Opinion: Strike report: Day <strike>7</strike>66

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Unanimous support found in four-person survey

A joke holds that Fox will lose more money if the Writers Guild of America grants a waiver for its broadcast of the NAACP Image Awards than it will if the show is canceled.

When I buttonholed a group of four WGA members — including but not limited to David N. Weiss, vice-president, board of directors; Skye Dent; and my friend David Wyatt — there was not much love in the air for me, with comments ranging from, ‘I don’t know where you studied labor organizing,’ to ‘It’s funny you say that because I know 26,000 journalists have been laid of in the last 10 years.’ But there was unamimous support for granting the waivers discussed in today’s editorial, and for the guild leadership’s strategy.

Welcome to Paramount

I will pursue no longer the question of blocking traffic flow at the studio gates. Wyatt’s comment this morning: ‘We act as pedestrians. When the light is green we go; when it’s red we stop.’ Weiss says some guild members have been ticketed for jaywalking, but according to him and a guild spokesman, no picketers been arrested since the strike began.

Dry sterile thunder without rain

I caused the most offense among this morning’s sample by expressing my belief that the writers need to play harder ball. Weiss took umbrage at the suggestion of a Negative Golden Globes party, saying the cancellation of the awards show was nothing to celebrate. He also asked to be quoted in full as follows: ‘This is one of the premiere exports of this country. We don’t export much anymore in this country. It generates billions of dollars of revenue, employs hundreds of thousands of people. You don’t do that for a nickel and a dime. The notion of cutting the content creators out of the food chain is shortsighted.’

The how’d-that-happen decade

My pals on the Paramount picket line were very critical of my non-objective, biased, know-nothing hackery, so I guess that frees me up to render a truly woolgathering opinion:

I used to think I lived in an inconsequential era, but now I think I live in a nonconsequential era. You can make decisions without taking any responsibility for the result. You want to invade a country but you don’t want any soldiers to die. You want to go on strike but you don’t want anybody to lose money. You want to buy an overpriced house but you don’t want to have pay for it. Given the unidirectional nature of the time continuum, that’s not really how grownups should be looking at the world. Maybe some presidential candidate needs to promise a cabinet-level department that will help make that point to all Americans. (And just to anticipate one potential consequence, I am speaking only for myself here, not the L.A. Times or the editorial board.)