Elana Levin

Lou Dobbs Crosses A Picket Line

The writers strike is still going on and going strong. Writers are still picketing The Daily Show.

So why did the self-professed "champion of the middle class" CNN pundit Lou Dobbs go on The Daily Show show last night? That's scabbing. I wonder what Dobbs would have to say to all those professional writers who's struggle for a fair deal he just slapped in the face. Don't they count as America's squeezed middle class (and not even middle class in many cases)? Isn't that the group he claims to speak for?

Dobbs hasn't commented on this controversy yet and didn't even use his air time to make any statements supporting the writers in his interview. I know because I watched the show online. The writers are fighting for their contract to include their being paid for shows that are watched online. Daily Show is VERY popular online.

Oh the irony.

Again, I am compelled to post my favorite WGA strike YouTube video (by a Daily Show writer of course) that explains how laughable the t.v. studios' claims that they don't make money off the internet are. Hey, if consumer research groups are reporting an explosion of online teevee viewing and Viacom is suing YouTube for a billion dollars because people are watching their shows on YouTube's site instead of on Viacom's own internet properties I think it is safe to say that online t.v. is a big deal and a big money maker and that those who create that content should be paid for their work.

Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore, who had his own battle with NBC last year over being told to deliver unpaid webisodes of his excellent show, told Time Magazine (from a Paramount TV picket line) last month that his struggle getting paid for content "taught me the lesson that the studios thought Internet stuff somehow existed in this magical realm where they didn't have to pay anybody and they could do whatever they want," Moore says. "That experience a year ago lead me to believe we were gonna be in this situation today."

Another picketing crossing disappointment on The Colbert Report this week was Matt Taiibbi.

Blogs like scholars and Rogues were compelled to ask "Why, oh why, did you sell out, Matt Taibbi?"
And Group News Blog more directly states "Matt Taibbi is a Punk" (they don't mean that in the Joe Strummer sense of the word punk-- crossing picket lines is not very punk rock). Jesse Wendel views Taibii's scabiness as part of a larger pattern of punking out. Group News Blog's "Lower Manhattanite" is a WGA member I might add so they know a thing or two over there. Keep reading United Hollywood's blog for some more thoughts from the front lines of the WGA strike.

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Posted at 1:06 PM, Jan 11, 2008 in Labor | Middle-class squeeze
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