I am one of those who doesn’t think that the award-winning film “American Beauty,” written by Alan Ball, is that good of a movie. I found it a little too obvious and pedantic in its attempt to unearth the not-so-quiet desperation in late 1990s suburban America. It didn’t move me.

Then came Alan Ball’s next project — “Six Feet Under” — and, putting aside a few lulls in the middle of its run of five seasons, I consider it one of the highlights of 21st-century American culture. Following in the trailblazing path of “The Sopranos,” it used the long-form nature of a television series to develop the subtleties and complexities of its characters with a literary patience and depth.

Alan Ball’s latest project premieres tonight, and from most accounts, “True Blood,” the fantastical story of vampires fighting for rights and recognition in the modern world (based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries of Charlaine Harris), falls somewhere in between the glibness and the richness of his two previous major works.

But even a blatant attempt at political allegory is refreshing, since it signals a thematic ambition that has been missing of late — with a few exceptions — on the small screen.

I’ve written plenty about the power of allegory, from Narnia to “Battlestar Galactica,” from “The Wire” to “Mad Men.” And, at least according to Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times, “True Blood” should be giving us plenty of “pop politics” to talk about:

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The Olympics in Beijing has been a great disappointment. No one has collapsed into a coughing fit from the air pollution — all but a certainty from the reports leading up to the opening of what are so quaintly termed “the games.” The American cyclists who arrived in the Beijing Airport wearing face masks seemed to have made it through the opening ceremonies without contracting “black lung” or suffering a terminal case of “ring around the collar.” I feel I have been let down yet again by the press.

Not all has gone well, however. In what no one seems to have noticed as a protest gesture that dwarfs Carlos and Smith’s now legendary salute, the women’s beach volleyball venue was the scene of a protest for the ages. The American, Misty May-Treanor bent over with her back to President Bush.

This certainly symbolically summed up what the American people have been doing for the past seven years of the Bush administration. Oddly, there was no comment from the press, no IOC or USOC officials rushed in to put Misty on a plane out of Beijing in disgrace. You can bet that Avery Brundidge would have understood this gesture, and punishment would have been swift and harsh.

Indeed, little Bobby Costas seemed to find the entire episode amusing. Context apparently is everything.

The nightly Michael Phelps show was quite impressive and nearly devoid of any controversy. Phelps’ display in the pool was great television, great sport, and just the sort of thing that brings people to their television sets in big numbers. It will also mean big money for Phelps. He should have been designated an NBC vice-president for programming, rather than being crowned with the understated title of “greatest athlete of all-time.”

While Phelps was dominating prime time, NBC also offered a seemingly endless parade of gymnastics events. The men’s and women’s competitions both provided high quality performances from the U.S. and Chinese participants, and perhaps also from many others nations not deemed worthy of prime time by NBC. In fairness to NBC, they did manage to work in a stray Russian or Romanian now and again.

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How thrilled are you that political commentator Rachel Maddow is replacing Dan Abrams in the 9 p.m. slot on MSNBC?

“MSNBC has put heavy emphasis this year on presidential election coverage (it has given itself the tag line “The Place for Politics”), and it has turned to Ms. Maddow frequently both as a guest and as a substitute for its most popular host, Keith Olbermann,” writes Bill Carter in The New York Times. “Mr. Olbermann’s emergence as the signature personality on MSNBC has led to its unofficial rebranding as the liberal alternative to Fox News, which is dominated by conservative hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.”

In a story published in The Nation this month about Maddow’s unlikely career path, Rebecca Traister writes:

What’s remarkable about Maddow’s ascension is not its velocity — Hurricane Katrina made Anderson Cooper in less than a week — but the shifts in media it may demarcate. Maddow is one of the few left-liberal women to bust open the world of TV punditry, which has made icons of right-wing commentators like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Unlike her beautiful, bilious conservative female counterparts or the cocksure boys-on-the-bus analysts, however, Maddow didn’t get here by bluster and bravado but with a combination of crisp thinking and galumphing good cheer. Remarkably, this season’s discovery isn’t a glossy matinee idol or a smooth-talking partisan hack but a PhD Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist.

All of which raises a crucial question: does Maddow’s unlikely success, reliant on her ability to defy cliché and categorization at every turn, signal a move in punditry away from the thuggish and the angry and toward the lucid and sophisticated? Or has her powerful charisma and canny career management allowed her to break the rules — without actually breaking a mold?

