Where Else You Gonna See Treme’s and The Wire’s David Simon Engaging Libertarians? One More Reason to Give to Reason

So we’re
a few days into Reason’s annual webathon and we’re asking readers
of this site to pony up $150,000 in
support of our fearless libertarian journalism in Reason print,
online, and video editions.

The contributions are tax-deductible and you can pay in Bitcoin
if you got ’em.

Why should you help us out? Click on the interview above. It’s
with David Simon, the man behind The Wire, widely recognized as one
of the very best TV shows of all time, and Treme, which
begins its final season this week on HBO . Despite many areas of
agreement, it’s a contentious interview and it sparked
a hostile response from Simon that led to our posting of the
full audio version of our conversation.

Let me suggest that this sort of interaction is one of the
unique things we do: We engage the world – and the people we admire
– in a way that is not only rare but invaluable. Across all of our
platforms, Reason journalists are testing the world, probing,
kicking the tires and finding out what’s what. And we’re also
always constantly trying to interrogate the limits of the
libertarian perspective so that we’re presenting the best arguments
and visions for a better world. Finally, we also try to do all this
with a sense of fun and adventure and brio rather than out of grim
duty or terror and apprehension about what might come next.

If you like reading and watching Reason – if you find our
content stimulating, provocative, infuriating, inspiring, valuable
– please consider helping us reach our target goal for the 2013
webathon.

And give the final season of
Treme a shot. Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the show is a
fascinating meditation on the tension between a reverence for the
past and “authenticity” and the absolute need to change and
progress into the future. The trick – and I’m sure the final season
will explore this in a way that only a master like Simon can do –
is how to respect and learn from the past without becoming
hopelessly stuck in it.