#85 The Wire
March 9, 2008 by clander
Though white people have a natural aversion to television, there are some exceptions. For white people to like a TV show it helps if it is: critically acclaimed, low-rated, shown on premium cable, and available as a DVD box set.
The latter is important so that white people can order it from Netflix and tell their friends “they are really into <insert series> and I watched ten episodes in a row in the weekend. I’m almost caught up.”
If you attempt to talk about an episode they have not seen yet, they will scream and cover their ears. In white culture, giving away information about a film or TV series is considered as rude as spitting on your mothers grave. It is an unforgivable offense.
Recent series that have fallen into this category include The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and most recently The Wire.
For the past three years, whenever you say “The Wire” white people are required to respond by saying “it’s the best show on television.” Try it the next time you see a white person! Though now they might say “it WAS the best show on television.”
So why do they love it so much? It all comes down to authenticity. A long time ago, someone started a rumor that when The Wire is on TV, actual police wires go quiet because all the dealers are watching the show. Though this is not true, it seems plausible enough to white people and has imbued the show with the needed authenticity to be deemed acceptable.
The popularity of this show among white people has create a unique opportunity for personal gain.
If you need to impress a white person, tell them you are from Baltimore. They will immediately ask you about The Wire and how accurate it is. You should confirm that it is “like a documentary of the streets,” the white person will then slowly shake their head and say “man” or “wow.” You will be seen in an entirely new light.
If you are not from Baltimore but the white person you are talking to is, they might start asking you a lot of questions. In this situation, you should just say you left when you were young but you still have a lot of cousins there but you don’t like to go back to visit. This will remove all doubts and they can go back to telling you about how John from Accounting needs to “stop snitching” about their two hour lunch breaks.
Note: Tonight (Sunday March 9, 200 
is the series finale. It would be considered proper etiquette to ask a white person about the show on Monday.
i have never heard of this before, hence i am black
I think people aren’t getting that it isnt just about the Wire. The point is more about critically acclaimed box sets. I go to college and white people love nothing more than to watch 10 straight episodes of entourage or LOST and go ” Oh man I’m so hooked I’m almost caught up”
I love “The Wire” and I am white, when other people ask me why I love The Wire so much the words “It’s just so real” have come out of my mouth…”you know, the dialogue is just so accurate”. Like I would have any idea at all as to the authenticity of The Wire’s depiction of Baltimore’s drug dealers. To incremenate myself further I have also said to other wire fan’s ” dude I just totally want to live in The Wire” and “Stringer Bell is just so hot”.
to incriminate you further, you used the word incremenate.
crikey, I have never heard of the Wire. Does that mean I am not white enough?
Crap. This all applies to me. I’m from Baltimore. I like the show. I feel special when they reference things I know about the city. Too bad I lived on the White side of town.
No problem Greff. Just head to Lexington Market after sundown. Ever see the Omega Man?
I’ve seen the Omega Man! B’more is my city!!!!!!
who’s the omega man?
haha I got in the habit of riding my bike down through the projects west of the MLK at sundown last summer…
People gave me the weirdest looks, this honky white person housesitting in Bolton Hill just cruising through…
Sometimes the police would follow me though, my rationale is that when you see a skinny white kid off the MLK he’s either making a deal or about to get mugged and either way they need to be there.
Hooray for B-Mo
I haven’t seen “The Wire”. Maybe I’m not as in touch with being white as I think I am. Could I be adopted?
http://www.jonesview.wordpress.com
What’s funny about The Wire is that the creators of the show are diehard White liberals, but they show blacks in the worst–and most realistic–possible light!
I’ve seen the people who created the show in interviews, and they were spouting the same type of negro-lovin’, limousine-liberal nonsense about race that everyone else in Hollywood does. It’s bizarre that people with such beliefs could produce a show which portrays the majority-black city of Baltimore as, basically, Hell on Earth!
I don’t think it’s bizarre at all that white limousine liberals made a show about how terrible black people have it in the inner city, and isn’t it a shame society doesn’t give them more opportunity?!?
let’s take a look at what’s wrong in “Wire fan”’s post:
‘Worst- and most realistic-possible light’: If poster honestly thinks that this is the most-realistic possible light in which one could show a inner city black people, they are horribly mistaken. I am from the inner city, and as gritty as the portrayal is in the series, the focus is solely on the drug business and the criminal element. There is very little focus on anything else until the introduction of politics as a major theme in the fourth season. Furthermore, even the ‘bad guys’ of the show are relatable. They aren’t just stereotyped evil, as in other cop shows. They have their own lives and their own motivations for what they do. This is fleshed out in the fourth season as well when they focus falls upon the education system. I went to public school, and received a good education, largely thanks to the encouragement from my parents. However, the Boston Public School System leaves a lot to be desired. Also, the character of D’Angelo Barksdale is a genuine human that you cannot help but feel sorry for.