Plus: We also learn of a new public television show to focus on — wait for it — world news …

The following is a new article by Steve Schwartz, published in the “sights” section of PopPolitics magazine. Schwartz reviews and contextualizes the “John Adams” miniseries, which has just been released on DVD:

In one of the final scenes of HBO’s seven-part miniseries “John Adams” (available now on DVD), the former president, nearing 80 years old and grieving after the passing of his wife Abigail, visits Boston’s Faneuil Hall to view John Trumbull’s iconic painting of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence.

The truculent old man offers his verdict directly to the artist: “It is very bad history.” Adams proceeds to explain that there was no single moment where the delegates ceremoniously affixed their signatures to the document; instead, they were doing so throughout the summer of 1776, while scurrying in and out of Philadelphia.

“You would not deny the artist a certain … license?” Trumball pleads with Adams, to no avail.

“Don’t let our posterity be deluded with fictions under the guise of poetical or graphical license,” admonishes Adams.

Of course, the writers and producers took their own creative license with this memorable moment. As David McCullough wrote in his Pulitzer-prize winning biography that inspired this miniseries, “What Adams thought as he looked at this painting will never be known.”

I focus on this scene not to criticize the fabrication but to use it as a handy reference point to illustrate the virtues of this series. It serves to remind us that good history can be presented in all of its complexities based on its own merits.

Continue reading “Making History: HBO Brilliantly Captures John Adams’ Complex Life.”

Watching Michelle Obama on “The View” (watch it yourself while it lasts), you see all her very admirable strengths — and you see a predictable campaign strategy emerging. As Jodi Kantor and Michael Powell over at The Caucus put it:

The virtue of a show like this is clear — not only is there a fair dollop of politics, it’s a very useful forum for a candidate, as they can talk about Third Rail topics such as race in a chatty, just between us fashion… . A smart place to roll out the non-makeover makeover.

That’s not to say the discussion isn’t full of shopping tips, a pantyhose debate, motherhood, etc — all the post-Hillary-”standing by my man” safe stuff that allows us to know that Michelle is, first and foremost, a woman.

And of course, not a dreaded feminist. That was made clear long ago, in an early 2007 interview with the Washington Post: “You know, I’m not that into labels. So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it [...] I wouldn’t identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn’t identify as a liberal or a progressive.”

“The View” appearance, though, certainly reveals that, when she wants to/is allowed, Michelle can be a great, measured spokesperson for the Obama campaign on a variety of substantive issues. Like her husband, she has an uncanny ability to seem like she is never breaking a sweat, no matter what she is asked. And she absorbs other viewpoints with a friendly smile and talk of diversity and a transcendence of party politics.

Basically, she’s really cool — someone, as I’ve said before, with whom everyone (black and white, woman and man) wants to hang.

Let’s just hope she isn’t confined in this new/old role — and she’s able to makes some enemies.

Yes, make enemies — a great indulgence in a campaign season but a potentially profound way to show leadership and demonstrate that true “change” will requires sacrifice and will inevitably be, at times, unpopular. That sense of non-negotiable values is what made John and Robert Kennedy moral touchstones for a generation.

So if someone calls her out on her supposed lack of patriotism or her supposed racial antagonism or if someone turns her intelligence and self-confidence into negative “manly” qualities, she shouldn’t just say they are “lies,” which they are. She herself should use the opportunity to lead us into needed conversations about the power of dissent and the complicated history of race and gender in America.

Now that would be really, really cool.

“Spanning the Globe to bring you the constant variety of sport; the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat; the human drama of athletic competition.”

Each week, ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” opened with the host, Jim McKay, doing this voiceover. McKay died Saturday at age 86. He was the ringmaster for The Olympic Games on American television and the host for “Wide World of Sports” for 25 of its improbable 37 years on ABC.

Over the past few days, events in the world of sport offered a fitting eulogy for Jim McKay.

The thrill of victory came into focus at several championship venues. In hockey, the Detroit Red Wings skated off with the Stanley Cup on Wednesday. This Red Wings team is arguably one of the best Stanley Cup winners of the past several decades. They were able to take very good hockey clubs and many star players and make them look very ordinary or even sub-par. They were able to dominate the extremely talented Pittsburgh Penguins for long stretches of ice time allowing them nary a shot on goal, while making them look inept on the ice. Many of these veteran players have won Stanley Cups, but the joy of victory never grows old.

