When I was twelve I remember
being immensely worried during the leadup to what would be known as the first
Gulf War. After George H.W. Bush spoke on television about the sending of
troops into Kuwait to repel the forces of Saddam Hussein, I remember spending
the next months in a state of alarm. When the war was over in a month later, I
was immensely relieved.
When Bush’s son ordered the
invasion of Iraq in 2003 I was also upset – because when he went on TV to
announce the coalition, the networks preempted an episode of the fourth season
of Angel. By that point in my life I had become enough of a television
watcher that I was more annoyed by Presidential address that ever caring about
them in substance: no matter which Party
or President was speaking, they were inevitably postponing a series on network
TV that I cared about more than current events. I realize that, given the state
of the world, I should care about these things more and that given that we live
in the age of streaming, nothing is lost forever. But for almost all of my
adult of my life, I have always viewed so much of political and national
discourse as to how it would effect how I watched television and anything else
on a secondary level, if that.
Every time I read either a
progressive blog or a conservative editorial,
one almost inevitably encounters one side making the same argument about
the other: they are intrinsically selfish, they have no vision for the big
picture, they don’t care how their actions affect the rest of the world. While
I consider both sides hypocrites on their particular message, in the case they
are both one hundred percent correct. But what neither side seems to truly get
that this is not a flaw that is universal to Republicans or Democrats. At some
level, everyone must care for their own needs first and everything else second.
Both sides will no doubt argue that there are other factors to blame for this –
social media, cable news, higher education, Zendaya (I expect that one to come
any day given the level of our discourse) but I think it’s the nature of
humanity. By design, there is a part of us that cares about our lives first and
everything else second.
And it is for that reason
that I am honestly inclined to believe that at least in this case, the
progressives are the bigger hypocrites. They are all excellent at talking the
talk, telling us about the ills of our society, how corporations, the
patriarchy, white supremacy, Jim Caviezel (that’s going to happen soon too) are
responsible for the imminent destruction of our society that I secretly think
some are looking forward too. What they are honestly lacking are any true
solutions. And it is for that reason I honestly wonder how truly committed they
would be to fixing these problems if they had to actually do anything.
You believe that Vladimir
Putin is a threat to the free world? Fine. But will you soldier guns and
volunteer to fight in the Ukraine. The rights of African-Americans or women are
in huge danger in Mississippi or Wyoming. We understand. Would you be willing
to move from your walk up in the Bronx and go down there to march with them or
help register voting drives? You believe that America doesn’t do anything to
help the homeless. True. Will you let certain organization set up affordable
housing for those people in your neighborhood? It is easy to have liberal and
progressive values when you stand behind a keyboard. But when it comes to
making any sacrifice at all, I see very little evidence that so many people
would do so.
That is, in my opinion, an
argument that corporations could easily make when the left decides to, as they
inevitably have been, accuse them of destroying America in some way. This is an
argument that is hard to refute when you consider the nature of so many
Americans and around the world.
“Our companies could put
together safety regulations that would guarantee that there would never be
another plane crash. However, the departure and arrival times would double
across the board. We could make automobiles completely fuel efficient and as
safe as tanks. They’d cost as much as a house. We could grant the power of
unions in Walmart, Amazon and Uber. But the products you buy there would double
in cost, you would not get overnight shipping and it would be twice as hard to
find a ride. This is the age of modern conveniences. How much of your personal
convenience would you willingly sacrifice for someone else’s, most likely
someone you will never know?”
(For the record, the left
could make this same argument about immigration to the right, pointing out that
without this supply of cheap labor, we
could not enjoy, say, our morning coffee. Then they would realize that this was
an argument that could just as easily apply to the unionizing efforts at
Starbucks and clam up.)
I expect a similar reaction
from America as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA continue to strike. Progressive websites
are angry because leaders of studios like Bob Iger seem tone-deaf and some
sources in the industry have made it clear that their plan is to wait until so
much of the talent stars falling behind in its rent or in danger of losing
their houses and will except far less than they are entitled too. This is
likely the strategy. What all of these websites are leaving out is that the
studios have just as big a bargaining chip and that is the largest example of
what I listed above.
The two most powerful unions
in America today are the ones in Hollywood and professional sports. Both are
the prime examples of how successful collective bargaining can be for an
industry. But whenever there is a work stoppage of any kind in either –
particularly professional sports – the public very quickly turns on the union’s
members when their personal enjoyment is threatened. We do not care about
whether they are being exploited by corporate overlords; all we care about is
being able to turn on the game when we get home or to watch our favorite series
over dinner. If that is impeded, our collective blame is almost invariably on
the performers not their bosses.
We don’t even have to go back
that far in time to look at the prime example of this for both. When everybody
in society was in lockdown starting in the spring of 2020 after the initial
shock, America started getting bored. And one of the things we wanted for a
distraction was to know when professional sports were coming back. My mother
is a huge Yankee fan and she kept
getting impatient as the summer progressed for baseball in whatever form to
come back. She was hardly alone in that.
