"The Wire" ended seven years ago, but its legacy is still strong and, thanks to streaming services HBO Go and Amazon Prime, it is still being watched and acclaimed by people.
One of those people is President Barack Obama.
The commander-in-chief recently sat down to interview David Simon, the show's creator, at the White House to talk about the war on drugs. Before Obama began asking questions to the former Baltimore Sun police reporter, he confessed his love for the show.
"I've got to tell you, I'm a huge fan of 'The Wire,'" Obama said. "I think it's one of the greatest not just television shows, but pieces of art, in the last couple of decades. I was a huge fan of it."
After giving praise, Obama asked the show creator what made him want to capture the drug trade in a television show. Simon explained the life of the person he met on the Baltimore streets that inspired the show's fan-favorite character Omar.
"The guy who was the model for the character Omar in 'The Wire' was a real guy named Donny Anders. I never thought I'd be saying his name in the White House," Simon said. "He's a guy who lived the life on the street; he spent years robbing drug dealers, he lived hard. And he eventually caught a 17 year bit and he deserved it.
"But he wasn't caught, he actually went in on conscience, cause it finally got to him. And he did everything that the prosecutors wanted him to do. He came out 17 years later and all he wanted to do was give back to West Baltimore; he'd taken so much, he'd been in for 17 years, he just wanted to address himself to the disaster."
The president and Simon talked about ongoing issues too. At one point, Obama brought up the generational issue in inner-cities when it comes to locking people up and the effect it has on the war on drugs and prison systems. Simon agreed with Obama, saying that "what drugs don't destroy, the war against them is ripping apart."
"...This is not happening in a vacuum. These are the places in America where the industrialization has had the most effect, and the actual unemployment rates among young Black males in my city bear no resemblance to the actual unemployment rate now," Simon explained. "And so that's something that has to be countered, which is that the drug trade itself, it's like a company town. And this is an industry that's so large, with so much money around it that it's hard to get around it if you grow up amid it, and certainly without role models who know how to maneuver around it.
"And to undo that, taking the overlay that is the drug war and at least rationing it down and making it proportional in some way, is essential."
The interview ended on a high note, with Obama saying that the war on drugs and the culture surrounding it is improving. Although it is taking a long time, the president believes that the talk about the topic is "smarter" now than it ever has been.
"If we can start down this path to a more productive way of thinking about drugs and its intersection with law enforcement, twenty years from now we can say to ourselves: 'well, maybe we got a little smarter,'" Obama said. "And we didn't get here overnight and we're not going to get out of it overnight, but the fact that we've got people talking about it in a smarter way gets me a little encouraged."
