I gotta say, I think that's a bit of an unfair attack on woj, because I will concur that it is just really, really tough to live in baltimore, whoever you are.
I've been a lot of fucked up places and the only one I would compare to baltimore is camden, -maybe- detroit. The quotidian violence and theft and danger and misery bystanders in baltimote get exposed to is really not a fantasy. The last time I saw statistics on it, between ten and twenty percent of baltimore's -entire population- was addicted to crack. I have a lot of gallows-humor stories of baltimore, bizzarre and awful experiences that always connect somehow to the drug epidemic. Lot of misery in the rust belt but baltimore really stands above the pack.
All of which is expressed amazingly in The Wire, but that's another subject.
>I live in the city near the campus since I came to JHU in 1992 mainly
> >because I like city living. As a result of that experience, my attitude
> >toward the underclass changed quite substantially. As they say,
> familiarity
> >breeds contempt, and a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. I am
> >not a conservative, to be sure, but I have no sympathy toward the lumpen
> >either. I do not hate, judge or condemn them, I just do not want be near
> >them.
>
> Goodness, how terribly traumatic it must have been for you and your
> co-workers, being forced to drive your Volvos through a stinking slum
> to get to your ivory towers! How insensitive of me to remind you of
> it, I feel like a real prick.
>
> Perhaps, no SURELY, there are various tax deductible charities
> devoted to easing the distress of unfortunates like this? With
> psychiatric and counselling sessions, subsidised car washes to get
> the filth out, that sort of thing?
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