Back when The Wire was ending its run, the Freaknomics blog hosted Sudhir Venkatesh watching the tv serial with some "real thugs". The first post had too much smarm for me to continue following it (Warren Buffet? WTF? It's RUPERT MURDOCH, dude).
I forgot and moved on. But after reading TR's damning review of his memoir/book, Gang Leader for a Day, I went back to see how those blog-posts had continued. Yeah, not so good.
to be fair , I thought "Off the books" was a good book. But yeah, his "Gang leader for a day" is putrid.
[...] Tenured Radical’s damning takedown of his book Gang Leader For A Day, a post I got to via CM, who shares with me, I think, an interest in how a scoundrel like Venkatesh maps onto The Wire, [...]