Got that Obama!

Who among us is surprised by this?

Sheriff’s deputies and investigators have broken a heroin distribution ring that dished out narcotics across more than half of Sullivan County.

<…>

The alleged dealers were pushing a variety of heroin that they called “Obama.” Chaboty said dealers are known to stamp the glassine wax paper that carries the heroin with brand names — like “Black Death” or “Blue Sunshine” — so that users can identify their preferred brands. This drug ring’s stamp happened to carry the new president’s surname.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Chaboty said.

Real Life Imitates The Wire, Again: Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon Indicted

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, frequently critical of The Wire for its “overly negative” portrayal of crime and corruption, was indicted today after a three-year investigation.

Dixon was charged with four counts of perjury and two counts of theft over $500, as well as theft under $500, fraudulent misappropriation by a fiduciary and misconduct in office. The charges stem in part from gifts she received from former boyfriend and developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, who was also charged earlier this week.

A grand jury indicted Dixon on 12 counts, including four counts of perjury and two counts of theft over $500. She was also charged with theft under $500, fraudulent misappropriation by a fiduciary and misconduct in office.

Dixon, a Democrat, has been the target of a nearly three-year probe by State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh into corruption at City Hall, an investigation that has centered on allegations that Dixon has used her office to award lucrative contracts to various people including her sister, her then-boyfriend and her former campaign chairman.

Oh man, this doesn’t look good:

Some of the charges center on gift cards that Dixon received from two real estate developers. According to the indictment, Dixon told one of the developers that the gift cards were going to be distributed to needy families in Baltimore. Prosecutors say that in December 2005, when Dixon was City Council president, she used 19 of 20 Best Buy gift cards for herself, purchasing personal items, including a digital camcorder, a PlayStation 2 and other electronics.

Prosecutors say that in December 2006, she used Old Navy, Best Buy and other gift cards intended for needy families for an Xbox 360, a PlayStation Portable, clothes and other items for her own use.

More, from The Sun

Below, Mayor Dixon in happier times:

Life imitates The Wire? Maybe not…

The complete five season box set release has spawned some new Wire reviews and recs.

Ran across this article at CNN.com.   The reviewer offers high praise for the series but grew up in West Baltimore and says he feels The Wire is bleaker than the world he grew up in.

Why did Cutty give Dukie such a hopeless answer? Maybe it’s because some people who never lived in a neighborhood like “The Wire” confuse hopelessness for authenticity. Yeah, I could shock you with stories of violence, but it’s so easy to slip from revelation to titillation. I start off telling you a story about how tough my school was, and soon I’m shooting it out with five drug dealers who want to steal my homework.

But I never remember West Baltimore being so hopeless. A man like Cutty wouldn’t tell a young man that he had no way out — adults rallied around kids with potential.

I even checked with some childhood friends — one who is now an undercover police officer who literally works a “wire” for the Baltimore Police Department — and we all agreed that “The Wire’s” bleakness was exaggerated.

“They made it seem like we grew up in Bosnia,” my friend, another “Wire” fan, told me.

The writer points out another scene that did ring true for him, though.  Read the full article.

Life imitates The Wire, episode 11,876

Rachel Maddow had Princeton’s Melissa Harris-Lacewell on last night to discuss the drama surrounding seats in the US Senate opened by Obama’s appointments. Naturally, the discussion focused primarily on the Blagojevich scandal.  Watch the entire segment to hear Dr. Harris-Lacewell’s parting admonition:

View “Rachel Maddow video: Senate scramble“

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Omar the Socialist vs Joe the Drug Dealer

If WordPress.com allowed embedding of Comedy Central videos, you would be watching David Simon on last night’s Colbert Report right here in the comfort and ambience of NuPac.

But noooooooooo, they don’t.  So, here.

I love that David Simon always seems cranky, even when he’s laughing.

Down to The Wire today in Raleigh

Well, it WAS his favorite show, after all

This is good strategery, given that Maryland is already strong blue.

via Huffpo

Tomorrow, members of the cast of the Peabody Award-winning drama series The Wire will attend a Backyard Brunch for Barack in Raleigh. Seven of the show’s cast members will visit the Tarheel State in support of the change Barack Obama will bring across the country and in North Carolina.

