![]() ![]() For that little burst of common sense, he was sent bullets in the mail and had his face spat in and eventually was the runner-up for a Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He decided to comply and to try to manipulate enough of his fellow councilors to comply. Show Me a Hero is the story of Nick Wasicsko, played by Oscar Isaac, at 28 the youngest mayor in America, who got himself elected resisting the new housing development, and then discovered once in power that the courts had decided the matter beyond any doubt and he had to comply or bankrupt the city. ![]() If you believe that, there's a little essay you should read called "The Case for Reparations." It was, more or less, everyday bigotry turned into a whirlwind of fury and abjection with real estate as its focus. The citizens of Yonkers resisted desegregation, they claimed, because they worried about their property values. The white people of Yonkers, represented by their city council, resisted the desegregation to the point where they were paying such huge fines, imposed by the court finding the city in contempt, that they had to close libraries and were on the brink of bankruptcy. But it required the white people of Yonkers to have the poorer, black people of Yonkers live beside them. The theory of public housing at the time was that, by putting the buildings on scattered sites rather than concentrated projects, residents would integrate into middle-class life. It focuses on the fallout of a 1980s court decision to force the city of Yonkers, New York, to build 200 public housing units on the east side of the city. The action-if that's the right word-in Show Me a Hero is almost entirely bureaucratic. Whatever else it is, Show Me a Hero is the opposite of entertainment. It's a bit like finding out that a favorite uncle, who used to front a band, has taken up pottery in middle age, and makes bad pottery. Watching it is watching a hero fail, or rather watching a hero become deeply, upsettingly boring. The disappointment of Show Me a Hero, Simon's latest miniseries for HBO premiering this Sunday, is amplified and concentrated by the memory of all that glorious history. Then The Wire, the best-written show ever, opened a new realm of possibilities for TV. Even if he hadn't made The Wire, he co-wrote the excellent HBO miniseries The Corner. If television has gods, then David Simon is among them. In the medium's golden age (a cliche because it's true), David Simon is the gold. ![]()
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