The end to the dumbing down of America?

Well...nah. But this is a good start:

In an often spirited display of protest playing out on both sides of the country, more than 1,000 screenwriters -- representing "Lost," "The Young and the Restless," "Chinatown" and everything in between -- hoisted picket signs and chanted labor songs as a long-feared show business strike became a potentially crippling reality Monday.

In their first full day away from their computer keyboards, the Writers Guild of America members scored several important victories. And those who are not on the picket lines -- primarily television's so-called show runners -- found themselves figuratively on the line, wrestling over whether to return to work.

The makers of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "Late Show With David Letterman" said they were suspending production of new episodes. Steve Carell, the star of NBC's hit "The Office," refused to cross WGA picket lines, and Ellen DeGeneres, the host of the syndicated talk show "Ellen," decided against taping her show in a gesture of solidarity.

CBS said production on its comedy "The New Adventures of Old Christine" was halted, and ABC said it was delaying the premiere of the series "Cashmere Mafia." At the risk of losing their jobs, some members of Teamsters Local 399 decided not to cross the picket lines, and that action might have shut down a small number of shows, union officers said.

Hooray. You mean we get a break from the crap the television industry has been shoving down our throats for the last 10 years?


Television writing is so awful now. I watch exactly two shows now...South Park and Scrubs. Each has outstanding writing. But I tried to watch The Office a couple of weeks ago. By the first commercial break I was bored out of my head.

I don't even want to discuss the odious garbage CBS tries to pass off as television comedy.

Anyway...I feel sorry for these poor writers. Not:

"It really doesn't matter what business you are in if the living you make is threatened," Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning author of "Chinatown" said outside Sony."

A strike is like war in a way: Nobody wins but they are also sometimes unavoidable. I guess this is unavoidable."

Picketing alongside Towne was a fellow Oscar winner, writer and director Paul Haggis. The "Crash" filmmaker called the current dispute with producers "another example of corporate greed." He accused them of trying to "shut down the entire town," and said he was prepared to walk the picket line for as long as it took.

Although top screenwriters like Haggis can make as much as $250,000 a week, many WGA members collect middle-class wages and can go months between jobs; the threat of an extended work stoppage could have grave consequences for the industry's lesser lights.

Comparing this strike to a war? Decrying the big bad corporations who pay them up to $250K a week?



What a bunch of morons...