From: the.wise.one@abel.co.uk   
      
   "My Nemesis: Stories About the Enemies, Bullies, and Brawls That Have   
   Shaped Us"   
      
   by David Simon   
      
   talking at Creative Alliance at The Patterson, Baltimore, Maryland   
      
   Thursday 5 April 2007   
      
   Transcript:-   
      
      
   ...Well, uh, state-of-mind...   
      
   Blaine Panna was the kid who pushed me to the ground on the blacktop in   
   third grade.   
      
   Lisa Jones, that was the girl who when we played spin the bottle and it   
   landed on her, wouldn't kiss me, in front of all the other kids.   
   Yeah... bitch!   
      
   [laughter]   
      
   Um, uh... Dave Thomas was the guy, the paste-up artist, who cut the last   
   graft of that story in 1985 about the kids and fire hydrants in East   
   Baltimore, I've never forgiven him.   
      
   As you can see, I keep these names, I treasure them.  I will confess to   
   you now that anything I've ever accomplished, as a writer, as somebody   
   doing TV, as anything I've ever done in life -- you know, down to like,   
   cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was gonna to show   
   people that they were fucked up and wrong, and that I was, you know, I   
   was the fucking centre of the universe, and the sooner they got hip to   
   that, the happier they would all be.   
      
   [laughter]   
      
   I mean, [clapping] it was real... I mean, if you've seen Superman -- the   
   good one -- it's real "kneel before Zod" country, and you know, that's   
   what's going on in my head.  So, naturally the place where I needed to   
   be was in journalism, because journalism is -- if it's practiced   
   properly -- it's ruthless, it's cynical, it's... it's funny, it's   
   iconoclastic and it has no regard for authority.  And I mean that   
   sincerely.  My dad took me to see "The Front Page" when I was about ten   
   years old at Arena Stage, and I absorbed every line.  I mean, I wanted   
   to be Hildie Johnson, and I thought it was gonna be like that when you   
   got there.  So I went to my high school paper, and everywhere I go, the   
   pattern's the same: ingratiate yourself, make them think you're normal,   
   make them think they're your friend, and then, you know, assault the   
   institution from within, you know.   
      
   [laughter]   
      
   Editor of my high school paper, I swear to God, the guy wanted to fire   
   me halfway through the year, couldn't figure out how to do it.  I was   
   always like one inch away from getting fired, um, and would manage to   
   eek out to the end of the year, and, and the paper would come out, and   
   it'd be a good paper, but the guy would be, you know, I was, it was just   
   like, they let the heretic into the church, you know, he was fucking   
   nuns, it was just terrible.  Whatever they thought scholastic journalism   
   was supposed to be -- gone, off the charts.   
      
   College.  Get to the University of Maryland, I edit the Diamondback, I   
   was one vote away from the board firing me.  For like half the year.   
   They hated my guts.  You know, paper came out, it was fine, but they   
   couldn't figure out where... where "Demon Boy" came from.   
      
   [laughter]   
      
   I get hired by the Baltimore Sun, I'm twenty-two years old, I'm the   
   youngest reporter in the newsroom, and it turns out that for the first   
   time in my life, you know, Mr. Iconoclastic   
   no-institution-deserves-to-stand including ... certainly anyone who   
   would hire me doesn't deserve my respect ... um, [laughter] I love this   
   place, and I have a really good editor, and I have, the guy who hires me   
   is like, intellectually honest, you know, he's really a smart guy -- not   
   because he hired me, I mean he was smart before I ever even walked in   
   the room -- I would talk to th- I'll say their names, Steve Luxenberg   
   and Rebecca Corbett, but these were very good editors.  And also, I'm   
   very young and the place has a tradition, I mean, this is the place of   
   Mencken, of Frank Kent, of William Manchester, you know, it's real, it's   
   like you can touch things that you can be proud of.  And I fall in love   
   with the place, for the first time in my life, I fall in love with an   
   institution.  And I don't know how to react to that, I just have to do   
   good work for its own sake, I have to go out and report the story, and   
   come back, and you know, and -- and love it for what it is.  It's not   
   perfect, it's not the greatest newspaper in the world, but it's a good   
   newspaper, and they gave me a job, and I'm young enough to be impressed   
   by it.  And I don't know what to do with that, but I'm basically happy,   
   and it's like the least ambitious I am in my life.  Until...   
      
   It gets sold out of town.  And these guys come in from Philly.  The   
   white guys from Philly.  And I say that with all the contempt that you   
   can muster for the phrase "white guys".  [laughter] I mean, you know,   
   soulless, motherfu-- you know, everything that Malcolm X said in that   
   book, before he, before he got converted back to humanity?  No, no he   
   was right the first time -- these guys were so without... and I mean, it   
   was the kind of journalism ... I can't describe... how do I describe --   
   bad journalism?  It's not that it's lazy, it's that whenever they hear   
   the word "Pulitzer" like, they become tumescent, they become engorged.   
   They become... [laughter] even though I give you ... even like, the   
   "Puh" sound.  All they wanted to do was win prizes.   
      
   There was this one guy, Marimow.  The guy like has Aspergers Syndrome.   
   He was the.... Mike Litman, a very smart columnist who they ran out of   
   town, said that he was the dumbest man to ever win two Pulitzers.  And,   
   it really was true.  I mean, one of his Pulitzers was for, uh, in   
   Philly, the police dogs kept biting too many people.  This motherfucker   
   won a Pulitzer for dogs biting men.  The dog-bite-man story?  [laughter]   
     You know the talk about this?  And the thing about it is like,   
   whenever you got into conversation with him, invariably within twenty   
   seconds, it went around to "have you read my series on ..." and you   
   would have to read it, you know.  The guy was... the guy was lethal, in   
   a, at a party.  And it was all about like these five-part series, you   
   know, "the Baltimore Sun has learned..." -- put it all in bullets,   
   because you know, God forbid you should write a transition, and   
   [laughter] over-report the motherfucker... over-report it, and it had to   
   be simple, you know --  the dogs are biting too many people.  Not about   
   the whole nature of like, you know, race relations in South Philly, and   
   where the jobs went and you know, why the world is not working anymore.   
     You know not -- don't go with a big issue.  Narrow it down, and then   
   write the fuck out of it, and then write a bunch of stories about how   
   you got a law passed to make it better, and then send it all to the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)