Hey, folks. Long time no blog. But I just had to add something to the WGA official response to this lovely piece of... disinformation.
As per AMPTP President J. Nicholas Counter III today:
"The WGA is using fear and intimidation to control its membership. Asking members to inform on each other and creating a blacklist of those who question the tactics of the WGA leadership is as unacceptable today as it was when the WGA opposed these tactics in the 1950s."
Well, he got one thing right: It was the WGA who opposed blacklisting in the 1950's. Not, for example, any of the antecedent companies in the 1950's that spawned the conglomerates he currently serves. They were as silent, and callously unconcerned, about defending people's rights then as they are now.
Meet the new boss. You know.
But that's not what I'm here to point out. It's something a little more galling, at least from where I'm sitting.
People coming to this blog may have noticed that we now have people posting anonymously with fair regularity. One of our most popular and often-viewed pieces of content, "Heartbreaking Voices of Uncertainty", was created anonymously.
Care to guess why? I'll give you a hint: Our contributors are scared.
They worry about losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their reputations -- in other words, about being blacklisted. But not by the WGA.
They worry about being blacklisted by the conglomerates that Nick Counter works for, the 6 monoliths that control almost everything you see and hear in the media.
So when Nick Counter shows up with his sudden, touching concern for our emotional well-being -- Don't worry, writers, we here at the AMPTP are your friends, we feel your pain! The WGA is being so mean, but we care about you! -- you'll forgive me if I'm less than moved. More like nauseated.
In his statement, Counter apparently is referring to rumors about writers unhappy with the WGA leadership. But we hear rumors as well: that the conglomerates are the ones doing the threatening, both privately and openly. There are rumors that network executives have told showrunners that if any of their writers are seen speaking up during the strike, they expect them to be fired when the strike is over. We all know showrunners are being threatened with lawsuits for respecting the picket lines. And there's another rumor that one showrunner in particular has been told that the AMPTP is going to use him as "an example," that they're planning to sue him and then see that he doesn't work again.
Gosh, that sounds kinda like... blacklisting.
Mysteriously, big lies are leaked to Variety and printed -- like the "story" that two writers for The Young and the Restless have gone "fi-core" and are, in effect, abandoning the strike effort. And, of course, that isn't true. [Since people are asking in the comments -- later today we'll be publishing the Y&R response today from the writers themselves, but apparently a non-writing producer who has WGA membership from previous work has chosen to go fi-core and become, effectively, a scab. Not multiple members of the writing staff of Y&R choosing to abandon the strike effort, as Variety reported. Just a producer who wasn't writing to begin with choosing to cross the picket line to the detriment of all the writers on that staff, and in this effort. Again, we'll post the full story today.]
If I were a person with a dim view of human nature, I might suspect that there's an organized attempt to break writers' spirits. That the threats and the rumors (you know, the ones about how some writers are breaking ranks to screw the rest of us over) are somehow related.
But since I have a sunny and pleasant outlook on life, I'm sure that these are just coincidences. I'm sure that all the people who are worried about signing their names to what they post here are just paranoid, and the AMPTP really is the benign, generous, concerned entity they make themselves out to be.
But just in case Mr. Counter is still confused about the strike rules: Most members understand that joining the WGA comes with rights, but it also comes with obligations. And one of them is, if there's a strike, you have to abide by the strike rules. Most of us -- if not all of us -- understand the concept of both honor and obligation, and we're abiding by it.
Who knows, now that I've written this, maybe I'll be blacklisted. But if I am, there's one thing I can promise you: It won't be by the WGA.
Laeta Kalogridis
(and yes, that's my real name)
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