The Wire: Episode 53 "White Out"
do not mistake a cover-up for a fix
2008-01-22
DeAngelo Starnes
I’m sure the inventor of liquid paper thought it would help those who have a propensity to make mistakes. The innocent applauded its invention. It beats scratch-outs and handwritten plug-ins, even though its use could be, sometimes, just as messy. Then there’s the second wave – the forgers/abusers of an altruistic motive. However, the trained eye catches even its most skillful use. Bottom-line, liquid paper is a tool used to modify written product. Such has been the case in "The Wire’s" newsroom.
We first saw this metaphor play out in the short but intense confrontation between Clark Johnson’s Gus Haynes and Executive Editor James C. Whiting III during the first episode of this season. If you’ll recall at the metro editors meeting, the regional affairs editor wanted to run a story about the University of Maryland’s failure to meet its desegregation goals. Whiting immediately piped up that “numbers aside, the campus has been more hospitable to minorities.” (I can’t stand the term “minority”). He supported this notion with a quip from his buddy, the dean of the journalism school, who thought Black faculty and students felt “better” about the school’s reputation. No supporting reasons for why Black faculty and students suddenly felt better about the school’s reputation. No underlying rationale for why Black faculty and students should feel better about UM. All that mattered was that his boy told him that. Consequently, he killed the desegregation story so that the paper “could do some more reporting [to] get a real sense of how UM is perceived by minorities.” After all, he said immediately before, “Race is beside the point.”
But race is the point in many things. While the media is quick to throw out statistics that one in three Black men are in the criminal justice system (I happen to be related to at least four such anuses), they don’t tell you there are more young Black men in college than in the criminal justice system. I’m sure you didn’t know that.
The media prefers to play up the Black male as Black thug stereotype. It seems to me, however, that the high number of Black men in college is a better story than either the University of Maryland falling short of its desegregation goals, or the sudden positive love the Black faculty and students have for the school. But in last week’s episode, the white cub reporter, Scott Templeton, picks up on Whiting’s mission to white out the realities of Black life, “You don’t need a lot of context to examine …”
Right! That’s the vibe. Wipe out the context. And isolate the limited amount of evidence you have to paint a broader picture to suit the agenda you, the writer/creator, have.
As Whiting went on to say, “Limit the scope to not get bogged down in the details.” And what’s the purpose of limiting the scope? What’s the rationale for avoiding the details? Answer: the details and the context are painful for white society to face. Because then you have to examine the cause. Because then you have to think about the controllers of the cause. While culprits sit on both sides of the aisle, running doesn’t solve the problem. It prolongs it. More importantly, it exposes subconscious racism.
Case in point: Tiger running from the “lynching” comment made by his white female reporter friend on the Golf Channel. (Y’all didn’t know? She made a joke that Tiger’s competitors should lynch him in the alley, I guess, in order to help them win tournaments. It f**ks me up that a woman made the lynching comment to begin with.) You can’t use “lynch” in relation to a brotha in the same sentence and think it’s cool. “Innocent” joke my ass, it ain’t funny.
To follow that up with a noose on the cover of Golfweek as some symbol of support for the suspended reporter?! That multiplies the insult – exponentially. Like John Saunders said on ESPN’s "Sports Reporters," an off-the-cuff remark on live television is one thing; putting it in print is another. A cover like that doesn’t go out without the consensus of money-men.
Meanwhile, controllers of the media don’t think it’s sexy to examine the details and the context that leads to the pain because “who’s gonna read that?” And that’s because they’ve invested so much time and money in creating the Black thug stereotype – a stereotype that’s been indelibly ingrained into our collective subconscious.
And, so, when Templeton peddles his fantasy of a thirteen-year-old kid wheelchair-bound courtesy of a stray bullet, Whiting has his liquid paper. Stereotype wins over “facts” supported by credible, objective evidence. The young white cub reporter had more credence than the grizzled veteran Black city editor (I’ve experienced similar pushing out by white colleagues). In the media, Black life is a figment of some white man’s imagination. And the rest of us buy it as reality.
On to this week’s episode:
- A lot of parallelism this week.
- Batting lead-off was the parallel between McNulty’s and Templeton’s falsification scheme. The common thread is focused on a single goal: winning at the expense of nonwhite people and the truth. That’s one of the tenets of white supremacy. As McNulty said with emotional conviction, “[‘they’] don’t get to win, we get to win.”
- Is the Pulitzer Prize for writing limited to the written page? Simon’s novelistic television is just as powerful as any book I’ve read. Maybe I’m old-fashioned but, generally, I feel the power of knowledge comes from reading the written word. Reading is to the mind what going to the gym is for the body. Television is so stunted because the context and details are eliminated. "The Wire" is different. I have never seen the screen approximate so closely what you get from books as I have on "The Wire."
- Brilliant writing entails capturing not only the headlines but foreseeing the future. George Orwell and Octavia Butler are heroes to those who pierce the Wizard’s veil. So how timely was this episode when the broadcast was on the same day as the underplayed headline of the LA Times firing its third editor for refusing to cut millions of dollars from its newsroom budget? The order came from “Chicago” which thinks it can squeeze a few more bucks out of what? Sensationalism? White-out?
Gus asked the poignant question, “How come there’re cuts in the newsroom when the company’s still profitable?” My theory is that things are so bad, worse than reported, that an uprising is inevitable if the people truly knew how bad they’re getting f**ked. Especially when 99% of us are the ones getting f**ked by the one percent Have Mores.
The Have Mores dictate that you don’t print that information. And to ensure it, they cut the information-distribution staff. More important, the Have Mores encourage disinformation and non-information.
On this issue, The Wire is telling us something. It might be flying under the radar because we tune in for Black Thugs. But the thematic emphasis has been on falsification and doing more with less. That’s what the slaves had to deal with. That’s niggerization. And when white people get niggerized anesthetically, the whole society is in trouble. And this isn’t the Congressional Black Caucus sounding an alarm that is downplayed by crossover politicians like Barack Obama. Look up and around you, white people are getting the nigga treatment. If that’s not alarming to you, you’re reading this from the After-Life.
- They smoked Omar out. Wow. Torture’s a bitch. As my girl, Snoop, said, “F**ked up plan if you ask me.” But TV likes torture. I’d like to see the fantasizers actually get tortured and see how they romanticize that s**t then.
- Clay Davis. Marion Barry. Another parallelism. And to bolster that with an Ashy Larry appearance? “On the advice of my attorney, I ain’t gonna answer that. Y’all trying to incriminate me here.” Was that the street means of invoking the Fifth?
- I love seeing Michael being a kid. Him at the amusement park reminds me of a time when I was doing the same. It breaks my heart to see him living the Street Life.
- Let’s hope that McNulty and Templeton get got with that lying.
There’s more in the noggin, but hit me on the email for elongated discussion cuz I know The Wire brings that watercooler out in all of us.
DeAngelo Starnes is a freelance writer and attorney who resides with his wife and son in Denver, CO. He welcomes direct constructive feedback at deangelo_starnes@hotmail.com.
Read DeAngelo on Episode 55: Antagonists
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Read DeAngelo on Episode 54: Transitions
Read DeAngelo on Episode 53: Not For Attribution
Read DeAngelo on Episode 52: Unconfirmed Reports
Read DeAngelo on Episode 51: More With Less
