Monthly Archives: August 2008

If you want to keep up with Hurricane Gustav, click on over to the journal of Dr. Jeff Masters. He knows of what he blogs.

A lot of folks seem to have forgotten that the Screen Actors Guild is still operating without a new contract. If one scans the Hollywood trade papers, one doesn't even find much information about what's happening. This is mainly because nothing is happening. The two sides have not even met since July 16. The Producers basically said, way back on June 30, "We'll give you the same thing AFTRA got and not a penny more." SAG basically said, "That deal sucks and we won't take it." And that's where it's been ever since. I still can't envision a scenario where SAG wrings any sort of victory out of this situation. I'd like to see that happen but I just can't imagine how.

The next event that may trigger some kind of movement will occur September 19. That's when the results will be announced in the current election for SAG leadership. There are essentially two factions — a group called Membership First is attempting to stay in power. An "upstart" party that calls itself Unite for Strength is seeking to take over control. If you have an interest in the issues, check out their respective websites. If you have the interest and a couple of hours to spare, you can watch interviews with reps from both groups on this page.

There are also a number of unaffiliated candidates. I have friends on all sides of this and do not feel qualified to say who will be better for SAG or who'll prevail. Whoever it is, they're going to have to either mend a lot of fences with AFTRA or figure out a way to do a hostile takeover.

As one might expect, the election is getting nastier than it should and that's not the end of the disharmony. The current leadership of SAG Hollywood is currently exchanging angry words with the heads of the New York division. On 9/19, something will change…one hopes for the better. In the meantime, since it's in no shape to negotiate a new version of the soon-to-expire commercials contract (which is separate from the film/TV contract), SAG has extended the current one for six months.

In other news: Various factions within IATSE are making noise about their union's deal with HBO. It was lowballed long ago as a means of getting union representation established there. Now that HBO is healthy and thriving, a lot of folks feel it's time they stopped paying discount rates for their labor. That's sure starting to sound like a strike waiting to happen. It may even happen for many of the same reasons that the former head of IATSE was condemning other unions' strikes.

Lastly: There's also an election ongoing in the Writers Guild and that's led to a round of post-mortem discussions of our long and recent strike. The topic's being debated both by those seeking office and by industry reporters. I'm endorsing no candidates and am not even sure who I'm voting for…but I sure don't agree with anyone who claims we could have attained the same contract without a strike. It's easy to say that and hard to disprove but I don't think that's true. I don't even think it's true that the DGA and AFTRA could have achieved their contracts — even the lousy one AFTRA accepted — if not for our strike. It's a sad fact of business that every so often, someone tries to screw you and you have to say no. If you say yes, they just screw you more next time. If you don't believe that, just look at the offer AFTRA gets when their current contract expires.

Wolf Blitzer on CNN is currently interviewing politicians about Hurricane Gustav. Apparently, the most significant concern about the storm is how it might impact the presidential contest.

The people in the path of Gustav may wind up getting attention and help that they wouldn't get if this thing hit on November 5. Maybe we can figure out some way to make sure natural disasters only occur in election years.

Our nation's population has increased by one baby panda. And he or she (they don't know yet) may still turn out to be one of a pair of twins.

The annual Jerry Lewis Telethon is upon us and once more, I'm confused as to its length. This year, I seem to be able to pick it up on three different channels on my DirecTV feed. All times given below are Pacific, on account of that's where I am.

KCAL Channel 9 is running it from 6 PM Sunday night until 5 PM on Monday. That's 23 hours.

WGN, which is in Chicago I think, airs the show from 8 PM Sunday night until 1 PM on Monday when they stop for a Cubs-Astros game. They're then scheduled to come back at 4 PM for another hour. That's 18 hours of Jerry and his friends and his kids and his tote board.

WDCW in Washington, DC starts at 6 PM Sunday night and airs it 'til 3:30 PM the following day. That's 21 and a half hours.

The WDCW feed may be the most interesting because according to the official MDA site, the whole telethon is 21 and a half hours. This, of course, raises the question of why KCAL is running 23 hours of it. I believe the answer is that even the 21.5 hour version contains some hours that are repeated, and that KCAL is repeating more of them than most cities in the Love Network.

Co-hosts, taking over while Jerry is napping, will include Norm Crosby, Tom Bergeron, Jann Carl, Nancy O'Dell, Alison Sweeney, Ace Young and Billy Gilman. Tony Orlando is hosting the New York end of things and Ed McMahon, complete with broken neck and financial problems, is back to anchor and announce. The MDA site does not list any of the performers but I have a hunch that they'll include most of the acts currently playing Vegas plus Maureen McGovern. If you hear that Charlie Callas is making an appearance, drop me an e-mail.

Tune in. Donate whatever you can spare. And if you're thinking of stiffing them, just remember: Jerry's packing heat.

I've been watching CNN's coverage of Hurricane Gustav, which is currently at Category 4 strength and almost certain to do a lot of damage to someone somewhere.

It makes me wish there'd been more mention at the Democratic Convention of Katrina. There are still people out there who I suspect have filed that one away in the "Act of God" file, denying how much of that disaster was man-made. It's arguable how much of what went wrong was because the levees that were built in and around New Orleans were shoddy and inadequate, and how much was due to inept rescue and response. Clearly though, a lot of people didn't do their jobs and as a result, lives and homes were lost.

Gustav is looking real scary. I sure hope someone learned something from Katrina and was able to apply it.

