Better to be spoken about than not at all: Baltimore the setting for "Hard Times" and "Hopkins"
I have a pretty good sense that if "The Wire" had been set in Cleveland — as its creator David Simon was once threatening to do — then that city would've been the setting for "Hard Times at Douglass High," the latest first-rate documentary from Alan and Susan Raymond, the family that brought us the Loud family on PBS way back when.
Instead, it, like the HBO series, is set in Baltimore, and just in case you were wondering if Simon made up all that stuff about the public schools there, well, guess again.
Bummer though it is, the Raymonds have produced an essential document for discussing how the next administration will have to do something about the seemingly impossible set of goals established by the No Child Left Behind Act.
Shari Elliker and I discussed that and another Baltimore-based show also debuting this week on ABC, "Hopkins," today on WBAL Radio:
