Last month, we posted about the strange meta overlap and old wounds dying hard between, well, between a bunch of things when it came to this season of HBO’s The Wire: Baltimore and Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun, and most pointedly, present Inky ed (and former Sun editor) Bill Marimow and Wire creator/ex-Sun scribe David Simon. This, of course, was all before the Inky (most likely knowingly) blew the lid off the whole theme when their big “Homelessness In Philadelphia” package on Sunday. For those not keeping tabs on this year’s storyline, the homeless have almost become a running joke on The Wire: Well, not so much the homeless themselves as they way institutions such as media and goverment exploit them. In scene after scene this year, self-important editors jockey for Pulitzers, grandly opine in meetings about “what we want to really say about the homeless,” and endlessly ponder the “Dickensian aspects” of it all. Given the well-documented public tete-a-tete going on between Marimow and Simon, this Inky series is either a towering, colossal “fuck you” to Simon’s portrayal of the Marimow ouvre, or it’s just the most un-self-aware thing a major newspaper editor has ever done. Frankly, we don’t like to think that Marimow is the kind of guy that would air his personal beefs in the callous way that Simon has, but on the other hand, I mean, come on.
Inky: The Dickensian Aspects
Previously: Bill Marimow: Probably Not As Psyched About The Wire As You Are

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 1:07 pm.