A friend calls my attention to a bit of a brouhaha that erupted in January 2008, when then candidate Barack Obama gushed about how much he liked the character of Omar Little in the HBO television series, “The Wire.” Obama told the Las Vegas Sun,
I gotta say Omar’s a great guy. That’s not an endorsement. That is not an endorsement. He is not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character— a gay gangster who only robs drug dealers and then gives back. But he’s the toughest, baddest guy on the show, and he’s gay. He’s a fascinating character.
A link to the audiotape at the Las Vegas Sun site can be found here. Omar Little’s innocent relish in killing his counterparts can be viewed in an extensive library of Youtube clips. I find this astonishing.
Imagine if John McCain had said that he thought Dirty Harry was a “great guy” and a “fascinating character.”
