chaplin

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

What Obama should know about power

Presumably Barack Obama hasn't had time to watch all of "The Wire". If he can only manage one it should be the episode from Season Four called "Unto Others". It begins with the scene (left) where Tommy Carcetti, who's running for mayor, has a talk with former officeholder Tony.

Tony explains to him what it was like on his first day in the job. There he was, installed behind the big desk, when his aides came in one at a time bearing bowls of shit. This one's from the unions. This one's from the blacks. This one's from the Polacks. It becomes clear that his role as mayor is to eat up each bowl.

That's what office must be like.

3 comments:

  1. If it's on the Wire it must true after all

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  2. Hillary Clinton must be a Wirehead too, because she warned him about this during the primaries: "Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear."

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  3. yes or maybe his presidency will run like other works of fiction he'll meet and marry a lobbyist or he'll pilot a jet fighter against alien invasions, I'm not a happy clappy type but i thought this post was despressingly skeptical.

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