Chad Coleman (who plays Dennis “Cutty” Wise), Deidre Lovejoy (who plays Rhonda Pearlman), Jamie Hector (Marlo Stanfield), Clarke Peters (Detective Lester Freamon), Sonja Sohn (Detective Shakima “Kima” Greggs), Seth Gilliam (Sergeant Ellis Carver), and Gbenga Akinnagbe (Chris Partlow) will all appear at the backyard brunch on Sunday.

On Monday, Chad Coleman, Deidre Lovejoy, and Jamie Hector will visit UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University to encourage students to vote early. Early voting in North Carolina started October 16 and November 1 is the last day voters may take advantage of early voting.

Call For Papers

HEART OF THE CITY: BLACK URBAN LIFE ON THE WIRE

January 29-30, 2009
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Sponsored by
The Black Humanities Collective
and The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS
Please distribute widely

The Black Humanities Collective (BHC) and The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS) of the University of Michigan invite individual paper and panel proposals for our 2009 symposium, “Heart of the City: Black Urban Life on The Wire.

Critically acclaimed and nationally syndicated, HBO’s series The Wire depicts a racialized postindustrial cityscape, marred by the brutal provenance of the drug economy.  In its five seasons, the series is as much a dramatic achievement as it is a complex portrait of a black urban experience.  Featuring a predominantly black cast, The Wire is an exceptional cultural text from which to examine a wide range of urban issues, to be approached from literary, historical, political, and sociological perspectives.

This symposium proposes a critical consideration of The Wire, which treats the show as both a topic and a model of critique. Our aim is to create a space that is open and interdisciplinary. Graduate students, professors, and independent scholars working in the Humanities, the Arts, Social Sciences, Public Policy, and elsewhere are encouraged to join this collective discussion. In this sense, The Wire can serve as a common point of discussion, as a viable vehicle of social engagement in its own right and a text worthy of careful and extended investigation.

Potential paper/panel topics include:

• Urban Renewal and Decline
• Race, Place, and Visual Culture
• The Black Family
• The City as a Transnational Conduit
• Critical Masculinities and Femininities
• Media Ethics and Issues of Representation
• Sex and Sexualities in the City
• (Counter-)Public and (Counter-)Private Spheres
• Pedagogy and Educational Practice
• City and Regional Planning
• Performance and Performativity in Urban Space

To submit a paper or panel proposal, please send a 250 word abstract via email to heartofthecityconference@gmail.com. Abstracts and pr oposals are due Monday, December 1, 2008.  Acceptance notifications will be emailed by Monday December 15, 2008.

The Black Humanities Collective is an interdisciplinary graduate student and faculty organization at the University of Michigan dedicated to the intellectual and professional development of those studying Africa and its diaspora.

Bigger than the war

Defeated, gobsmacked and heartbroken.

Copy that.

Nate Fick at DNC 08-“It took seven years of hard experience to get me on this stage.”

Nate Fick was one of the early speakers in the line up for the Democratic National Convention’s final night at Invesco Stadium. He was one of the “American Voices,” a group of Americans selected to tell their stories during last night’s historic event.

Below, the text of Fick’s remarks.

Good afternoon. I’m Nathaniel Fick. My Marine platoon landed in Afghanistan on a moonlit night in 2001. A little more than a year later, we rolled into Iraq. I’ll never forget one dawn after a vicious gun battle. We’d just medevaced one of our wounded Marines, and I turned to see a small American flag hanging from a humvee’s antenna. For a second, it reminded me of the line we all know so well: “And our flag was still there.”

I registered as a Republican at 18 and voted for John McCain in 2000. It took seven years of hard experience to get me on this stage. But we cannot afford more of the same. That’s why we need Barack Obama and Joe Biden to lead us beyond the tired divisions of the past. They have the judgment to make the right decisions, leading our military, and uphold our highest ideals.

Everyone who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan has left something: a friend, a limb, a piece of their youth. In those palm groves and on those ridge lines, this is personal for us. I don’t want to retreat; I want to win.

The past seven years have been hard, often heartbreaking. Our flag, however, is still there. Let’s move forward in our quest to live up to the idea of America.

I can’t find a video of it on the DNC site yet, but I did see Fick speak. It was very moving. The part about everyone who was there “left something” reminded me of something that completely tore me up when I saw it during one of the video segments aired earlier during the convention: a young Marine spoke about how seeing the boots and helmets of  fallen comrades, arranged in lines for a memorial service, was so powerful for soldiers because they had each spent so much time living and fighting in those exact same uniforms, wearing those exact same boots.