Division Over Labor

These trade union strikes bring out the worst in everybody on all sides, don't you think? Being as the whole phenomenon is really only three generations old, it's no wonder there is no consensus yet on what is right and what isn't. The country and indeed world capitalism as a whole have gone through several stages of development in that time. No sooner do we all figure out where we stand on labor versus management, the ground has shifted under us yet again. I would hope that no sane person would feel it was OK for Henry Ford or Alfred Sloan to hire thugs to beat up his own employees in hopes of keeping sweatshop conditions in place. Yet those same people would be in a panic if their local firemen or policemen or teachers stayed home to get a fair shake from their bosses; so much so that most city charters outlaw striking by "essential" service workers.
Now we have Hollywood writers shutting down the entire entertainment industry over future internet revenue sharing. The most curious thing about it all to me is the us against them line that gets drawn every which way but straight as the strike draws out. Take Ellen de Generes for instance. Please. As a member of the writer's guild, she should be holding out for better terms with her sisters and brothers in solidarity. But she is also contracturally obligated to her syndicator to provide fresh material on schedule. So she goes on the air doing material she at least pretends to make up herself (as a writer) in violation of the strike terms. This has pleased no one. David Letterman had said he would pay his writers out of his own pocket--which he should have been doing all along-- to give him good stuff. But is he agreeing to pay them future internet royalties under the old rules or the proposed ones the writer's are clamoring for? Nobody knows and I bet very few viewers care.
The icing on this fallen cake is the latest lament from the out of work tradesmen that goes something like: "Without us, there would be no movies." The various techno types possessed of a range of skills from muscle to geekness in all its various photographic, sound, editing, lighting and set building personae are now asking for an end to the strike. They can't put food on the table when they don't punch their clocks. Their position is that the writers are getting rich enough typing words on pages even with the old deal. And without camera guys, lighting guys, and boom guys, it remains just words on paper.
When I worked in TV stations, I heard--and said--the same stuff. The sales staff strutted around claiming they provided the paychecks because they sold ad time. But when we engineers suggested the transmitter would be a dark hulking pile of copper tubing without the electronically savvy support staff, we were ridiculed and shouted down. It's true the TV engineers were paid well; right behind the salesmen and top anchor stars. Without us there would have been no ad time to sell. Without hollywood crews, no movies could be made from any script good or bad. But without scripts, there is nothing for the crew to shoot. So we end up at square one again and again.
Until all the wealth is fairly divided, the injustices promoted by capitalism and which form the very foundations of its stranglehold on our psyches will go on unchecked. On the other hand--and how many hands does this make?--the writers may have shot themselves in the foot long ago. Those early compacts between studios and scribes all but gave away the store. Because moviemaking was more a technical enterprise than book publishing or even stage dramatization, the studios wanted and got ownership and control over the reels in the can including the words spoken thereon. The royalties they get from selling and reselling and streaming those fabrications goes among other places to the big pension funds that pay out money to retired or disabled technicians. So the snake is devouring itself with the web being a mutated appendage with both head and tail.
If a movie is good because the story is good, pay the writers more. If the movie is good because the special effects are good, pay the tradesmen more. If a movie is good because of both, pay everyone more. If a clip from a movie or TV show run on the web gets people to visit the site and spend money on other stuff or have their IDs mined for future commercial exploitation, pay the writers more. There you go; end of labor dispute.

Apologize to the Apologists, Or Else!

