Also, Omar.

It's testament to the overpowering awesomeness of The Wire that despite being a deeply opinionated commentary on social, urban, and economic policy, it's basically beloved by the whole political spectrum. You already know the panoply of lefty bloggers who regularly recommend and rave over the show, but now Cato is recommending it as a stocking stuffer. Meanwhile, my personal Wire-watching group includes lefties, punk rock chefs, and hardcore libertarians. So I think the anecdotal evidence of pan-ideological appeal is ironclad.

Which is a bit odd, given that the creators are, as best I can tell, revolutionary socialists. They loathe the public bureaucracy, but are totally dismissive of the Horatio Alger/personal responsibility tropes. At the close of this season, for instance, the most entrepreneurial of the set, Randy, was enduring a savage beating, the culmination of a long chain of events triggered by his go-getterness. Michael, the closet A student, was running a corner and amassing a body count. Duquan, who'd used a proficiency with computers and a bond with a teacher to pull himself out of total despair, was helping to run Michael's corner. And Namond, the group's total fuck up, was the closest to a happy ending, courtesy of Bunny's old-fashioned paternalism. Every one of the kids who'd taken affirmative steps towards improving their lives had seen their efforts destroyed by circumstance. And the one who'd sought to ruin his life had been (temporarily?) saved by outside intervention.

Yet everyone likes the show. That's possibly because it's a masterful story, expertly told, and exquisitely acted. It may also be because it's little kinder to state intervention than personal initiative. While none of the problems would be solved by charter schools, the public schools aren't making progress either. Indeed, it may be the radical apocalypticism of The Wire's vision that makes it so palatable: By offering absolutely no hope, it evades arguments over solutions.

Update: Radley Balko (in an awesomely titled post) nails me for being unclear about the "revolutionary socialist" thing. I didn't mean that the show demonstrates such an ideology. I literally meant that its creators are revolutionary socialists. A fair array of hints are on display in this interview. A taste:

Thematically, it's about the very simple idea that, in this Postmodern world of ours, human beings—all of us—are worth less. We're worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It's the triumph of capitalism.

That isn't, I think, how most libertarians approach capitalism -- and nor is it how most Democrats do.