ shady deals as well as covering the asses of his higher up in the Baltimore PD. Carcetti wanted to lower the crime rate, fix the schools and the city’s crippling budget deficit.
Thankfully Carcetti won and began his term as mayor by the end of season four. Politicians have more control over our lives than we sometimes want to admit. In America’s inner cities, politicians can either answer the call or make political and financial gains. There isn’t much in between.
When it comes to news media coverage in the 21st century its no secret that television is king. While print media continues its investigative role, television news seems to be more focused on entertaining the masses versus informing them. In 2013 CNN’s president Jeff Zucker promised to bring more “attitude” to the channel’s programming. To me that sounds like he wants more excitement than he does news.
In Season 5, The Wire took a radical step when it decided to devote time to a story surrounding The Baltimore Sun. We got to know Gus Haynes, the city desk editor, as well as two of writers who serve under him. Scott and Alma are both young writers with experience and hunger. In a city like Baltimore, uncovering a worthwhile story can have its own hurdles.
Gus wants stories that are news, not just special interests. Scott falls into a trap set by Jimmy McNulty when McNulty hatches a scheme to create a fake serial killer in hopes of getting resources to investigate Marlo Stanfield.
The one redeeming story that was investigated during season 5 was that of Mike’s. Mike followed around Bubbles, a series regular from the beginning to the end, and documented Bubbles’ struggle with drugs to him finally getting himself clean. If you watched the series, we were all proud to see Bubbles finally kick his habit. The story was eloquent and shined a positive light on one of the darker spots of Baltimore, rampant drug use.
Urban crime has found itself at the center of the entertainment world for a while now. Television news media seems to be infatuated with Chicago’s crime rate and not how it got to this high nor how to fix it. News media portrays inner-city violence as a phenomena of angry blacks makes going out and committing murderous rampages nationwide. Not to mention the convenient agenda setting with the ongoing gun laws battle. Urban crime is in fact at its lowest point in nearly a quarter century.
The reporting of the crime pandemic is simply blown out of proportion. Baltimore and D.C. account for over half of the urban crime increase reported in 2015. If you remember the economic factors I explored in part one, most crime is bred through a lack of opportunity. News outlets rely too much on “If it bleeds it leads”. The average American viewer may look at the news and see an exponential rise in crime in cities like Baltimore and Chicago and believe that the same can be said about where they live.
Violent crime rates have fallen from 80 per 1,000 people in 1993 to 23 per 1,000 in 2013. The news media sensationalizes gun violence without educating or informing the public about the truth. Gun violence has decreased while violent crime coverage continues to increase. Inner city crime speaks to a larger national issue and is isn’t gun violence or even police brutality. Poverty has been the largest determinant of crime in the urban black community for nearly a century.
Inner-city strife encompasses systematically broken families, lack of sufficient funding for school systems and work programs for teens, understaffed and overworked PD’s, politicians using their race and power to get over and media portrayals that paints an entire race as an aggressor. What The Wire did was frame the realities of the hood and present them in a way that audiences from all demographics can enjoy.