My boss caught me reading The Nation in my office the other day, and asked: "What is the state of the nation these days anyway?" I replied it was moving to the right. He asked if I thought it were temporary and I replied I thought it was more of a sea change. We comiserated for a moment then moved on. The latest evidence I find has to do with these second rate products that are everywhere up down and across the spectrum. From flimsy houses to disabled new cars to lead painted toys to poison dog food, nothing is being put together very well by anyone. China has no monopoly on garbage products; they merely expanded the horizons and shamelessly went where every capitalist has wanted to go all along but had been held back by regulations. Now that government attention has been diverted to wiretapping, torture, warmongering, oil-grabbing, prison-building and revenue stream enhancement for these ventures there is no time or energy left to keep manufacturers, distributors and purveyors of goods honest. The results are stores, malls, catalogs and of course websites full of junk whose shortcomings are legion but concealed by ever more dressed up marketing ploys and outright lies.
My boss had come to me seeking technical advice on purchase of a new TV for our lobby where patients wait to see the doctors who do most of the heavy lifting around here. The least we can do for them is to provide them high definition images of The Price Is Right or Oprah or The View while they cool their heels. The patients, not the doctors. My job was to find the best deal at the best price for him to go buy on the company credit card. The only restriction was it had to come from Costco. He could not have known that I have had a running battle with my consumer-crazed friends who worship at the Kirkland altar. I was recently talked into spending $87 in a Costco on a dog bed, tuna, orange juice, muffins, blue jeans, dog bones and pizza. What we all must keep in mind about Costco is how much we are saving by shopping there. Never mind that the pants don't fit right, the dog hates the smell of the bed, the pizzas are too big to go in my freezer and the dog bones cause flatulence. It's OK though because I saved almost $10!! Extrapolate this to the cutting edge world of HDTV, and you can imagine how disappointing the Vizio VX37L is as it sits in the corner of our waiting room. The picture is smeary, the sound is tinny, the tuner is weak and the features are non-existent. I spent half a morning on a ladder getting the antenna elevated into our ceiling crawl space such that we could sort of get some of our local stations when I should have been doing my real job coordinating research studies. Then the real fun began.
I emailed Vizio support to complain about the lack of a digital tuning strength meter which all normal HDTVs have to facilitate installation. They laughed in my face so I went on the two big HD web forums to warn prosepctive buyers. You would think I had stood up at the NRA convention to suggest Dick Cheney surrender his hunting rifle. The snotty, rude and vitriolic comments I got from dim bulbs defending Costco and Vizio would have caused a spike in my blood pressure had I not stepped back to consider the bible. "Forgive them, they know not what they do" is served up somewhere in those hallowed pages to support the turn the other cheek philosophy. Look how far that got John Kerry or even Michael Dukakis. But fighting back at idiots just stimulates their lizard brains even more so I canceled my membership in the HD forums. It is easier sometimes to climb back up to the top of the mountain and turn toward the sky and sea for serenity and solace. The babble from the hordes of fools below soon fades into a noise I can tune out by orienting my antenna on the fly.

Wind in the Rigging

Gay men have more fun than the rest of the population; it's almost criminal. Oh wait: in several states I guess it really is a misdemeanor. But not California if last weekend's Gay Pride Festival in Palm Springs is any indication. Two thirds of the temporarily swollen population would have been behind bars (and loving it?) if the religious right had gotten its way. They bellowed through their bullhorns prior to the start of the parade until the cops silenced them. Proclaiming the wages of sin to be a pact with the devil or some such blather, they were all but ignored by the thousands who had gathered to celebrate our decadence. And practice it. My husband and I were among them; having driven six hours across the desert to attend and worship at the altar of pleasure where many have been sacrificed to HIV among other pitfalls. Those bitter ironies are multiple and rampant; they could fill books so I will leave that aside for now.
My point today is that all this fun in bed playing with our private parts comes at a price. A virtual, intangible one that gay men laugh at with the use of three letters: N S A. "No Strings Attached" is the latest pre-emptive warning used on internet hookup sites to screen out those who would complicate the negotiations with, well-- negotiations. The person I see for counseling had given me homework in this very subject area last week, and what better lab than the leather bars of Palm Springs to conduct research? The assignment was to think about how intimacy gets mixed up with NSA sex play and how or if they can or should be kept separate. Good thing I did not have that open ended essay question on the tip of my tongue as my opening cruise line. Buffed out bare chested boys can grasp the concepts, but would much prefer not to. Like clotting agents in blood though, tiny threads do form imperceptibly between gay men who play with each other. The sex police and brimstone crowd would have the world believe we do this with abandon and care not about how we emotionally affect each other. But that is not the case. I speak from experience, and I know that my male gay friends end up with tangled strings; try as they might to avoid them.
Hetero men who start feeling like a puppet with multiple attachments yanked by multiple partners handle this in a variety of ways that range from the socially tolerated to the capitally criminal. Drinking, drug use, infidelity, wife-beating, poker playing and jewelry come to mind as obvious coping tools used by the conflicted segment of the straight population to untangle the feelings. We homos just move on to someone else and constantly recycle, renew, replace and reinvent our love lives. But there is deep programming we can't ignore. Cavemen who settled down in the end made more babies who lived than the ones who promiscuously roved far and wide. It's that simple, and their genes dominate in all men gay or straight. The little spark of responsibility and ethics and fairness and respect toward the person who lets you connect flesh with him cannot be extinguished with any external force. To deny this basic truth is to deny your humanity. It's not that gay guys have no rules or no morals or no feelings. It is just that they are more fluid, more loose, and more selfish. Does that make us inhuman or animals or criminals? I hope not. We just need to be aware of the strings that bind us and arrive at the ideal tension that lets us live, love, laugh and yes cry as events warrant; the internet hookup rules notwithstanding.