David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” has been making the rounds lately — and I couldn’t be more pleased.

While I am eagerly awaiting his new TV series set in post-Katrina New Orleans (appearing on HBO in 2010 – already re-upped for a full season!), he wasn’t doing the usual promo cameos. It’s a little early for that, anyway.

No, Simon is testifying in front of Congress — and chatting up the likes of Bill Maher — about the future of journalism and the destructive effects of the drug war, both topics he has experienced and explored in depth in his career as a reporter and in shows like “The Wire.”

Simon’s appearance on Bill Maher shows how comfortable he is walking the line between the entertainment and political worlds. Maher’s show is a strange hybrid of those worlds, but it rarely reaches the level of clarity and insight that Simon provided:

His testimony before the Senate was more direct and elaborate, and its focus was exclusively on the state of journalism. John Nichols, who has written about the demise of newspapers himself, has a great critical review of the hearing over at The Nation — and while he laments that no solution to the journalistic void is clear, Simon seems to be the most lucid deconstructor of why we are the in current mess. I look forward to listening to Simon in whatever medium he chooses.