Legal Commentary

Omar Back

By Jami Floyd

Tell the world baby, Omar Back.

Omar Little (as played by Michael Kenneth Williams) utters this line as poetry in Season Two of HBO's The Wire.

Omar is perhaps my favorite character on what has to be my favorite television show.  Ever. That is no small sentiment in a show replete with rich soulful characters all of whom live on the precipice of good and evil. 

Tonight starts the fifth and final season of HBOs best show ever, indeed television's -- a show that is gripping, honest, pwerful and, most of all, necessary.

Necessary because we have lost the so-called War on Drugs. It has consumed our police, taken over our prisons, ravaged our cities just as the drugs themselves addict our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

The Wire doesnt pretend to have a solution.  Instead it seeks to take first the necessary step toward finding one:  Admitting that we have failed, that the War is lost and can never be won.

Not until we acknowledge this ultimate truth can we begin to craft an effective response to traffic, distrubution and addiction.

Perhaps most complicit is the press, for failing to ask the hard questions, for failing to tell the stories, for failing to care.  And this final season is all about the news media and our role in the drug culture.  As a member of that media, this season will be a cold hard look in the mirror; but The Wire will force all Americans to look in that mirror and to decide whether we like what we see.

JFlo

Full post as published by Jami Floyd: Best Defense on January 01, 2008 (boomark / email).