JOLLY DAYS

Ed Burns

Although David Simon got most of the attention, the less extroverted Ed Burns was co-creator of The Wire. Now the muckraking duo is about to have another mini-series on HBO. In this piece Burns comes across as an admirable and special man. He has retained his concern about society — after working as a cop he became a schoolteacher — a real contributor, he walks the walk.

As an interesting extension of my previous post about expertise,

Mr. Burns said he was surprised by all the attention “The Wire” received from policymakers who were piqued by the show’s gritty civics lessons — the very sort of people, he said, who more or less ignored him when he worked in the public sector.

“The irony is that you have to be somebody before anybody listens to you,” he said. “I wasn’t an expert when I was an expert, and now that I’m not an expert, I’m an expert. It’s kind of curious.”