President Obama has stated time and again that his favorite show is The Wire, but don’t expect Mitt Romney to get in on all the bleak Baltimore excitement anytime soon. Not that we … really did, but now David Simon has made his distaste for Romney pretty clear. “Can we stand back and pause a short minute to take in the spectacle of a man who wants to be President of The United States, who wants us to seriously regard him as a paragon of the American civic ideal, declaiming proudly and in public that he has paid his taxes at a third of the rate normally associated with gentlemen of his economic benefit,†Simon writes on his blog.
Am I supposed to congratulate this man?  Thank him for his good citizenship?  Compliment him for being clever enough to arm himself with enough tax lawyers so that he could legally minimize his obligations? … I can’t get over the absurdity of this moment, honestly: Hey, I never paid less than thirteen percent.  I swear.  And no, you can’t examine my tax returns in any more detail. But I promise you all, my fellow American citizens, I never once slipped to single digits.  I’m just not that kind of guy.Â
[…]
God.
This republic is just about over, isn’t it?
Yeah, just about.