Categories
Editorial Opinion

Writers on Strike

Unless a settlement of the Hollywood writers’ strike emerges soon, you can expect to be watching reruns of many of your favorite television shows, starting this week.

The first casualties will be the late-night comedy shows, such as The Daily Show, Late Night With David Letterman, and The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Those programs need fresh humorous takes on news events every day. Without writers coming up with new jokes, those shows are dead in the water.

At a time when writing is often considered by corporate media to be merely “content” to be monetized, it’s not surprising to see writers standing up and demanding their share of the pie. Without them, after all, there is no content. As funny as Jon Stewart might be, he’s nothing without a script, and those scripts come from a roomful of funny folks thinking up jokes and one-liners. As wonderful as that Macy’s sale may be, no one’s going to pick up the paper to read that full-page ad unless there’s something compelling to read.

It’s one of the ironies of this Internet and electronic age that writers — practitioners of one of mankind’s oldest forms of communication — have become more important than perhaps ever before.

Websites and television shows — and, yes, newspapers and magazines — have a never-ending need for material, content that provokes and amuses and challenges readers and viewers. No one goes to a website or a publication just to read the ads. The story is still everything. And the storytellers are beginning to realize it.

Football and ADA

From the Detroit News comes word that the University of Michigan has run afoul of the U.S. Department of Education for violating wheelchair access rules at its famous 109,000-seat football stadium.

The issue is compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — the same issue that confronts Memphis at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.

According to the newspaper, the “scathing report” came eight years after an investigation was launched by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The so-called Big House was built in 1927 and has been expanded and renovated several times.

Are there similarities between the Big House and Our House? Michigan’s stadium has 88 wheelchair seats, far fewer than the 1 percent, roughly 1,000, that ADA compliance requires. But the university says it has accommodated every ticket holder who has required an accessible seat. The other U of M up north stands to lose millions of dollars in financial aid to students, according to the newspaper report.

Let’s hope the federal government takes a reasonable view of the Liberty Bowl. Michigan’s stadium is almost always sold out. The Liberty Bowl is almost always about half full. There would appear to be enough accessible seats or places to add them if there are not.

But ADA compliance should not be an excuse for tearing down a pretty good stadium and building a new one at taxpayer expense. How many people in wheelchairs are being turned away because of lack of access or seating? When that question is answered and the University of Memphis starts filling the house and tickets become scarce, it will be easier to take the worst-case view of ADA compliance seriously.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Ye Olde GOP Presidential Players

The hallmark of this president will undoubtably be the
Iraq war; however the influence of Karl Rove with his powerful Svengali job as
casting agent and director for the George W. Bush Show will loom large. Over
the last six years, America has been a willing participant in a reality show
created by Republicans called Let’s Pretend. Thematically, this is the
message: “I will pretend to tell you the truth, if you will pretend to believe
it.”

When it comes to acting, Dubya is a rookie, but you’ve
got to hand it to him —- the guy is one hell of a performer. After all, it
can’t be easy playing Goober Pyle, Howdy Doody, and Forrest Gump
simultaneously. Until now, the sunny performances by Ronald Reagan on the show
I’m Not a President but I Play One on TV
have ranked tops among
Republicans, but the acting skills of George the Forty-Third have put old
Ronnie to shame.

Cheney, Condi, and Rummy, the co-producers of this
mendacious melange, have a flair for the dramatic as well. Their formula has
been brilliant: Take Lost in Space, cross it with some Green Acres,
and lace it with just the right amounts of Combat and Rawhide
to create a new version of Groundhog Day. What a masterful stroke of genius it
was to make the media part of the cast. When it came to the thespian talents
of the working stiffs at the networks and 24 -hour cable channels, who knew?

Stage doors will soon be shutting for our Witless Wonder
but those amusement loving Republicans have nothing to fear – Fred Thompson is
waiting in the wings. Thompson, a bona fide B- lister in Hollywood rolled out
his candidacy this week by keeping all the razzle-dazzle so cherished by his
party. Not one to disappoint, Ready Freddy kicked off his campaign on The
Tonight Show
with Jay Leno.

The role of Candidate is a reprise of one of Thompson’s
earlier portrayals, but in case you missed it, this is the synopsis: Southern
Lawyer turned Washington Senator/actor/lobbyist drawls his way through America
using warmed-over Reagan anecdotes to tout Dixie-fried conservative values.
Folksy speeches that don’t really say anything but are punctuated with the
benefits of war, a devotion to God, and the love of freedom stir the crowds of
the saved and self-righteous. Winking and smiling, Thompson is assuring
nervous neo-cons that he’s their man and will continue on with the Bush
charade of pretending to tell us the truth, so we can continue to pretend to
believe it.

With rank hypocrisy, Republicans love to condemn the
mythical Hollywood life style and claim it to be the epitome of hedonism
represented only by Democrats. Yet Republicans are the ones with a penchant
for electing real actors — candidates whose multiple marriages, secret
lovers, and closeted sexcapades more accurately reflect Hollywood values. In
the days ahead, it will be interesting to see if Mr. Law-‘n-Order can cast his
actor’s spell over Republican voters.

On the other hand: Surely, the time has come for people
to consider electing a President who is genuinely more interested in winning
the Nobel Prize for Peace than the Academy Award for Acting.