Love Him, He's A Liberal

What's those lines from Phil Ochs's introduction to his live performance of the 'Ringing of Revolution':

" This is a fictional song . . . a cinematic song. You've got to picture this mansion on the top of a hill housing the last of the idle rich, the last of the bourgeois, the last of the folk singers. As they are being encircled tighter and tighter by their ringing of revolution, all the people on the inside spiritually resemble Charles Laughton; all the people on the outside physically resemble Lee Marvin . . . "

Nice to see that George Clooney is lending his name and financial support to the writers strike.

What's My Next (Picket) Line?

From Writers Strike, Silence Falls:

" . . . anyone who's willing to stand up to greedy bosses deserves our support. A victory for one group, from Ford workers to stagehands, raises the prospects for everyone else. Who knows? If the screenwriters win, maybe some tiny measure of respect will eventually trickle down even to bloggers. So in further solidarity with striking writers, I'm going to shut up right now."

Good stuff from the Nation Website by Barbara Ehrenreich on the ongoing screenwriters strike.

My World Turned Upside Down

Alan J over at the Mailstrom blog has a post on the ongoing writers' strike in the States, which has my worldview turned upside down: I've always liked Ellen Degeneres up to now but I've never really had much time for Mr Brooks.

But what about Garth Brooks and WalMart?

This post title needs a rewrite: I'd thought of 'Write To Strike' before I spotted Patterson's piece.

Interesting article by John Patterson in yesterday's Guardian about the impending writers strike in Hollywood that will affect both the film and tv industry, but for the real inside track on what's going down - i.e. if this blogger was living in Harlesden rather than Hollywood, she'd be blogging about Respect - check out Nikki Finke's LA Weekly blog on why some media moguls aren't that devastated by the possible picket lines.

Being the main newspaper for an industry town, of course the LA Times is full of news of the strike action that is scheduled to start on Monday morning, and it was heartening to see the following excerpt from their press coverage about the dispute:

"Teamsters Local 399 leader Leo Reed this week urged his members to honor the picket lines, a call that was reiterated Thursday by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa. "If we abandon our union brothers and sisters now, we abandon the very core principles of trade unionism," he said.

Solidarity is the key to the winning of this struggle . . . That and the new series of 'America's Next Top Model' tanking. And we already know all about that show's murky history.