{"id":563,"date":"2008-09-11T09:08:46","date_gmt":"2008-09-11T17:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/?p=563"},"modified":"2008-09-11T09:08:46","modified_gmt":"2008-09-11T17:08:46","slug":"the-audacity-of-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/2008\/09\/the-audacity-of-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"The Audacity of Despair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During the Olympics, President Bush sat down for a rather lengthy interview with Bob Costas.\u00a0 Costas began a question about China\u2019s problems by saying, \u201cI know America has its share of problems, but\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Almost before Costas could finish his question, Bush rushed and said, \u201cAmerica doesn\u2019t have problems.\u201d\u00a0 Clearly President Bush and David Simon are not looking at the same America.\u00a0 Simon, former journalist for The Baltimore Sun<\/em>, acclaimed author of Homicide <\/em>and The Corner<\/em>, and the writer and producer of the greatest television series ever, The Wire<\/em>, is currently serving as the writer-in-residence at Cal Berkeley.\u00a0 Yesterday afternoon, he gave a lecture entitled \u201cThe Wire<\/em>:\u00a0 The Audacity of Despair.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hosts of the event, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities<\/a>, seriously underestimated his popularity as they used a room with only about 180 seats or so.\u00a0 Almost that many more stood or sat in the aisles.\u00a0 Before he began, Simon quipped, \u201cWhere were you people when we were trying to pull numbers on HBO?\u201d Simon spent much of the lecture bemoaning the state of politics and journalism in America and the influences they had on the creation of The Wire.\u00a0 \u201cThe Audacity of Despair\u201d was such an appropriate title given the likes of Bush\u2019s naivete and McCain and Obama\u2019s inability or unwillingness to get beyond petty bickering to talk about real key issues.\u00a0 Simon argued that our politicians will never get past ad hominem attacks because our eviscerated journalists will never hold their feet to the fire.\u00a0 A former journalist himself and the \u201cvictim\u201d of a 1995 buy-out, Simon spent much time discussing the downfall of serious journalism, the barrenness of internet news, and the possible return of serious reporting through smaller, local, on-line subscription services.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Simon settled into his discussion about The Wire<\/em> by recalling a recent trip to Harvard.\u00a0 When the question and answer portion at the Harvard lecture came around, he grew nervous anticipating the intelligent, impossible-to-answer questions that these brilliant audience members would ask.\u00a0 The first question from one of those ivory tower academicians:\u00a0 \u201cWhy did you kill Stringer Bell?\u201d\u00a0 He knew then that he would be o.k.<\/p>\n

So much of The Wire<\/em>\u2018s revelation of government inefficiency and corruption seems unconscionable.\u00a0 Simon, however, reminded the audience to consider Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, and especially the reports of barges left in the canal.\u00a0 During Katrina, one of these barges rammed into the levee and caused it to flood.\u00a0 In a recent report on the eve of Gustav\u2019s landfall, Simon read another account of three barges left in the canal.\u00a0 Why could these barges not be moved away from the levees?\u00a0 Simon argued that, in light of instances such as these, evil is not necessarily sinister people doing sinister deeds, although our country certainly has its fair share of that.\u00a0 Rather, evil often involves people who simply do not care or people who simply want to have a better day at someone else\u2019s expense.\u00a0 Their mindset, Simon argued, \u201cAs long as it doesn\u2019t fall on me.\u201d Simon asserted that as a society we are culpable in this evil because we fail to ask the epic \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0 Instead of holding our leaders accountable for their failings and shortcomings, we accept their \u201cshit\u201d and call it gold.\u00a0 Again, he referred to the loss of the \u201cwhy?\u201d in journalism as the main source of its downfall in America.<\/p>\n

Simon wanted to assure the audience that he was remaining non-partisan in these comments.\u00a0 He added, \u201cMy liberal ass is too busy running around beating up on as many people as possible.\u201d\u00a0 This is one of Simon\u2019s great attributes, and The Wire<\/em>\u2018s as well.\u00a0 No one gets away easy.\u00a0 During the question and answer session, he referred to his show as a parable.\u00a0 If pressed further, he might have drawn similarities between his parables and Jesus\u2019 parables, both of which undo the ruling powers of the day, expose injustice, shed light on virtue in strange places, and re-order the status quo.\u00a0 The first shall be last and the last shall be first.<\/p>\n

When Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin ridicule Barack Obama for being \u201cjust a community organizer,\u201d they implicitly ridicule and belittle the communities in which he worked.\u00a0 Simon and The Wire<\/em>\u2018s gift to American society is that he takes those communities seriously, humanizing them in a way few other television series or politicians ever do.\u00a0 The problems that face these communities are gargantuan, and these problems, along with society and the government\u2019s inability or unwillingness to respond efficiently to them, enrages Simon.\u00a0 He peppers his speeches with the occasional curse word and claims that anger, while not useful, is certainly not useless.\u00a0 Perhaps we can harness a righteous anger creatively to combat implicit (and explicit) racism, greed, homophobia, and violence in our society.<\/p>\n

Simon quoted Camus\u2019 predicament:\u00a0 to commit to a righteous cause in the face of extreme circumstances is absurd.\u00a0 To not commit to a righteous cause in the face of extreme circumstances is also absurd.\u00a0 However, only one choice offers the opportunity for human dignity.\u00a0 Simon concluded, in part, by encouraging the audience to pick one of those righteous causes with which they connect and to fight, all the while knowing that you will not necessarily solve anything.\u00a0 \u201cAt the least,\u201d he said, \u201cthose bastards can\u2019t say they weren\u2019t told.\u201d<\/p>\n

One highlight of the lecture was a brief reference he gave to his current project and upcoming series, Treme<\/em><\/a>, which focuses on a community in the ninth ward of New Orleans that is home to many local musicians.\u00a0 The series, not a crime or war drama like his last two outings, focuses on these musicians as they return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n

David Simon, his writing, and his television series are not for the faint of heart.\u00a0 He is no idealist, nor will he abide any, especially those that blindly claim America\u2019s innocence and purity.\u00a0 At an environmental conference at Yale earlier this year, I heard a speaker describe a prophet as simply someone who describes the situation as it is.\u00a0 If that is the case, then Simon is one of the greatest prophets of our day.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I am also reminded of the ways in which prophets are treated throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.\u00a0 It certainly did not seem like Simon was too bothered by his series\u2019 low ratings.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the Olympics, President Bush sat down for a rather lengthy interview with Bob Costas.\u00a0 Costas began a question about China\u2019s problems by saying, \u201cI know America has its share of problems, but\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Almost before Costas could finish his question, Bush rushed and said, \u201cAmerica doesn\u2019t have problems.\u201d\u00a0 Clearly President Bush and David Simon are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Audacity of Despair<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"During the Olympics, President Bush sat down for a rather lengthy interview with Bob Costas.\u00a0 Costas began a question about China's problems by saying, "I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/2008\/09\/the-audacity-of-despair\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Audacity of Despair\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During the Olympics, President Bush sat down for a rather lengthy interview with Bob Costas.\u00a0 Costas began a question about China's problems by saying, "I\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/2008\/09\/the-audacity-of-despair\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pop Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-11T17:08:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/files\/2008\/09\/davidsimon-200x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"J. 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