It took me a while to appreciate the political undertones of The Wire because the writers throw so much at you that metaphors and allusions take a back seat to basic story comprehension. But after viewing the final episode and reading some of Wire creator David Simon’s recent comments, I have come to realize that this show is perhaps the greatest indictment of power, politics and capitalism ever produced for television. It may be that this level of sophistication prevented the show from ever gaining a wide appeal. But it’s audience of devoted young adults offers hope that future generations may come to understand the devastating force of wealth disparity. The problem, however, will lie in how we choose to solve it. Should young people–as they already seem to be doing–throw their energy and support behind electoral politics with candidates like Barack Obama (who incidentally calls The Wire his favorite show) preaching about “change”? Or should they abandon the idea of working within an already broken system? The subtext of The Wire indicates pretty specific answers. But for a more definitive stance, check out David Simon’s response to a similar set a questions posed by Newark Star-Ledger tv critic Alan Sepinwall:

Not that I’m announcing my support for anybody, but I’m impressed that Obama got this close to being a nominee just being part African-American. There’s a part of me that looks at that and says, “Damn, we’re getting healthier on some things.” Now, is Obama any more able to address the fact that we’re a money-obsessed oligarchy and not a democracy? I don’t think so.

I think for change to happen on a level that actually affects the structure of that oligarchy, a lot of distressing things will have to happen, and more people are going to have to suffer a great deal more. More struggle for the working class, and the middle-class is going to have to be marginalized. Wages will have to go a lot lower, the recession will have to go a lot deeper — and I think we’re in a recession and headed for some bad economic times. I think it’s going to have to go a lot deeper.

At some point, the Sunis that we paid out with money and guns are going to have to wait until we fashion whatever escape we have from that war and start ripping the country up and reducing it to a civil war. I think we’ve built a Lebanon, and once it becomes clear that we’ve built a Lebanon and condemned that region to generations of internecine violence, and it cost us 4000 troops and a veritable treasure — I hope we get out of there before it’s more — I think people are going to be angrier.

Right now we have the illusion that we’re fixing things. I don’t know for sure; I’m not there on the ground. But I’m sitting here in a room with Even Wright, who just was in Baghdad and spent weeks there interviewing everybody there and talking to Petraeus and to people on the ground, and his take on it is we’ve built another Lebanon. Right now, we’re paying people not to shoot at each other, and we’re giving people guns and saying, ‘Please don’t use these.’ At some point, somebody’s going to assert for power there, probably after we’re gone, and we’ll realize that this was over nothing, over absolutely nothing.

When that happens, maybe the next war gets harder, and when the economic structure fails to a point where people begin to realize en masse that they’ve been cheated and that their future has been marginalized, at that point maybe there’s another New Deal coming, maybe there’s another reckoning. But short of that, as long as it’s just some people in places like Baltimore, and it’s only 10 percent or 15 percent of the population we don’t need, I’m sorry, I think there’s a lot of money to be spent by a lot of people in order to keep people pacified.

By the way, if you want to not focus on what the fuck’s going on, read the newspapers. Suffer the journalism, and don’t worry: the big picture will elude you nicely.

No one in the entertainment industry is saying these things. Not even so-called liberal George Clooney–he’s been too busy stumping for Hillary Clinton. Let’s hope that Simon continues shedding light on our corrupt system with his upcoming documentary on Iraq and series on New Orleans. If more people get this sort of education through entertainment we may begin to see some serious changes.