WGA Strikes; TV Viewers Fail To Notice, Go On With Lives.

I've been keeping up with the WGA strike for the last... oh... seven hours or so, and I have to say I'm fascinated by it all. In the vain interest of possibly getting some Google hits, I will now list a large number of words that may pertain to the issue at hand: late night, Writer's Guild, comedy, drama, TV, television, movies, producers, studios, executives, scripts, scabs, production, DVD, digital, Internet, demands, residuals, support, reruns.

Now that that's out of the way:

I just saw a picture of Tina Fey standing in a picket line, presumably outside New York City's Rockefeller Center, holding a sign that said "On Strike." I actually think Tina Fey is a wonderfully talented writer (one with whom I secretly harbor a desire to work closely one day), but "On Strike"? A blindfolded, retarded monkey on an overdose of LSD could come up with a better phrase to put on a picketing sign. You’d think a bunch of writers would have come up with better slogans than “On Strike.” If this clever wordplay is indicative of the kind of material for which they were actually getting paid just last week, let us all hope that this strike lasts indefinitely. Anyway, between classes, I jotted down a few alternate slogans that are all, in my humble opinion, better than the Bible and/or heroin:

“No more pages until higher wages.”

“Fight for your write.”

“You treat us like Kurds, you don’t get the words.”

“Hey hey! Ho ho! The unfair treatment of writers and story editors and the exploitation of our talents to fill your own fat-cat coffers while we’re forced to endure the unimaginable and unconscionable embarrassment of being paid only once for work that we, in fact, only did once has got to go.” (It's harsh, but it's true.)

“Your characters won’t prattle until we win this battle.”

“Your pockets are fatter because of our chatter.”

“Half of us were already unemployed, and we’ll be willing to sacrifice their potential incomes for months on end if we have to!”

“It’ll come to blows before you get more prose.”

“Corny remakes of crappy 70's TV shows aren’t going to write themselves.”

“Stop with the slighting; let’s get back to writing.”

“You can’t cite our works if we don’t write for you jerks.”

“You’ll have nothing to watch if this contract they botch.”

“My degree in film theory from Ohio State is looking pretty useless right about now.”

“Say goodbye to new pictures unless you loosen your strictures.”

“The AMPTP is a big ol’ sack of crap.”

OK, so maybe I petered out a bit toward the end there, but you get my point. If studio executives are supposed to be compensating writers based on their ability to write, one hopes that their negotiations will be handled by a different person from whomever came up with those signs.