The Best Thing BET Ever Did

(The Wire, coming to the average black person near you.)

HBO is in talks to sell the syndication rights of The Wire to BET and BET is talking about giving the show a serious marketing push.

That might very well be the first good show BET has ever aired as well as the smartest move the network made since they fired the hosts of 106th and Park.

Looking at the BET schedule online, I see the masterworks of Beef: The Series, Access Granted: Bow Wow and College Hill.

Negro please.

I never understood why The Wire wasn't a bigger hit in the black community.

It examines all the worst elements of black culture that are routinely fetishized in hip-hop culture; the drugs, the poverty, the struggle with authority and deconstructs them with a level of intelligence and grace that these issues have never received in the American media.

That's why the millions who watch the Sopranos don't tune in. It's too black, it's too urban and it's too real. And the reality is depressing.

Black people consistently complain, and with good reason, that America doesn't look at the root causes of the problems in the black community, the way the 'War on Drugs' disproportionately affects blacks, the corruption of government and here we have a show that takes the time to explain every aspect of why minorities get the shaft and it gets less ratings than reruns of America's Next Top Model.

Of course there is talk of them editing the show for content, which is a bitch move considering there isn't a damn thing on The Wire that you couldn't have seen on BET Uncut or the new Jeezy video.