Bill Moyers Talks Drugs, Crime, Journalism and Democracy with Creator of 'The Wire'

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted April 21, 2009.

BILL MOYERS: The reason I ask you if you're cynical is not because you wrote that, I'm going to link our viewers at PBS.org to a powerful, extemporaneous speech. I can tell it was extemporaneous, because it reads like that. It reads as if your words were just taken down. That you made at-- to the students at Loyola College in Baltimore some years ago. And you said to them, "I want you to go and look up the word 'oligarchy.'" Well, I did just that. I took your advice. I looked it up.

DAVID SIMON: Uh-oh.

BILL MOYERS: It means "Government by the few. Or a government in which a small group exercises control for corrupt and selfish purposes." Is that what you saw in Baltimore?

DAVID SIMON: I was speaking nationally. But I think that yes. We are a country of democratic ideas and impulses, but it is strained through some very oligarchical structures. You know, one of which could be, for example, the United States Senate. You know, you give me the high-- higher house of a bicameral legislature. And you tell me that 40 percent of the people are going to elect 60 percent of the representatives. And I look upon that as being decidedly undemocratic. Or I look at the Electoral College as being decidedly undemocratic. You know, I don't buy into the notion that one-- one man, one vote is not the most fundamental way of doing business. And ultimately, when I look at you know, for example, the drug war. There are places were the majority of people are now aware that the drug war has been a fraud for 30 years. And yet, because of the dynamics that are put in place that are I think, to an extent oligarchical, because money speaks so strongly in politics...

You know, listen, the only reason that alcohol and cigarettes, which do far more damage than heroine and cocaine, are legal is that white people and affluent white people at that, make money off that stuff. You know? Phillip Morris was-- you know, had-- if those guys had black and brown skin and were-- you know, in the Mexican State of Chihuahua, they'd be hunted. Or maybe not anymore. Maybe they'd be in control of the Mexican State of Chihuahua, that's another story.

But I look at that, and I say, you know, "Yes, this is about, you know, money talks." And the idea that what the most people what is best for the most people, and the utilitarian sense of democracy's supposed to be, that that's still applying in American life. I just don't see a lot of evidence for that.

BILL MOYERS: So, is this what you mean when you say THE WIRE is dissent?

DAVID SIMON: Yes. It is dissent. It is saying-

BILL MOYERS: Against what? From what?

DAVID SIMON: It is saying, "We no longer buy these false ideologies. And false motifs you have of American life." And so I look at this and I think to myself, if only you stand up and say "I'm not going to be lied to anymore." That's a victory on some level, that's a beginning of a dynamic. And, listen, I don't think-- can change happen? Yes. But things have to get a lot worse.

BILL MOYERS: Here's the lead I would put on the body of your work. Your journalism, your articles, your essays, your speeches, your books, your television series, it would be this. "David Simon says America's not working for everyday people who have no power. And that's the way the people with power have designed it to work."

DAVID SIMON: Right. I mean, it would be one thing with an oligarchy and they were doing a better job of it. I would be okay with that.

BILL MOYERS: Making the trains run on time.

DAVID SIMON: But everything-- right. Everything from Iraq to Wall Street to urban policy to the drug war. I look at it all and I say, "You know, these guys really couldn't do much worse." You know? I mean, New Orleans was such a beautiful metaphor for the hollowness at the core of American will, you know? To have seen the President of the United States take the planes down and look out his window and say, "Oh my God, it must be twice as bad on the ground." Twice as bad? Really? You know, it's not-- it's failure of will and imagination and I see it across the board and I just think-- in a way, THE WIRE is an editorial. It's an angry op-ed. It's, you know, as if Frank Rich was given, you know, 12 hours of rant-

BILL MOYERS: Are you, as someone said recently, "the angriest man in television"?

DAVID SIMON: Yes, I saw that. It doesn't really mean much. The second angriest guy is, you know, by a kidney shaped pool in L.A. screaming into his cell phone, because his DVD points aren't enough. I mean, what is the second angriest man in television, American television? But I don't mind being called that. I just don't think it means anything. How can you not have lived through the last ten years in American culture? In everything from-- how can you not look at what happened on Wall Street and that's still happening? At this gamesmanship that was the mortgage bubble, you know? That was just selling-- again, selling crap and calling it gold.

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Bill Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.

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