Monday, November 19, 2007

My two cents on the writer's strike

Possibly the best thing to come out of the writer's strike thus far is ironically a demonstration of the power of the internet as a superior medium for communication. The writer's union has (not suprisingly) come up with the clever idea of putting together internet sketches, some parodying the shows they write for and some just simple interviews, but all discussing the strike and explaining what is going on broadly and giving the latest updates. They're now posting them regularly on YouTube as a way of forcing the agenda into the media, which for some reason doesn't seem to be providing very good coverage of a strike against, well, them. As a propaganda tool, it could not be more cleaver. Unions especially, but the entire progressive left generally, could take an example from this as a powerful model of strike/protest actions moving outside the status quo. Similarly, the media could take this as an example that the internet is indeed at least of equivalent importance to television, and that the writers should be compensated for their internet work.

The best one I've found thus far--"Not the Daily Show" starring One of the Writers:

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