Thursday, December 27, 2007

Why I Plan to Boycott the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

It was brought to my attention that the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are going to be going back on air without their writers. In other words they are crossing the picket lines and will become scabs. How can it be that supposedly left leaning artists could abandon their fellow artists and side with Westinghouse, part of the Military Industrial Complex? Maybe they have figured that labor is worthless today. I think though if either Mr. Stewart or Mr. Colbert looked around they may see that everything around them was created with labor.
The labor dispute between the studios, General Electric, Disney, Westinghouse, and Fox, and the writers is over revenue. At the moment the writers get no royalties from the shows that their networks air over the Internet, even though the studios are receiving ad revenue from the advertisers. The writers argue that if their work is bringing in money then why don’t they get a cut.
The major companies argue that it is really impossible to figure out any dollar amounts for online content. While at the same time, Westinghouse, owner of CBSViacom, is suing Google for one billion dollars for allowing users of YouTube to post CBSViacom’s content on their site. So again it looks as if the powerful want it both ways. When the hell will people wake up to this phenomenon?
I find it really sad that these two would jump back on air so quickly and even more shocking is that they would cross the picket lines. How can they claim any democratic credentials anymore, and I use a small “d” not a “D” on purpose. It is totally possible that I am wrong about this. It could be that the two of them are going to use their pulpits to lambaste the networks, which pay them, and show support for the writers. Unfortunately if that is the case someone will have to tell me because I will not be watching. I expect this kind of shit from Jay Leno but Stewart and Colbert, they know better.

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