In case we forgot, thousands
of people were sick and dying every day. America was going through so many
legitimate crises both in policing, protests and the upcoming election and
there was nothing resembling a cure in sight. Considering a professional
athlete an essential worker should have been one of those things that boggled
the mind of any true progressive. Yet starting with baseball, every professional
sport put together a season. Sometimes in completely empty stadiums, sometimes
in bubbles. Universal precautions were taken and there was a COVID list next to
the injury one. All of was done so that America could have a distraction from
being forced to shelter in place.
And did we ever express
gratitude to these athletes, who very well could have died for the sole purpose
of providing this distraction? These athletes, who in many cases were already
rich, had nothing to gain and everything to lose for doing their jobs? Who did
not have a crowd to react to when they managed to achieve athletic feats? Nope.
But whenever an athlete chose not to get vaccinated, social media turned them
into pariahs. They became rich and entitled and everything that they had done
for us – for us – in 2020-2021 was basically thrown under the bus.
It was no different when it
came to television during lockdown, though in this case I speak solely for
myself. Like everyone else I was bored and kept finding ways to fill my time
and watched a lot of television. However, I chose not to spend these
months in relative isolation catching up on all of the series I had spent much
of the past years ignoring.
There was no reason I
couldn’t have watched all of Schitt’s Creek or The Handmaid’s Tale; seen
all of Ozark or looked at Peaky Blinders; watched all of The
Morning Show or even both seasons of Succession. But I did not want
too. I wanted the series I liked to come back.
Perhaps it speaks to both my
privilege and a certain defect in my character that while so many people were
suffering and dying and my family managed to get away untouched by Covid until
well after we all had been vaccinated that during this period of lockdown, my
greatest source of frustration was that so many series I liked or wanted to see
were being postponed. I was upset that the fourth season of Fargo, The
Undoing and The Good Lord Bird were all pushed back until the fall
rather than debuting in the spring and summer when they had been promised. I
was aggravated that because of Covid I was likely going to have to wait at
least a year for the final season of Better Call Saul. And I was
incredibly pissed that the broadcast season of 2020 was so piecemeal because no
one was able to film back then.
I mention my inherent
selfishness to demonstrate that, even in the midst of what was essentially a
watershed moment in global history, my greatest concerns were whether the fifth
season of This is Us was going to air. I don’t pretend to be remotely
proud of this fact; I mention only to demonstrate that, at a certain level, I’m
willing to bet that more than a few of my readers were at a similar level of
impatience and selfishness and like me, never gave the respect to so many of
the actors and creative forces who, in the summer of 2020, would begin to
reopen Hollywood so that the rest of America and the world would have something
to entertain themselves with. I don’t know if I ever asked myself once during
that period whether I should be grateful that so many people were putting their
lives in danger so I could watch Big Sky or Ted Lasso. Did any of us think to do
that? I grant you the world was exploding well beyond that and there were far
bigger problems to deal with, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves. We spent a lot of
time taking for granted what a lot of actors were doing back then. Did we just
think that they were all so wealthy that they didn’t deserve our gratitude?
That is the fundamental
reason that I am relatively certain that the studios won’t have to work that
hard to turn public sympathy against the writers and actors. This weekend, I
was talking with some friends about the strike and one tole me they hoped it would
end soon because they were tired of watching reruns of old shows. That’s what
the studios are counting on. They know that in this era of instant
gratification, where so many viewers can’t even wait a week to watch the next
episode of a series, where they don’t want to pay for cable services, where
they balk at the idea of sharing a password so they don’t have to pay for any
streaming service at all, that the average American does not give a damn what so many writers or actors are fighting
for or that many of them are struggling to make ends meet the same way they do.
They want new shows; they want new seasons of their favorite series; they want
to see movies again.
Hell, the people who are
currently in favor of supporting actors and writers don’t care that this will
cause another major blow to the movie theater industry which has barely
recovered from the lockdown. But these days no one wants to go a movie in a
theater any way, so who cares about them?
Same as with all of the retail stores or the groceries stories or the
restaurants that all went out of business during Covid? As long as we had
Amazon or grubhub we didn’t give a damn? Of course if they were all to
unionize, we’d be angry at that stoppage. We’re only pro-labor as long as the
labor doesn’t effect us. I guarantee that if the prize of a Big Mac was
effected, the pro-union people would want McDonalds to stamp out ‘agitators’.
The studios know that Americans don’t care how
much the creative forces end up getting exploited as long as they watch the
next season of So Help Me Todd or 9-1-1 soon. And that’s just the
ones on the left; the right hates Hollywood in principle, thinks everything
they make has leftist messages and is responsible for the destruction of
America.
So the corporate bosses will
win. They might have to give up more than they want but they’ll still win. The
conservative base will message it as selfishness
from the Hollywood elitists; the progressives will argue that this is a victory
for organized labor. The average American will essentially blame the writers
and actors for causing them to have to watch shows in syndication and forcing
them to wait another few months to see the next season of The Last Of Us. And
the workers who struggled for these rights and who did all of these battles
will find themselves being ignored again and will have to wonder why they
bothered to fight a battle that the public only really cared about because it
temporarily bothered them. Most of the public will watch a rerun or an episode
of the series and not even know that this battle was it was about. We don’t
care because it’s not our fight until if affects us.
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