The Office and Seinfeld

Is it safe to assume that the vast majority of the population believe the writers have the moral high ground over the studio suits. It's not the boycott all mediums of entertainment or even honk your horn level of support, rather more of a "if I had to choose one side to pray for at night if I weren't agnostic"-type of support. It doesn't matter whether they have support though because the writers can handle themselves. You can count on one hand the people who were not told that being a writer and joining the entertainment industry as scribes was the most farfetched daydream ever. And the stubborn kids did it anyway, whether they're making Tina Fey money, or I don't know, Jill Soloway money (actually they're both probably doing well).

I was reading that interesting article a few weeks back by some guy who was married to a WGA member and he was saying that the members can't agree on anything but they're unified. Additionally, the suits were all keeping and line and pushing their talking points and pretending to have amnesia with regard to their hours of planning an efficient online business model for their product. I found it hilarious that the two sides were acting so cliche - it was exactly as you'd imagine it. The corporate fat cats tell all the bald-faced lies in the world without blinking and taking less than a minute to do so. No shame, no breaking character, no emotions. They just read the lines they want to feed to the media outlets that are owned by the same people and then have business lunch at Le Cirque and go about their day.

The writers being unified was perfectly explainable by their stubborness and self-centredness that makes a person think that they can put to page something that people would want to expend time, energy, and money to see. It's got to be pretty special to beat a nice long sleep after a ten hour day plus commuting, but the TV hooks alot of the labour force every night. On top of that, if they can't on anything else (global warming, voting democrat, etc.) then they are still sure to agree on one thing: that they're worth more than they're being paid. That applies with almost every worker, and probably more so with writers who are obliged to feel that their works are unique unlike an accountant (well, excluding the "creative" ones) or a code-monkey (I'm just bitter, IT people make good money). They'll put up with being used by the people who cut the check, they may even put up with being groped once a month, but they can all agree that they will not put up with being royally screwed by "The Man". And they're willing to eat into their savings a little to show their backbone. How many movies or TV shows portray management as the good guys? Obviously, the audience relates better with the underdog but it's also because the writers skew socialists.

I'm probably a left-wing socialist liberal by any standard but I have sided with management for a few sports strikes/lockouts. The recent NHL lockout because that's one where the players knew for a fact that a number of teams were in trouble and still chose to stand firm on the status quo; you know it's time to back down when 20% of the teams had much better finances during the lockout than in operation. They had a national TV contract in the US that the lacrosse and curling leagues wouldn't want, so how much did the players think the owners could milk from their attendance revenue.

I also had a problem with the MLB strike in 94(?) just because they waited until the good part of baseball - the last three months - to strike. Financially that was the play but it was not fair for the fans, especially the six of them in Montreal because the Expos were leading the division and I'm sure if they made the World Series they would have at least the size of a saturday night movie crowd. Maybe.