USA social commentary - a visiting European view
POSTED BY: kpo
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 9, 2009 23:23
VIEWED: 4974
PAGE 8 of 8
That sounds hilarious. Wish I could have seen it (on TV - don't think I'd actually want to be there).
Baltimore is where the Wire is set, right? That's a great series - I'm still working my way through it. What was the thinking behind the planners who decided to build things like the Projects, and dump the poorest, most disenfanchised people there. It happened here as well, social planning at it's worst - seems these places become somewhere where people get stuck, in that gang - crime cycle.
Anyway, interesting stories Frem.
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So this expert bases his opinion of the United States on movies and video games. She/He wants me to take that opinion seriuosly.
I'm laughing right now.
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Magonsdaughter,
Yes, The Wire is set in Baltimore, where I used to live, and it references many real life events that actually happened while I was living there, a rare few of which I was tenatively involved with, though not by choice.
Of course, they had to play some of em up for hollywood, that window leap was actually out of a second story window into a full dumpster, and Donnie sprained his knee, was all.
And the keytune, used by more than one of em to tell folk to clear out, wasn't Farmer in the Dell - it was Pop goes the Weasel, as I recall.
Hell, might as well come clean with it - I was the Brooklyn Ghost, bit of an in-joke because the Brooklyn-Curtis Bay area, known to the police as "Barrytown" was a racially mixed area with a lot of old white folk living on pensions or social security, plus folk too poor to live anywhere else, most of whom were desperate as hell, combined with the local poor and the dope lords mid to low level cornermen and street dealers.
And most of the white folk were a little country-fried, which led to problems whenever the cops (rarely) actually tried to investigate anything, cause the black people clammed up, and you couldn't get any five of the white folk to shut the hell UP long enough to figure out what they were sayin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimorese
The reason for the ghost monniker is cause of the lame story handed upstairs by occasional cornermen or dealers of being robbed by someone who clouted them from behind and made off with their roll - the guys upstairs played occams razor on that and called bullshit.
It wasn't bullshit.
I was seventeen, not even yet legally emancipated with a hostile legally appointed guardian who had just robbed me of all I had and set the cops on my tail - I went to the one place even they would not go unless they came in force, and then what ?
I needed a security deposit and a bribe big enough to make the landlord look the other way, and damned if I was gonna take it from people worse off than me, who were as a rule well armed and more than willing to kill you to keep what they had - so I started takin off the dealers and cornermen when I could catch them out alone.
Tried to go legit, workin three jobs at eighty some hours a week, scratchin and scrapin and getting eaten alive by car insurance, inspection, emissions, tags, registration, plus the way all the businesses are predatory in their pricing - you are correct in your assessment that the ghetto is designed to keep those people from escaping, there *IS* no decent route out of there, especially when those nightmare fees make car ownership impossible, and the bus system is so unreliable no employer will hire you.
Especially, and I found this out from "inside" that little scam, that if your phone extension is 354 or 355 your application goes in the trash, period, they don't want "those people" working for them, the employers, you see ?
Having no choice, I went back to the only survival option I had, till opportunity presented itself working the other end, industrial security for the chem plant up in hawkins point, essentially a suicide-mission and a job nobody else wanted, the damn neighborhood is out on a peninsula stickin out, and cause of poverty and political pressure along with the NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) principle, had four waste incinerators, a medical waste incinerator, several chem plants, a couple of refineries and landfills, and air quality and lung cancer rates six hundred times worse than the national average.
When questioned on that, city council responded by saying more people in that neighborhood smoked - that oughta give you a new outlook on tobacco lawsuits, neh ?
The EPA couldn't care less, nor could the state, with that sumbitch Shaeffer, a racist, sexist, old school bastard of the first caliber, who could give the Transmetropolitan Character "The Beast" a run for his money, practically GLOATING over the suffering of the poor unfortunate colored folk, hee hee, ha ha, ho ho, what a pity, innit ?
Besides which, half my job as
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Quote:
Originally posted by snarclight:
So this expert bases his opinion of the United States on movies and video games. She/He wants me to take that opinion seriuosly.
I'm laughing right now.
Modern Warefare 2 and Stargate SG-1? Super Mario Brothers and Chuck? Looks to me like America kicks ass and saves the world and imports the hottest Scandanavian chicks.
I don't watch Desperate Housewives or Reality TV.
H
"Hero. I have come to respect you." "I am forced to agree with Hero here."- Chrisisall, 2009.
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Quote:
So this expert bases his opinion of the United States on movies and video games. She/He wants me to take that opinion seriuosly.
I'm laughing right now.
I think you've missed the point - which expert? I'm talking about ordinary Europeans' shock when confronted with the extremes of US society (that Americans might consider natural). The fact that this guy develops video games is irrelevant, as his experience of America was firsthand.
Frem, thanks for the interesting descriptions of life in Baltimore - I'm up to season 3 of the wire and finding it excellent so far. From what you know would you say Baltimore is fairly typical of US cities, those that have suffered industrial decline? Or is it especially bad?
Heads should roll
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I'd say it's especially bad, there's just something... wrong, with the people there, behavioral maladjustments that social factors alone do not explain, but the pollution also might account for that, particularly the lead from the shipyards - but even that, I just dunno.
It's like a contagious madness, it is, and hard to explain to someone who's not seen it, not felt it, like an external "pressure" you can almost feel physically, you see ?
Hell, for all I know Cthulu might be living in the sewers or something, it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Seriously though, it's an evil place, and one best avoided.
-F
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Any place is evil.
It takes strong folks (a lot of them) to roll in and fix it.
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Evil is a strong word, I wonder if it really does apply - but I've never been there.
I think some places can be really, really dysfunctional - and it can be a generational thing that just goes on and on and gets madder - poor family structures, poverty, lack of opportunities, and add a drug taking culture, violence and corruption at civic levels and you have the cocktail for the places you describe - they exist all over. Some whole countries are like that, so count your blessings that it's only patches.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Any place is evil.
It takes strong folks (a lot of them) to roll in and fix it.
Like New Orleans? :) Or Baghdad? Or Kabul? Or Vietnam? Or Little Big Horn?
How about when the police and military roll in and disrupt the G20 summit? Are they "fixing" the "evil"?
Kinda all changes depending on your point of view, eh?
Mike
Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde
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