"Bullets fly in Baltimore, and no one's surprised"

"This stuff has been going on for a while and to the extent that young men are bent on absolutely annihilating each other, it's a continuing frustration," Bealefeld said. Last week alone, Baltimore had glowing school test scores and a successful soccer match that proved to the world that an American football stadium can sell out for its European cousin. And Monday night, Anthony Bourdain's popular cable show, No Reservations, came to our city.

But Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik noted on his blog that the show took the now cliched and definitely jaded approach of The Wire, featuring pit beef over crabs and boarded rowhouses over the Inner Harbor. "Unfair," you shout, but how can that argument stand when 18 citizens are shot on a single night in just one half of one city in America?

We lament our reputation for violence and then do everything we can to prove our critics right."