ceived notion of some people; it was a
disconnect [between] two tribes that
don't know each other. I was the only
Jew these guys have seen in the last 20
years, since the Koreans took over the
corner groceries. There's no connection.
[Jews] don't exist for them."
Ironically, Simon has been accused
of anti-Semitism. There are two regular
characters on The Wire with Jewish
names. Rhonda Pearlman, a conscien-
tious assistant state's attorney, is one
of a handful of generally positive char-
acters in the show. The other, Maurice
Levy, is a venal, amoral drug lawyer.
"Why did we make this guy Jewish?
Because when I was covering the drug
trade for 13 years for the Sun, most of
the major drug lawyers were Jewish.
Some of them are now disbarred and
others are not but came pretty close.
Anyone who is anyone in law enforce-
ment in Baltimore knows the three or
four guys Maury Levy is patterned on.
"If I have people from every other
tribe in Baltimore portrayed negatively,
[if] everyone is maligned in some way,
how can I not do that to the Jewish
guy? How can I pull that punch? At that
point, I'm just being hypocritical. Here
are good people from my own tribe
who say, `How can you do that, and my
answer is, `How can I not?"'
Serious Message
That's not to say that he hasn't had his
own ethnic problems, but those were
directed at him because he was white,
not Jewish. Some people resented the
fact it was a white man telling this
black story.
For example, in 1997 when The
Corner was released in hardcover,
Simon arranged to have one of the kids
whose story he tells accompany him
on a promotional tour. On a West Coast
call-in radio show, Ishmael Reed, the
black author and activist, called in and
yelled at the kid.
Reed, says Simon, was "furious" and
accused the teenager "of being manipu-
lated and led around by this white writ-
er who was using him to foster a nega-
tive image of African Americans. [The
young man], to his great credit, said it
wasn't like there was a . black writer on
the corner waiting to tell this story."
Later, when the book was being
filmed for HBO, there were tensions
between Charles Dutton, the African-
American director, and Simon. "I think
he struggled with the fact that I'm
white," Simon remembers. "In the end
we did work together, and I'd work with
him again. But I think he would have
preferred it if I was black."
On the other hand, Spike Lee, who
once argued that only a black man
could direct X, the biography of
Malcolm X, loves The Wire and came
"this close" to directing an episode
this season. But the timing was bad.
Perhaps next season, if HBO renews the
series.
Certainly, The Wire is one of the few
shows on the air that is both entertain-
ing and has a serious message: in this
case, that something must be done
about the drug trade.
Simon favors legalizing it and using
the money spent fighting drugs and
imprisoning dealers to provide educa-
tion and social welfare programs. Of
course, he understands it's not going to
happen. The political system, he says,
"is paralyzed by ideology and partisan
rancor."
And that is why David Simon isn't
smiling. 7
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The fourth season of The Wire
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ensemble cast of unknowns. He
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conditioned to laugh by an actor's
past performances but to grow to
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characters.
He feels one of the reasons he
is so successful is that he breaks
down traditional sitcom walls that
place paramount importance on
where the cameras are. Instead, he
reverts to his old Broadway days,
directing stage plays and then
worrying about the cameras. "I
think the actor and writers respect
me for that," he said.
Burrows' newest series, The
Class, is about a group of 20-
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59