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Feb
18
The Writers’ Strike: How we played it wrong.
February 18, 2008 |
Now this is armchair quarterbacking, I know. We writers pretty much won the strike. But I can’t help but think we could have creamed it. We could have walked away with multi-million-dollar paychecks, sweetheart stock options, huge tax breaks, jets and more. Each one of us. How?
I got the idea when I read this article from Politico about a conservative confab in Hollywood, which contained this great quote:
“…When the writers went on strike Nov. 5, they entrusted their futures to a leadership that essentially believes Karl Marx is still relevant,” he said. “This was a revolution against The Man.”
Now, I know the strike was a while ago, but I vaguely remember it being about us getting more money. I’m not sure how that qualifies as communism.
It’s our own fault. The WGA went to great pains to point out how “middle class” we are. But imagine if we had gone the other way. If we had trotted out our richest members. Imagine if we had pointed out that most writers are in fact corporations. Right wingers would have cheered us on.
Come to think of it, instead of a strike, we should have called it “synergy.” We would have made the cover of Business Week.
Yes, many would have complained. I can imagine how the liberal New York Times would have covered it:
“Corporations band together to raise the price of television and movie scripts. Cartel? Some say no.”
This is probably how Forbes would have covered our membership meeting:
“The CEO’s of Bad Robot, Shondaland, and thousands of other corporations gathered today in a members-only confab in Hollywood. The topic? More profits!”
Cheney himself would have come to that meeting to cheer us on.
“My friends, some who call themselves ‘Americans’ would have us believe that the price of tv and movie scripts should be dictated by some bureaucrat in some office. These people would have you submit your work to some producer who gets to say what he’ll pay for it. I say the sale price of a product is best determined by the person who made that product. And they should get that price no matter what. That’s how America works.” Thunderous applause.
Yes, there would have been a huge public outcry. We would have been dragged before a Senate committee. But our new friends, the conservatives, would have made damn sure we skated. Republican senators would have filibustered their asses off for us. Money would have poured into our Legal Defense Fund.
Then, O’Reilly and Limbaugh would have beat the drums for us.
“Hello, Caller, you’re on.”
“Yeah, my name’s Nick, I’m from LA. Uh, you’re saying these corporations should be able to raise their price without any oversight, without any concern for the guys like me who have to air those shows, who have to try to sell ads for those sho–”
“Cut off his mike. Next caller.”
Of course it would all end with the Bush Justice Department arguing that tv and movie scripts are vital to our national security. “If we have to go into pilot season with underfunded scripts, it only emboldens those who want to destroy us.”
And in a last-minute “compromise,” Senate democrats would have agreed to add a ten million dollar “security surcharge” to the sale price of every script, paid by the government from the Medicare Fund.
We could have done better. Next time, maybe we will.
