I’m really getting tired of this stupid WGA Strike.  Not because I’m missing out on shows I like.  I’m not.  It’s the NFL Playoffs, and I don’t need TV shows until February.  Really, I won’t need TV at all.  I can go spend time with my kids, or write stuff of my own.  In fact, a lot of the shows that aren’t running right now because of the strike, I find stupid and pointless.  That includes the Sci-Fi junk.  I am in such a mood….

Anyway, I ran across this article on Jay Leno’s monologues.  Now, let me make it really simple.  Jay Leno was told by NBC to start doing the show or else.  Or else what?  I don’t know, but regardless, Leno doesn’t want to force their hand, ultimately resulting in lost jobs for his crew, and possibly even Kevin Eubanks and the band.  So Jay has to do a show.  Unfortunately, Jay is also a member of the Writer’s Guild of America.  So how do you suppose Jay, a veteran stand-up comedian, is going to open his show?  With a monologue.

This is where it gets really stupid.  If you’re going to do a monologue with your own jokes, without writers to write your jokes for you, how are you going to do that monologue?  Are you going to make up your jokes in your head as you go along, hoping to be funny?  Are you going to make them up ahead of time and memorize them?  No, you’re going to write it down!

But wait!  Jay’s a WGA member.  He’s not allowed to WRITE ANYTHING, even for his own performance!  Now excuse the heck out of me, but this seems utterly ridiculous, and the WGA risks losing even more credibility than they’ve already lost.  Everybody loves the “us versus them” mentality.  Everybody goes in for the David in the face of Goliath.  More importantly, everyone who hates Republicans has a knee-jerk reaction to support a Union in the face of a Corporation of any kind. 

Behold, the opiate of the masses, I call you groupthink!  Guys like Robin Williams, and even Jay Leno himself, are out there feeding the writers on the picket lines, and giving them hot chocolate, and oh how it makes a wonderful underdog story.  B.S., I say.  A friend of mine from SciFi Studios, Dave Andrews, who is an actor and writer in his own right, is very familiar with the situation, and posted this entry on his blog recently…

In creating and maintaining this ill-conceived and long-lasting strike, the WGA has created an environment where literally everyone in the entire Hollywood studio system, from companies down to individuals, has no choice but to seek ways to get around the WGA itself. They’re literally making themselves obsolete.

To make a long story short, the studios are going to clean house, and a lot of striking writers are going to lose the shows for which they were writing.  The studios will look elsewhere for revenue streams.  The Golden Globes has failed to receive the backing of the WGA, and this also is pathetic.  As Andrews mainains…

Since the kudos shows are meant to honor members of our industry, including writers, this marks a new low in the trashy behavior of WGA leadership. Supporting these shows would have shown that the WGA respects the working members of our industry. It would have shown that they are part of a team. Not that they were giving in to producers, but that they supported, respected and honored those who work in the industry.

No such…

I guess given their behavior of late, there should have been no part of me that expected the WGA leadership to act in an honorable way. I should not have expected them to be respectful to the rest of us, including the writers that they supposedly represent.

What I care about is all sorts of gullible people falling for the lie that the poor downtrodden writers are being trampled by the big bad studios, and are not being paid for their work in some manner or fashion.  The idea that writers are not being paid for online sales is patently false, and it’s turned into a huge propaganda ploy for no good reason.  I have friends, associates, acquaintances, and all you members of The Tribe, you know who you are.

Read Dave’s blog entries on the subject, which go back to the beginning of the strike, and check out Variety Magazine’s archives on the subject.  All the meaningful statements are there in black and white, and I’m just sick and tired of everyone buying the lie.