Here’s the situation. The writer’s strike is indicative of what’s been happening economically during the past 10 years. Those whose imaginations feed the industry fantasy, news, commentary, and content are fed up with having the money made by their labors’ zoom to the top of the pile of greedy pig management types intent on destroying the middle class before anyone realizes what’s happened.

Tina Fey, the SNL comedy writer came up with a slogan that goes something like, “ If you don’t like it, you write it.” Which is a challenge to management to get their pens out of the their overpaid suits and start writing.

Of course, nobody in management, the ones making all the money off the writers, can barely write a complete English sentence without the help of ten other people in management whose jobs in the industry are as essential as a surf board rack is on the top of a Ferrari.

The writer’s strike is a wake -up call for all the underpaid creative people who provide the fodder for corporate earnings. Writers are asking for an equal distribution of the income scooped up by executives that spend most of their time schmoozing other executives over lunch at bistros with servings so expensive they would bust the food budgets most middle class families set aside for a month’s full of groceries.

Look at it this way. Writers are in the kitchen, making the dough, letting it rise, putting the toppings on, and shoving the pizza into the oven. When it’s done, they grab a pizza peel and slide the pie from an 800 degree oven. They put it in a box, close it up, and hand it off to the guy who delivers it to your house. Here’s where the economy goes upside down and sideways.

The guy who delivers the pizza, having nothing at all with producing it, is paid 4,000 times as much money just delivering the product than the people who make the product.

The writer’s strike is an important benchmark for all of us who do the grunt work of making business in America a success. In fact, management, the people who deliver product, have scammed creative people for decades, threatening to replace them if they don’t cow-tow to low salaries with no benefits. Now, with no one in the kitchen, executives begin to tremble over the future of their own careers. What happened to the replacements? Where are those keenly crafted scripts that bring in billions worldwide? Billions management said could be replaced with a snap decision from the tips of their fingers?

The hustle is over. If corporations want content, from now on they’re going to pay for it. If not, let management start scripting screenplays. I guarantee in less than an hour they’ll be reaching for that bottle of Alprazolam to stifle the anxiety of not being able to produce single piece of marketable content.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 7:43 am and is filed under Stuff I know. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.