[Marxism] Studios "Red-Bating" WGA Leadership

["Jeffrey Thomas Piercy, El Pato Comunista" <mqduck@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-goldstein11dec11,1,2828748.story


Although [the studios' proposal] offered precious few concessions, it 
was labeled a "new economic partnership," which brings to mind the time 
the Bush administration described a pro-logging proposal as a "healthy 
forests initiative." Nonetheless, the studios flogged it as a big step 
forward, claiming it would increase the average working writer's salary 
to $230,000 a year.

The proposal doesn't mention anything about the average nonworking 
writer, who, as it happens, is on strike too. If you include all 
writers, the plump $230,000 figure ends up being roughly a quarter of 
that. The new consultants also clearly had a hand in the studios' Friday 
statement about the collapse of the talks, a statement that many in the 
guild leadership view as a "red-baiting" style campaign designed to 
divide the guild -- and chip away at its public support -- by branding 
the leadership as radicals.

It's a fascinating statement, not for what it says, but for the language 
it uses, which would bring a blush even to the face of wily GOP 
rhetorician Frank Luntz, the man the WGA should hire if it really wants 
to win a PR battle with the studios. A new word that pops up in the 
document is "ideology," as in "the WGA organizers are on an ideological 
mission far removed from the interests of their members."

The document also criticizes the guild's "radical demands" and 
repeatedly refers to the WGA leadership not as negotiators but as 
"organizers," another sign that the studios are attempting to brand them 
as militant apparatchiks. That would be in keeping with the traditional 
tactics of the studio's new hired guns, it being Lehane, who, as Gore's 
campaign spokesman, once compared a Florida secretary of state to a 
"Soviet commissar" during the 2000 election uproar.

The statement also charges that guild leaders have "never concluded one 
industry accord," implying that they are clueless outside agitators. It 
has a nice ring to it until you realize that the single most successful 
labor negotiator of modern times, baseball players union leader Marvin 
Miller, had never done a baseball deal either when he came to the game. 
He'd been an economist with the United Steelworkers.

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