Fiction has its advantages over reality.  Fiction, writes Mark Bowden in the Atlantic Monthly, "...frees you from the infuriating unfinishedness of the real world. For this reason, the very clarity of well-wrought fiction can sometimes make it feel more real than reality."  David Simon, the producer and creator of the HBO series The Wire, has created this kind of larger-than-life fiction in this television show about the urban realities of the city of Baltimore.  By delving into the gritty details of the city's characters, institutions, government, and culture, Simon paints what several have called a Dickensian portrait of the urban narratives of the city.  Simon, by creating his own fictional urban vision, has illuminated many of the problems facing reality.

Well, chalk it up to 2 -- that's right -- TWO election-changing stories that the New York Times prevented from being published before the 2004 presidential election.

As tlh lib has alerted us while I was writing this diary: The New York Times Ombudsman, Byron Calame, has just published an article stating that executive editor, Bill Keller, had discussions on the eve of the November election on whether to publish the now infamous story about Bushco.'s illegal wire-tapping of U.S. citizens.

This is in addition to killing a story originally broke by David Lindorff in which a senior NASA imaging specialist confirmed that there was an mechanical device of some kind on Bush's back during the debates.