RIP DeAndre McCullough (David Simon character from The Corner and The Wire)

[LezJepzin]

Can we get a pic, please?

 

[head shots101]

Let me see a pic before I read this shyt

 

[SuikodenII]

 

[jackswstd]

It's hard to read that but sometimes those demons are too powerful to ever overcome. R.I.P. Dre!

 

[Arcavian]

 

[The War Report]

Fresh was the dude that played him in The Corner. LaDonna from Treme played the mother as well.

 

[Double Burger With Cheese]

the corner is a tragic piece. the dude who played gary in the show gets an A+ cause that shyt was heart breaking, this is too. RIP

Yeah. That was actually hard to watch some times...

Acting and directing at it's finest. You FELT that shyt. Realistic as hell too. The Corner was pretty much the father of The Wire. The Wire is more glammed up. The Corner is about as real as it gets.

 

[Sad Bunny]

RIP

I know of people who died similiar in the same struggle. Hood aint no joke.

Gonna reread The Corner

And props to Dave Simin for giving these black, underpriviledged people a voice.

Im so happy I chose journalism bc we really have the power to make a difference.

And im oroud to say I lived in Bmore for 2 years learned a lot.

 

[Tres Leches]

damn Lamar from The Wire ? R.I.P.

 

[BrothaZay]

Anyone got more info on his cousin Dinky? that was always my favorite character on the corner, never read the book tho.

I know he dead now tho.

 

[AkaDemiK]

R.I.P

I remember watching the corner in middle school.

 

[Tom]

just downloaded the entire The Corner series off the strengh of cats name dropping it in this thread.


first episode was kinda wack, just a bunch of crackheads, and the dude from Fresh rocking dreads.

I'm assumming it gets better as it goes on tho

 

[newarkhiphop]

just downloaded the entire The Corner series off the strengh of cats name dropping it in this thread.


first episode was kinda wack, just a bunch of crackheads, and the dude from Fresh rocking dreads.

I'm assumming it gets better as it goes on tho

Eh its ok, forgettable at best

 

[The Phoenix]

The exchange in the comments after the article between David Simon and Tim of the Baltimore PD is pretty good.

Dave, another dead junkie, nothing more nothing less. I walked you through those very streets some 25 years ago, before the book, before your stint in homicide & before the TV shows. Fayette & Mount has not change a bit. The violence brought upon the community by all the “Dre’s” of the city is unforgivable. To make him out as something special is incredibly short sighted. Your compassion is, in my experience, misguided. You’ve chosen to fall in love with your subject matter & have overlooked the carnage he brought upon his own neighborhood. Where, I’m left to wonder, is the compassion for those that “Dre” left in his wake.

I remember you well, Tim. You were a fine police officer, thoroughly professional in your duties. I remember how precise your casework was, and how committed you were to addressing the drug trade along the lower end of the Western District. I admired you and your craft in every possible sense.

But here, your lack of basic empathy, if not a certain fundamental humanity, is startling.

DeAndre hurt no one more than himself. He was not notably violent and his crimes, until the very end, were about self-destruction. And indeed, if you consider the robberies of those pharmacies to be ruthless you are mistaken. He couldn’t bring himself to even brandish the gun, and in some cases it is entirely unclear that even had a weapon or a loaded weapon. He couldn’t even announce the robbery, merely handing a note and running away with the prescription drugs.

That you can ignore the totality of this tragedy — willfully avoiding all possible context for how children find themselves growing up in places like Fayette Street, and giving yourself a dose of smug, self-satisfaction by simply labeling other human beings as “junkies” — this is a problem of a stunted, malformed human condition. And I am not referring to the others you are so quick to categorize and condemn. I say this harshly because, frankly, you must know that you are not merely conducting an academic or intellectual exercise when you write in this way about this particular young man at this particular moment.

I have never actually sent anyone participating here to any sort of kill file. I’m quite content with fundamental disagreements on content. But in your case, I have to consider what you intended to accomplish with your post. Even if you believe every word you wrote, and even — if only for the sake of argument — we pretend that every word you wrote was intellectually justified, are you not still aware that you are writing in a forum in which other human beings are genuinely grieving for someone they have lost? That for myself — and for many others who knew DeAndre in ways that you can’t — this is staggering and heartbreaking? In that precise context, what kind of person writes as you did in this forum? And to what honorable purpose?

With all due respect to the good that you tried to do on Fayette Street in your days there, I have to ask you to reflect on your own cruelty, your indifference to others and their pain, and ultimately, on your lack of manners. Seriously. When you go to the funerals of people you knew, do you sign the visitor book with an accounting of the flaws and failings of the deceased, and do you do so as a means of making you feel superior in your own skin? Because, Tim, that is exactly what you just did on this website.

DeAndre struggled with great demons. As did many people lost on Fayette Street. The sad outcome doesn’t make their humanity or struggle any less real. Nor does it answer the greater question of why the Fayette Streets exist, and why we allow certain children in one of the most monied and propertied societies to learn their earliest lessons of life in such places.

If you’re going to write again, think a little harder. Feel a little more deeply. Or understand what has happened — and happened for the first and only time — when the next comment is your last in this forum.

Respectfully, and with fond memories of you in other contexts,

David

Dave, you conventionally chose to forget about the victims of the robberies who had no clue that “Dre” was such a gentle and loving guy. Ban me if it makes you feel good but you have missed something here. I live in the real world, “Dre” was not a good person & contributed NOTHING to improving his circumstance. I know better than you the story of “Dre”, I feel for the true victims of his life style, not for what he did to himself. Do you really believe what YOU write?

Tim,

I went back and reread the original post with your comments in mind. One would think, from your stance, that I had lionized DeAndre or excused or avoided his culpability in the tragedy, or that I had obscured the wrongs in which he was involved. But no, his failings are right there on the page — every one of them, right down to the last robberies.

You on the other hand are insistent on making this man less human — which is, I believe, the precise dynamic that has allowed the drug war to go on as long as it has — achieving nothing and destroying everything still standing after the onslaught of the drugs themselves.

You want to believe that DeAndre was the bad apple, that the game itself isn’t a dishonorable fraud on the part of our society. Well, you have a problem. Ed and I walked into that rec center on Vincent Street and we latched on to a half dozen adolescents, including DeAndre. And now, today, they are all of them gone. All of them. Not one still standing as part of our society and ready to claim the mantle of personal righteousness upon which you insist. Dinky was shot to death. So was Boo. Tae is in prison. So is Brooks. R.C. is gone, also an overdose. And now, after a long fight, DeAndre.

When the odds are that stacked against childhood, it is no longer a matter of individual failure. It is systemic, it is indicative not of one young man’s venalities, but of a powerful dynamic arrayed against all of the young men. You fought the drug war in that neighborhood and I know you did so fairly, giving the ground stashes to the right guys, never cheating the P.C. You played by the rules. But you are having a hard time being honest with yourself about what corruptions you served by doing so. In truth, those were rules to a rigged game, and you were a soldier in Pharoah’s army. And everything you did along Fayette Street — at least in terms of drug enforcement — didn’t serve anyone, or help anyone, least of all that neighborhood. To the extent you responded to violence and to crimes against people and their property, you were a meaningful civic asset. But nothing was achieved from your service to this dystopic and dishonorable drug prohibition. Sorry. All my years of reporting and writing have led to that inexorable conclusion.

The factories were gone, the jobs were overseas. The only hiring industry in that America was the corners. And you chased drug stats in a city in which half of all adult African-American males were without work and without any legitimate prospect of work. DeAndre grew up amid that rigged game and he played out his string. That he lasted as long as he did, that he went longer than every single one of his contemporaries is testament to his own fitful attempts at change and to the great efforts of his mother, who clawed her way to sobriety and managed to move her entire extended family away from Fayette Street. Only DeAndre, the oldest and most affected by a childhood in that place, could not be rescued.

In response to your query, I believe every fukking word I write. And I knew that young man far better than you have any right to claim. His mistakes and his wrongs are in the original post, plain as day. But that isn’t enough for you, because some of his humanity was there as well. And that is what bothers you, isn’t it? You need all his failure to be a consequence of his being just that much less a human being than you and yours. Fitzgerald famously said that the sign of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two seemingly opposing arguments at the same time. Well, DeAndre did what he did and lived as he lived and died as he died. No one is denying any of that. Yet at the same time, he was also quite human, a wounded soul who wanted more for himself and those he loved. And the people who knew him understood this. That this is unacceptable to you, that you can only hold one side of this duality in your mind is not about DeAndre. Brother, it is about you.

If you want to argue the drug war further, I will do so, and you should take your opinions to another heading at this site, perhaps the last one that argues drug policy, which is pegged to the recent Mexican election. I can be civil in debating the issue as an issue, and we can avoid any further discussion of DeAndre. But this post is here to serve the memory of one human being who, despite his struggles and failings, mattered to other human beings. And I can’t allow the basic indecency that underlies your remarks to continue. You can make your points without maligning this specific young man at a time when his family and friends are still coming to terms with his death. That’s just real, real wrong. Sorry.

If you comment here again, under this heading, I will necessarily delete the entry.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

The exchange in the comments after the article between David Simon and Tim of the Baltimore PD is pretty good.

that exchange was great

well thought out...well written...

all counter points to typical "its his fault" ideas