In tennis, the French Open came to its conclusion offering the women’s finals on Saturday matching two young players who had not won a Grand Slam event: Dinara Safina of Russia and Anna Ivanovic of Serbia. Ivanovic had come out of her war-torn country to international tennis prominence, practicing in a drained swimming pool in the winter and, at age 11, practicing tennis in the morning to avoid NATO bombings of Belgrade later in the day. The joy of victory could be seen in the mix of a joyous smile and tear-filled eyes as the Serbian national anthem played to mark Ivanovic’s first grand slam victory.

Rafel Nadal won the men’s title for the fourth straight time, tying Bjorn Borg’s record. He did not lose a set on Sunday or in the two weeks of the tournament. Indeed, in three sets Nadal lost only four games to Roger Federer. This was a stunning and dominating performance over the man who has been called the greatest tennis player of all time. Nadal was clearly thrilled to have won this tournament and to receive the winner’s trophy from Bjorn Borg.

Perhaps the greatest thrill of victory this weekend came in conjunction with a most devastating agony in defeat.

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In a post from a couple weeks back, I wrote about enjoying Keith Olbermann’s castigation of President Bush over his “giving up golf” comments. I even appreciated the freshness of finally having an unabashed liberal beating the O’Reillys and Limbaughs at their own sensationalistic game. But I did express a bit of a hesistancy over the way Olbermann’s style risks losing the message within the machinations of the messenger/entertainer.

Well, I think Olbermann’s latest “special comment” concerning Hillary Clinton’s reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy just confirms my worries. And I’m not alone. James Poniewozik, TIME’s TV critic, writes:

The substance (or lack thereof) of the controversy notwithstanding … Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability. (As soon as the Clinton gaffe broke, blog commenters were wondering how ballistic he would go, and he obliged, and how.) Even if we concede his argument — that Clinton was at best callously and at worst intentionally suggesting she should stay in the race because Obama might be killed — every time he turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.

While years of frustration might have — might have — justified Olbermann’s outburst over Bush’s disregard for soldier’s lives, Clinton’s comments don’t rise to that level.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I see Clinton as the consummate Machiavellian — and I’m sure, apologies notwithstanding, that she really was saying that an assassination might just happen this year and that is a reason to stick in the race (although I can’t imagine she wanted to say it publicly). I don’t give her the benefit of the doubt.

But all she did was make herself slightly more irrelevant than the day before. And that’s not worth the anger.

It’s about time.

It’s been two decades since “Pretty Woman” made prostitution seem cool — a path to self-esteem and self-empowerment — and I have rarely seen, outside of academic journals and hard-hitting documentaries, such an effective puncturing of that cultural myth as I read today in an opinion piece by Anne K. Ream and R. Clifton Spargo of the Chicago Tribune, who were inspired by the media’s recent treatment of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the prostitute who famously serviced the former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer.

Of course, the glorification of prostitution began long before “Pretty Woman,” but as Ream and Spargo point out, since that film hit the big screen, the myth-making has reached ridiculous extremes — from “Pimp and Ho” nights at clubs to “Turning Tricks” pole-dancing at gyms.

And that’s not even mentioning TV shows like HBO’s “Cathouse” — “where a Nevada pimp and his ‘girls’ are portrayed as one big, happy, sexually uninhibited family.” That show and others “are an ode to the joys of being sexually serviced by women.”

I realize we need to be careful not to condemn sex workers for their choices — which are often made from a very limited list of options. But we need to make sure we don’t end up justifying a system that ultimately devastates women’s lives.

Ream and Spargo rightly note, “Our cultural fascination with and glamorization of pimping and prostitution do not make for a kinder and gentler sex trade.” And they go one to cite statistics — from 90 percent of prostitutes having been victims of childhood sexual assault to jaw-dropping mortatily rates:

A comprehensive 2004 mortality study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store). The average age of death of the women studied was 34.

Yet somehow it’s almost conventional wisdom that prostitution, if done right, can be a savvy career move and an avenue to self-fulfillment:

Nowhere was this more clear than on a recent edition of “Larry King Live.” During an interview with Natalie McLennan, the woman who allegedly trained Dupre at the escort agency New York Confidential, King asked, “Do any hookers ever marry their johns?”

“They do!” she exclaimed, telling King the tale of a fellow “girl” who “went on a date with a client and then we never saw her again. It turns out that they met and they fell in love and she never returned. It’s a real sort of Cinderella, ‘Pretty Woman’ story, you know. Which is I think . . . just a fantastic story — ”every girl’s dream.”

For the vast majority of women working in prostitution, however, the reality is less fairy tale, more grim fable. But who wants to let that get in the way of a good story?

This is one of those dominant cultural narratives that we must do a much better job of resisting.

Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times wonders at — rather than analyzes — the sea change that has made “Pop TV” the new favorite venue for politicians. With all the recent appearances by the President, candidates and their spouses on everything from “Deal or No Deal” to the “Colbert Report,” Stanley notes, “It’s hard to recall how unusual it was to see Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas playing the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992.”

Her pop explanation: “Elitism is to the 2008 campaign as communism was to 1950s politics: a career-breaker. And pop TV is the antidote, a free platform to rub shoulders with viewers who only glancingly pay attention to the news.”

Have you caught March Madness? The television ratings thus far indicate that there is a greater chance this year than last that you have not.

I have. I always do. I can’t help myself.

No matter how much I loathe the hyping of March Madness, no matter how mentally disturbed I find many basketball coaches, no matter how hypocritical I find the NCAA, and no matter that I have come think of elite intercollegiate athletics as one of the most corrupt institutions of our time, I still watch.

I love the competition. I love the pure illusion that Cinderella might actually win the Big Dance, even though Cinderella needs to buy a ticket to get into the Final Four. I love all those screaming college students who actually seem normal when they wander into my classroom. I love the all-out effort by the athletes, who enjoy the beauty of competing with such intensity, even as I wonder if they ever give half that level of intensity to their educational responsibilities.

All this being said, the commercialism that now totally dominates intercollegiate athletics is beyond the pale. The corporate sponsors seem to be omnipresent. General Motors is hyping its “March Madness” sale, hoping that hoop fans will catch this form of March Madness for which this staggering corporate giant has paid a pretty penny. The length of the so-called “TV Timeout” is now approaching infinity (actually three minutes). I watched nearly an entire hockey game during these timeouts.

CBS advertising sales are estimated at $545 million on an investment by the network of an estimated $529 million. Advertising rates for the championship game will be $1.256 million, second only to the Super Bowl. General Motors, AT&T and Coca-Cola are the three biggest advertisers for March Madness and pay additional fees into the NCAA’s “Corporate Champions Program,” the NCAA’s top sponsorship level.

This gives these champs additional opportunities to build marketing programs around March Madness and other NCAA sports and the right to use the NCAA logo. One report put the cost of this status at $500 million.

Again this year, CBS and the NCAA will provide online video streaming. This time it is free to users. Sponsors such as Courtyard by Marriott and Dell will pay the freight, and commercials will appear during the games just like real television. Facebook purchased the exclusive rights for the CBS Sports Official Brackets contest. Indeed everything that moves or does not move seems to have a sponsor.

Not to worry, however, because the athletes themselves will not be able to exploit their commercial value while advertising the virtues of Enormous State University and pushing ESU’s merchandise on an adoring public. They will also find little time to pursue their education during a basketball season that sends them around the country to compete at all hours of the day and night so that ESPN, FOX and CBS will have sufficient programming to fill their schedule.

One of my favorite discussions these days is about the David Stern Student Athlete (DSSA). That’s the freshman superstar who has been forced to go to college for a year, rather than to head into the NBA after high school. The television analysts have termed them “the one and done” players. I prefer to think of them as victims of a drive-by education.

One of the more revealing discussions during one of the game telecasts this past week was speculation on whether or not these “one and done” players actually bother to go to class during the spring semester. If they plan on leaving for the NBA after the end of their David Stern enforced exile, why would they bother? It doesn’t matter if they flunk out of school because they’re not coming back to school anyway.

I love this sort of candor.

I doubt that NCAA President Miles Brand enjoyed that discussion on national television. The NCAA, of course, is all about education and student athletes, even if it is only for one year — or even one semester. I am sure someone somewhere is saying, yes, but these players are getting exposed to college (the raincoat theory of education).

This is true and, in the end, much less dangerous than being exposed to high levels of toxic waste or even all that NBA money.

Always equally edifying is the report that comes out of Richard Lapchick’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, showing graduation rates (PDF) for those universities involved in March Madness. Just how strong the commitment is to education in NCAA athletics is evident from these studies. Although they show some improvement in graduation rates over the past few years, unfortunately once again this year the gulf between graduation rates for male African American athletes and others remains quite significant (PDF).

When all is said and done, then, March Madness really is about the money, and it has either a detrimental effect on higher education or at best no effect. Its purpose, as is the purpose of intercollegiate athletics generally, has been stated quite well by former University of Michigan President James Duderstadt. He said that they exist “for the entertainment of the American public, the financial benefit of coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners, and NCAA Executives, and the profit of television networks, sponsors and sports apparel manufacturers.”