‘Negro-lovin’: This just makes me think you’re trying to get a rise out of us.
BTW: I am white, and I shamelessly love The Wire and consider it the best show on TV because from what I have seen growing up, the situations are fairly believable, if dramatized a good deal for the screen. Clearly ‘Wire fan’ is an idiot racist conservative and is largely missing the point of the show, which is to highlight how our society, while not encouraging this activity, still sets the machinery in motion to provide the need for the criminal element as portrayed in The Wire. Also, the second season focuses on the stevedores and importation of illicit goods, which is pretty much an entirely white section of the criminal enterprise.
spot-on.
agree - if that first guy is a “Wire fan” and he thinks the show is about “black people” (and not about drug dealers - what he expects them to be like the drug dealers wearing Armani suits in 2 Fast 2 Furious?), his IQ is obviously a bit too low for this blog. And jokes in general. THINK THINGS THROUGH, man.
I am glad to see that someone here has actually seen “The Wire” starting in seaon(s) 1 & 2. I am from Maryland and grew up only 45 minutes from Baltimore, and 20 minutes from down town Washington D.C.
The last 3-4 seasons of “The Wire” focused most of its energy on the drug trade in Baltimore, where as the starting season was evenly split between the drug trade of the inner city black neighborhoods and the underbelly of the harbor district where white “Stevedores” worked.
You know the drugs have to get into this country some how and if your under the impression it is through the innner city neighborhoods of black people, your sadly mistaken.
uh oh- is your corporate sponsor getting you to advertise for their product? cause that would be pretty great.
thanks.
I am a honkey, and I have never seen “the wire.”
Whats a “honky”?
White people also like The Atlantic. If you read this article (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/bowden-wire) about The Wire from The Atlantic, you will no doubt be able to impress a white person with your superior inside knowledge about the creator of The Wire, and be able to say you obtained it from a favorite white-person source….double whammy.
I am white, and your blog is great! Loved the idea and the humor in your writing style! I’ll be back I am sure!
so like, did you put up this post cause, like, it’s the last episode of the wire, and like, all the white people would get all like “yo, man, that sucks, the last episode” and then post responses here and all and make your blog even more, like, popular and shit?
dude, that’s some f’ed up shit right there…
It depends how it ends. If it ends like the Sopranos they I will renounce m love of the show. Marlo needs to take a bullet tonight.
if you watched the wire since the beginning the final 3 episodes is the best.
Marlo , Omar and senator clive davis ………
Crazy and you will be saying oh shit !!!!!
No you would be saying shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!
man it would be awesome if HBO sponsored this post. But they didn’t.
I’m bout as krakka as they come, but what in the hell is “The Wire???”
OMAR COMIN’! OMAR COMIN’ Y’ALL!!!
i went and downloaded the whole first season, then watched ‘em back to back all weekend!! mos def the best show on tv.
‘the farmers in the dell, the farmer’s in the dell..”
McNulty is a hero…
Mcnulty is a drunk and an idiot lolololol
Yeah but McNulty has a nice azz yo!
yea, and like, cause everyone watched the show, then baltimore will be, like, all cleaned up and there’ll be no more drug dealers and shootings, and everything’ll all be all like lovey-dovey and everyone will live happily ever after…
so dude, like, tell us more stuff that white people like that will, like, make the world better…
The writers of The Wire do have incredibly strident political views that luckily do not make it into the show much; it could have been a really hackneyed Message drama. I certainly wouldn’t say, though, that it shows “blacks in the worst–and most realistic–possible light.” It’s a show narrowly focused on police and criminals, and it does that extremely well.
If you’re going to pose as a Baltimore native, I think you’d be better off complaining about the light in which your city is portrayed by David Simon et al. Then the Wire watcher can feel guilty, which he probably likes.
I hate this show, that all!!!
how about “imbued” rather than “imbibed?”
Ow, this hits close to home. However, if I remember right, in the special features they claimed that only 1/3rd of the viewing audience was white because most are unwilling to take a chance on the show due to the gritty content and the fact that only 1/3rd of the characters are white.
hey, did’ya ever see that show about four guys in a band and they looked like that other band called the insects or beetles or somethin’, and they ran around a lot and sang and stuff, the monkeys i think it was called….yea, white people like that show…
white people don’t like ‘the wire’. that’s for black people.
well, I don’t like.
white people love grammar, gotta respect it
this must arise from their love of teaching english abroad.
White people especially love Kelsey Grammar. He makes me feel safe.
I allowed my HBO subscription to lapse.
Does this make me less or more white?
