Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley will be the first to insist that he is not Tommy Carcetti, despite the ample parallels between his own rise from Baltimore mayor to Maryland governor, and the assumptions of many Baltimoreans that Carcetti, like so many of the show's characters, has an obvious real-life inspiration.
Yet sometimes O'Malley can't even help himself from inviting the comparison, like he did last night at a campaign event in Philadelphia, where he joined an Irish band onstage to play guitar and sing The Pogues' “Body of an American,” which “The Wire” used several times as the anthem sung by cops at police wakes.
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Now, the song predates “The Wire,” and Carcetti isn't actually involved in any of the scenes where it plays, but even so, it's hard to watch that Vine and not think O'Malley's having a bit of fun with all the assumptions about his fictional counterpart.