And finally, did you know that there is an official ladder of the NCAA Championships? When the winners cut down the nets next Monday night, look for this new star of the latest NCAA revenue stream.

No word yet on the scissors.

There will be many sweet remembrances of “The Wire” in the coming days — and a few interviews with David Simon posted shortly [update: see below] — but for now here’s an excerpt from the first review I read, by Alessandra Stanley. And what a good one it is:

“The Wire” ended at just the right time: too soon. And it’s not that Mr. Simon’s series was the only intelligent drama on television. The difference is that most smart shows try to dazzle viewers with what they don?t know: “House” on Fox throws out the rarest diseases and most far-fetched diagnostic tools to update Sherlock Holmes and “Numb3rs” on CBS twists every crime to fit an advanced mathematical formula.

“The Wire” worked with primary sources that anybody could grasp if they looked closely out the window on the train from New York to Washington. It?s the same view of Baltimore — abandoned row houses, gutted factories and bullet-pocked store fronts — that McNulty takes in when he parks his car and looks down at the city from afar.

“It is what it is,” is what McNulty and others would say to end a conversation. “The Wire” was what it was, and that was a lot.

Now, for those interviews with David Simon and other wraps:

- Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey Star Ledger talked with Simon over two days — and let’s give props for the subject headers.

- Don’t miss Sepinwall’s finale review and breakdown of all the characters’ fates. Sweet stuff.

- For a much abbreviated discussion, check out Simon’s interview with Salon.

- “‘The Wire’ illuminated ways of life I’ve never experienced, and though I wept for Dukie, I thank the show for creating him and dozens of other memorable characters,” writes Maureen Ryan.

Plus: What’s next for Simon (and, hopefully, TV viewers).

Need to celebrate or drown your sorrows? Take The Wire food quiz

First, if you don’t know “Sheeeet!,” you don’t know … well, you haven’t been following the best show on television.

Whether it’s the best television show of all-time … that is a matter of fierce debate in critics’ circles. Check out this enlightening exchange between Alan Sepinwall (The Newark Star-Ledger), Andrew Johnston (Time Out New York) and Matt Zoller Seitz (The New York Times). Johnston argues for The Sopranos, Seitz for Deadwood and Sepinwall for The Wire — but they all admit The Wire holds its own.

In any case, the series finale is here — and many of us are in panic mode, wondering what the future of television might be like beyond the streets of Baltimore. Whether it’s sparking a conversation about masculinity, the media — or something inbetween — it has never failed to deliver on both a literary and a raw emotional level.

And it’s not just me talking.

The reaction to the final season, however, has been surprisingly mixed, to say the least. For a positive take on this season, see The House Next Door. For a more sober assessment, see David Zurawik of the hometown Baltimore Sun (which — and I’m not accusing Zurawik of bias here — has been mocked incessantly on the show this season) or Ross Douthat of The Atlantic. Or check out this debate between Dan Kois and Adam Sternbergh of New York magazine.

I happen to think that while the show made its various allegories a little too explicit this season, it worked as a climatic crescendo to what has been an incredibly patient and subtle show over the years. The show’s unflagging criticism of both personal and collective corruption is now blatantly obvious, I admit, and McNulty’s fake serial killer scheme does strain the very disciplined realism of the show. But it is the reactions of the media and the mayor to McNulty’s scheme that bring the show back home.

Those reactions, even though they are laughable and outrageous, feel undeniably true. That’s exactly how a modern for-profit newspaper and an idealistic but inevitably political politician would respond to the sensationalist opportunity that McNulty delivers to them. Yes, it’s over-the-top, but have you watched a 24-hour news channel lately when it’s got a celebrity scandal/scandalous murder to latch onto?

Whatever one’s thoughts are toward this final season, as the finale approaches it’s time for celebration and appreciation.

For a celebration, how about some crab cakes — Baltimore-style. Get the recipe here (or try yellow pepper coulis). Thanks to the the Raleigh News and Observer — which also created the definitive Wire food quiz (pdf).

Better yet, if you are near Baltimore, hit some of the show’s favorite bars.

Putting aside food and drink, you might enjoy BET’s Top 10 Wire Moments and other fun stuff.

For an appreciation, beyond reading the critical appraisals noted above, let’s leave it to David Simon, the show’s creator, who recently held forth on The Wire — its take on journalism and its roots in everything from Greek tragedy to Stanley Kubrick.

Most importantly, though, let’s give Simon and the other minds behind the show a final chance to remind us that for all its literary greatness, it’s a show very much based in a reality that persists and that we must fight to change. In their humble opinion, that means rejecting, among other things, the so-called war on drugs.

After humanizing a part of America that had been dismissed or forgotten by media and popular culture, after representing what many thought was unrepresentable, in this election season they have my vote.

So I dropped in on the new TV series based on the “Terminator” movie franchise: “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” And the usual lowest-common-denominator limitations of broadcast TV are certainly present. Everyone is “hot” (even the freaky and geeky kids at John Connor’s high school) — and many of the characters feel trapped in stilted, predictable dialogue.

Despite these shortcomings, however, the ideas that motivate the narrative are so compelling that they more than make up for the sloppy execution — at least for now. Sure, the TV series and movie franchise use well-worn science fiction tropes — from time travel to machines becoming conscious and rebelling against their creators. But they make them fresh in such a way that both the movies and the TV show are more about the instability of modern identity than a more primal fear of technology. They deftly explore what makes us human and what human qualities might become our collective downfall.

It helps, of course, when explorations of identity aren’t afraid to present a realistic portrait of men and women. Unfortunately, as many critics have been pointing out, the waifish actress Lena Headey in the TV series isn’t very believable as Sarah Connor — who, as portrayed by a well-built Linda Hamilton in the movies, has gained a gritty, muscular physique over the years as she has constructed a guerrilla resistance force of sorts aimed at dismantling the machines that will otherwise lead to the apocalypse.

Check out the comparison pictures here. The PR shot of Headey handling a gun, especially when juxtaposed with an action shot of Linda Hamilton in T2, is particularly disturbing — echoing a phallic fetishization of women and guns that makes it look like an ad in Soldier of Fortune.

As members of the Sarah Connor Charm School and other feminists have noted, Linda Hamilton’s portrayal of Sarah Connor was an iconic inspiration for many women who rebel against the dangerous and debilitating standard of beauty in American culture. Unfortunately, when put in the context of images of women in music, magazines, advertising, TV, films and elsewhere that have come to dominate the cultural landscape in the last couple of decades — a virtual body image apocalypse, you might say — she feels like the last real woman we’ve seen.

The return of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to the airwaves tonight is bittersweet — but pretty much just sweeeet.

Yes, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA), who are on strike, will be picketing both shows — and they are certainly justified. The WGA’s grievances with the media industry are clear and undeniable.

But we really need some quality satire these days. To cite just one example, someone has got to start mocking all this rhetoric of change.

Having already had an early look at the first episode in the final season of “The Wire” (premiering this Sunday on HBO), I’m ready to be as effusive as I have been in the past about what is clearly the best show on television and — bear with me as I flirt with hyperbole here — arguably the greatest achievement in the visual arts of the past couple of decades (I think I might have said that about “Deadwood” once — but I would stand by that paradox with my very life).

The power of the show is its ability to both be an uncompromisingly realistic portrayal of life on the toughest streets of Baltimore and at the same time, present the conflicts on those streets as microcosms of a variety of broader American conflicts — economic, bureaucratic, educational, etc. Working at both the level of realism and allegory, the show can be a very heady literary experience, requiring multiple viewings in order to catch all the verbal and visual symbolism as well as simply to have time to contemplate all the issues that emerge.

The chief allegory of the final season is clear and complex right from the opening scene as a detective exploits the gullibility of a suspect. The interactions of cops, politicians, drug dealers and the rest of Baltimore is a complex dance of deception, subterfuge and manipulation — a play of power that depends as much on the performance as the truth.

Just like the interaction of the media and the American public in the 21st century.

To explore that connection more fully, the Baltimore Sun newsroom becomes a major setting for the show, and we see how the sausage is made.

Brilliant. Mind-bogglingly brilliant.

But regular readers of this blog or almost any other respectable cultural criticism these days wouldn’t be very surprised by that assessment. We’re all stumbling over each other to praise David Simon’s masterpiece. Part of that unbridled enthusiasm certainly comes from a sort of desperation as “The Wire” spent its first few seasons reaching an unfathomably small audience and would have been on the verge of cancellation if it weren’t in the good graces of HBO. But the enthusiasm also comes from a sort of hypnosis; we are under the spell of an exquisitely crafted work of art. Even though it’s our job, we’ve lost all sense of perspective.

That’s not to say that “The Wire” isn’t as amazing as we make it out to be. But it should give us pause and encourage us to give space to the rare dissenting view — especially when it comes from a formerly true believer who also happens to be writing from ground zero.

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