I have never seen this show, so I must not be white… aww shucks!
and they also liked that show about that old guy who found oil when he, like, shot at the ground, and bought this house in hollywood…his son was really stupid…but i liked the granny…she was funny…yea, huh?
but white people didn’t like the show about that junkyard guy, and i think his son was on it, and he kept, like, insulting that woman cause she was uuuuugly!!! yea, white people didn’t like it cause it was all black people…
the wire was not full of black people.
if you think that you are missing the whole show.
open your mind up !!!
lol this is what inspired him to make this blog
aaaah shit. now i am going to have to watch the show. and i am black.
and how bout that other show with the building superintendent, and he was funny, and he was, like, “”Eez not mai yob” and all, yuck yuck…but white people didn’t like that show cause he was, like, porto rican or sumtin’
Lauren Burk, a freshman at Auburn University and Eva Carson of UNC mudered last week by negroids.
How the so-called “Civil Rights” Movement in America has led to loss of the most important civil right of all: life.
The almost simultaneous murders of White co-eds at two different, prominent universities, Auburn and University of North Carolina, should bring attention to an epidemic of brutal African-American crimes against White women in the United States.
The murder of Eve Carson, Student Body President of UNC has shocked her campus and its surrounding community to its core. Ms. Carson was found murdered in the middle of an intersection just outside downtown Chapel Hill on Wednesday, March 5th. Her body … which had two gunshot wounds, including one to the head, laid just a mile away from her SUV, which was left abandoned. Bank ATM video revealed that the murderer-carjacker, an African American, apparently attempted to get cash from Carson’s stolen ATM card shortly after the crime.
In a similar recent incident, police arrested another African American attacker, Courtney L. Lockhart, 23, for the grisly murder and attempted rape of Auburn University freshman co-ed, Lauren Burk, on March 4. Courtney was arrested on March 7 after having brutally pistol-whipped the face of another White victim, 72-year-old Marjorie Llewellyn of Newnan, Alabama and briefly kidnapping her at gunpoint during an armed robbery and attempted carjacking earlier in the day.
The recent murders of two White coeds at major universities by Black predators underscore a racial reality that the mass media in America hides from the public: the tens of millions of White victims of Black criminality in America.
OH SURE, cover the “Duke Lacrosse” case ad nauseum, but not these.
Sounds like a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Or, that the seeds of strange fruit are severely bitter. Clearly you dislike it. But what does it mean when a cook won’t eat?
guilty…although i don’t bother buying dvd box sets. i just find a friend with HBO, go to their place and eat their potato chips.
–
http://canibeexcused.org
and that show about like that space ship going through space and like the captain was always like “beam me up scotty” and the pointy-eared guy” was all “that’s illogical” and stuff, but white people didn’t like it…too many aliens.
and that show about that dog with really long hair, and, dude, that dog could like save everyone, no problem, and he was smart, yo, he could bark back to let you know what you said…awesome…but only dogs watched that show, not white people.
I love The Wire. I’ll miss it when it’s gone.
To cheer ourselves up, we should all go here…
http://moveitmoveit.wordpress.com
maybe a couple of cats, but they was scared
White People also love Homicide: Life on the Street because it’s also set in Baltimore. White People are tired of crime shows set in New York City or Los Angeles.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
Anyone white person who has not seen The Wire has not achieved “advanced” white person status. These are the people who wear trucker hats, pseudo-vintage t-shirts, and think Ikea represents “modern” design.
then there’s those shows about nature where all those weird animals are, like, chasing and eating each other and shit…damn…but only animals in, like, zoos and stuff watch those shows, they’re kind of boring.
@30, Portnoy’s complaint:
You are an embarrassment to sentient beings of all races, language, the printed word, the internet, and Phillip Roth.
In that order.
sheeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
-clay davis
For all the page views you are getting, you really should move your site to a private domain, host ads, and get rich. And then you can write about how white people love blogging for a living.
then there’s that show about little people with antennas and they’re, like, blue and shit and speak this weird language…but only two year old white people and midgets with tv’s in their stomachs watch that show
dude! (he says while all satirical comments about classifying who watches certain shows go ignored)
This blog is usually pretty clever. 95% of the people who leave comments on this blog are pretty ignorant.
Hockey (the one on ice and how the other one is played only by women)
or how about that show about really bad guys who drove SUVs and hung out in, like, a strip club, and were all like “gabagool” and “vaffangul to you too” and “hooooo!!!” and stuff…but only overweight new jersey mobsters watched that show anyway..
hey #44 idiots: Hooo! vaffangull!
ooh, and the show about this really ugly family, and like, the dad had bolts in his neck and shit and the grandpa had these white streaks in his hair and all…and the kid was weird…but only, like, frankenstein and dracula watched that show…well, the werewolf did too, i think
im sure you have heard this ,,, white folks love blogs……espicially blogs about white people …..
how’bout that show with the guy in costume, and he had like, these pointy ears and a cape and he lived in a cave and shit, and always saved everyone…man, bats loved that show!
I’ve heard this is a good show. Is it?