The person named Pat Buchanan who appears on MSNBC (obviously no relation to the old Pat Buchanan) called it "The Greatest Convention Speech of All Time" or something equally effusive. Oddly enough, I felt a tiny letdown when I finally watched the Obama stemwinder. It probably achieved what it was supposed to achieve in terms of vote-wrangling but I guess I was waiting for a little more poetry…some line that people would be quoting for decades after. If there was one in there, I missed it. For me, the best line of the convention was still John Kerry's "Talk about being for it before you were against it."

Then again, I'm not the audience that matters. Obama already has my vote — a vote, I might add, which won't make much difference since there's very little chance of him not carrying California. To the extent I could imagine myself in the position of an Undecided Voter, I think it may have been fine. He seemed smart and patriotic and passionate and — most important to some people, apparently — a good family man. He also managed to make a pretty good case that four years of McCain equals Years 9-12 of Bush-Cheney — and I don't believe that even most people who say they're happy with Bush want more of him.

So I was satisfied but that was about it. And in politics these days, that's not bad. I mean, I'll settle for just not being totally disappointed.

Chris Matthews just cited an interesting statistic. The current Republican ticket is the first one in 36 years that hasn't had a Bush or a Dole on it.

A longtime correspondent, Dave Sikula, writes…

I both agree and disagree with you about Gov. Palin. On the one hand, she's a good choice for McCain because she helps solidify the base. On the other hand, she looked woefully out of her depth to me. Unless she shows more gravitas in the next couple of weeks, she'll resemble nothing so much as a PTA president going up against Putin or Ahmedinajad and be wildly overmatched.

Rumor has it she's a good debater, so she may show something against Biden (though, unlike you, I saw nothing in her performance this morning to indicate that — she seemed less like a governor than a local morning talk show host), but I agree that even PUMAs are going to be insulted at the thought that, if Hillary cracked the glass ceiling, this is the GOP's idea of the woman to break through. And if the Alaska trooper scandal comes to fruition — or if, god forbid, anything happens to McCain — the Republicans are toast.

If the Democrats play this right — and god knows they've shown an inability to do that over the past quarter century — and concentrate on her extremist views and lack of experience, they can marginalize her and defuse the whole female candidate thing.

As I say, she'll be good for McCain's standing in the party, but I didn't see a lot this morning that would draw in independents. Watching the speech this morning, the thing that struck me the most was how much of the media's love for McCain transferred right over to Palin. Absent any investigation of her record, she'll be fine.

Give McCain credit, though; they're not talking about Obama's speech any more.

Yeah, they're talking about how little experience his running mate has. That's going to help him?

Look, it's not exactly a secret I think McCain would be a dreadful president. The only area about him in which I'm undecided is whether he fooled people like me for a long time or whether he's a recent convert to the pernicious agenda he now represents. A friend of mine has spent the last year or so hurling "I told you so"s at me, arguing that all that maverick talk — all that "reaching across the aisle" and "standing up to his own party on principles" was fluff; that he only did that for show, when it didn't matter. It's tough for me to accept. I might still have a hard time voting against the John McCain of 1992 or thereabouts.

I don't think Sarah Palin's going to help him. I think she's going to hurt him and I'm not unhappy about that. Just putting the two tickets side by side, the Obama-Biden parlay looks so much more presidential now, not because Palin's a woman but because she looks like she was picked out of the audience at random. I'm sure she's a nice lady, a good mother, maybe even a fine first-term governor. But the selection of her simultaneously trivializes the valid concerns of the womens' movement and, of greater danger to us, the need to have someone in charge who can, as you say, deal with the Putins and the Ahmedinajads.

McCain just threw away his most powerful argument, which is that Obama was "not ready." Republicans seem to think that the Dems can't attack Palin's lack of experience without highlighting Obama's but it won't work like that. Democrats don't have to say anything. McCain just looks insincere now for having complained that Obama didn't have foreign policy experience, hadn't been overseas enough, etc. If you take the "experience" issue completely off the table, that helps Obama.

What with so much happening — the conventions, Gustav, announcements, etc. — I think the polls are going to be wildly unrepresentative of the electorate for a few weeks. But once things settle down a bit and everyone wraps their brains around the idea that these are the tickets, I think the consensus will be that McCain made the wrong choice.

Not a bad speech. Interesting that she has a son heading for Iraq at about the same time that Joe Biden has a son heading for Iraq. She'll probably make the Republican base happy except for the fact that they'll fret her inexperience weakens McCain's assertions that Obama doesn't have enough.

I wonder if they did much (or even any) polling on this. There couldn't have been much or her name would have been on some reporter's list of possible running mates. Did everyone else test so poorly that McCain figured she wouldn't do any worse for him? Or did he just not think that kind of polling research matters? If the latter, good for him.

I don't think it's going to help the G.O.P. ticket to pick up disenfranchised Hillary supporters. First off, I don't think there are as many of them as people think, especially after the last few days. Also, it's going to come off as tokenism to a lot of folks. Women don't want a woman to be picked because she's a woman. They want her not to be disqualified because she's a woman. Would Palin even be on the long list, let alone the short list, if she were male?

The best thing about the pick so far is that the Talking Heads of Television have no idea what to make of it. All the chatter is like, "Well, this is a risky pick but it could prove to be a master stroke." Translation: "When do we get to see some polls on her?"

Well, maybe the best thing is about how this is probably pissing off Ted Stevens. We're going to hear a lot about how Palin stopped his "bridge to nowhere" project. The G.O.P. is throwing their Senatorial candidate under the dog sled.

Okay, he just introduced her and a hall full of people who never heard of Sarah Palin until they got up this morning is on its feet, cheering for her. And out walks Tina Fey.