Two Brief Observations Regarding the Writers' and Stagehands' Strikes:
On the writers: In this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Michael Eisner, former Disney chief and general big muckety-muck, said of the writers' demand for a piece of the Internet use of their labor: "The area where they cannot make a deal is original production for the Internet, which is neither profitable nor is it clear in exactly what direction it’s going to go."

Now, the Rude Pundit's no half-billion dollar or so media mogul, but it does seem that when a large corporation like, say, GE or Disney (and, remember, this is about big ass media multinationals), is investing in developing content, there's expenses that they have to eat. Shouldn't writer residuals be part of that meal?

By the way, this weekend the Rude Pundit's gonna catch up on an episode or two of 30 Rock he forgot to Tivo. Those are available for free over at the NBC website. It's a stream, not a download that you have to buy over at iTunes. There's a couple of commercials during the stream. So someone's paying NBC for time. The writers don't receive a dime for their work being streamed because NBC views it as "promotion." Even though it's the entire episode. With, as mentioned, commercials. Promotion with commercials. So postmodern.

On the stagehands strike that's fucking up Thanksgiving for the tourists in New York City: A dancer friend who works at one of the huge, sparkly musicals told the Rude Pundit, "When there's set pieces weighing a thousand pounds flying onto and off of the stage, I'd rather have too many stagehands there than too few."