avid Simon sees things most of us overlook. Perhaps he learned to look at the world differently, some might say more pessimistically, while a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Then he turned to writing books and later television dramas portraying life on our nation’s streets. Simon’s success in dramatic writing is underscored by his 12 years working the city desk for the Sun where he learned to distinguish between the American Dream and the American Reality.

In the last decade, David Simon’s work has aimed at telling his fellow citizens that what they see on the news is often, perhaps at times even intentionally, an illusion. Simon’s dramatic series ( Homicide: Life on the Street, HBO mini-series The Corner, and most recently the HBO television series The Wire ) reflect a nation at war with itself. The nation Simon portrays is infected with a drug culture it is unable to control and unwilling to tolerate. Just as in the real America, the characters in his immensely successful HBO series The Wire, openly game the system and juke the stats to make whatever it is they are doing seem right, or successful, or somehow normal.