Opinion: Strike update: Day <strike>7</strike>67

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Our do-nothing president

I caught up with Melrose Larry Green this morning, while he was working the 76 station at the corner of Highland and his namesake avenue, waving a poster in support of Mitt Romney. Larry, who attended college in Massachusetts and admires Romney for his values and his leadership of the Bay State, despises the Clintons and had this to say about the Writers Guild of America strike:

‘The strike is a disaster. The mayor, who has a background as a labor organizer, and the governor, who was a bigtime actor, ought to be working together every day to settle this thing.’

Asked to pick a favorite between the two sides, Larry declined, saying, ‘Probably both sides are to blame. I think President Romney would have intervened, because this is not just Los Angeles; this is the whole country. I think President Bush should intervene and get this thing settled.’

Strike TV, where art thou, or, it’s 1997 all over again!

The prediction that the strike would lead to an explosion of new media creativity is looking creakier all the time. Strike TV, an online channel promising to feature new, non-strike-related work by WGA members, aims to raise money for the strike’s fund. The channel is supposed to be coming in February to YouTube and Google Video, and Strike TV held a seminar yesterday, which is described in detail by Fun Joel.

I’m second to nobody in my nostalgia for the Clinton era, but are people really still holding conferences where they talk about the challenges of monetizing the Internet? There’s even a reference to ‘Hollywood 2.0,’ a concept I loved when I saw it 11 years ago on the cover of Wired. Seriously, the point of these here interwebs is that you don’t have to go to meetings or spend four months on a project. What do you think this is, Hamlet? You’re competing against ‘Leave Britney Alone,’ folks. Let’s see what you can do.

Self-criticism for the self-absorbed

At my Paramount spot today, I watched a BBC crew schmooze the picketing writers. The correspondent’s questioning style was to hold forth on how amazingly fantastical the universal public support for the writers has been, and at one point he asked ‘But the real question is what will happen on Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, The Oscars®?’ And he said it with such deadpan Brit-fanboy breathlessness (you could actually hear the registered-trademark symbol) that I remembered why it’s so hard to take seriously critiques of Hollywood like The Player and such: Because when you get down to it, Hollywood self-criticism is just another form of Hollywood tinsel.

Real criticism from the non-organized

I’m not as confident as the BBC in saying what the public feels about the strike. I spend some time around true Hollywood hangers-on who are not striking but out of work and/or business, and I keep hearing that the worm is turning against writers, with ‘greedy writers’ commentary becoming more prevalent.

There doesn’t seem to be much evidence for that claim. Here’s an anti-guild screed from somebody whose husband’s out of work; that’s not exactly a groundswell. If web comments are any guide, the writers still have the upside in the PR war. And every day this week I’ve heard at least one horn-honk in support of the picketers.

How much value there is in the PR is another story. The ultimate arbiter of public opinion will be my favorite economic concept: revealed preference. If the people don’t want to watch, nothing’s gonna stop them. Public behavior on this issue may end up looking the way it does on so many other issues: Most people, as the BBC might say, just don’t give a toss. That could be bad news for either side, or more likely for both.