If you can find the full, ten-minute clip on your favorite internet video-sharing service, David Letterman’s blackmail confession was brilliant, riveting and hysterical. It was almost a throwback to his nervy, early days on “Late Night.” If only the blackmailer had been revealed to be Andy Kaufman.

Thank goodness for the Hollywood unions for providing a little basic trade union education for the American public. It’s been so rare to see aggressive, proactive union activity that most people clearly don’t understand how this stuff is supposed to work. The fact that most late-night talk show hosts are crossing picket lines to return to the air without their writers, while David Letterman gets to go back with his writers and their union’s blessing is inexplicably confusing to some. Apparently even some producers don’t understand. One anonymous weasel (presumably from NBC) whined, “Regardless of who technically owns what, they are now intentionally putting us at a competitive disadvantage.” That’s how this works, sweetheart. If the striking Writers Guild was affecting everyone’s business equally, how would that compel the producers to settle?

I’ve written about “me-too” agreements before. These are contracts wherein an employer agrees in advance to the terms of an industrywide agreement and buys its way out of a labor dispute. Whatever the other guys agree to, we’ll do the same. Just please don’t strike us. That is precisely the kind of contract that Letterman’s Worldwide Pants company, independently of the major networks, has signed with the Writers Guild. The other late night guys whine that Letterman’s getting off on a technicality (Letterman negotiated to own his own show when he moved to CBS, while Leno pushed Letterman out of the way to take over Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” on NBC’s penurious terms). Do not let them obscure the fact that they planned to put Letterman at a competitive disadvantage by crossing the picket lines to return to the air, while Letterman held out for his writers.

And why? Jay Leno is retiring in a few years, and could have stood his ground, except I suspect that he secretly hates unions. Carson Daly, who enthusiastically went back on the air first, is the kind of unprincipled, talentless careerist who cynically calculated that by being the only host presenting new programs that people might finally watch his dreck. And Conan O’Brien, I can only assume, was worried that NBC might take the promised “Tonight Show” away from him if he stayed out with his writers.

If all of the late night programs had stayed in reruns, they would have maintained their audience share. Yes, I’m sure there are less viewers overall for reruns, but the proportion of viewers would remain the same, so that all of the shows would lose revenue equally, and thus, in a way, not really lose out at all. But now David Letterman gets to go back with fresh, scripted material and access to all of Hollywood’s stars, while Leno, who is painfully unfunny even with his team of writers, has to vamp and ad-lib for an hour each night with only the help of his own wit and whatever college professor or book author he can scrounge up. If it does place not only Leno and Conan, but all of NBC at a competitive disadvantage, then it places pressure on the NBC-Universal corporate ownership structure to settle the damn contract. Which is exactly the trade union purpose of a “me too” agreement.

It’s hardly unusual to find a glowing hagiography of a corporate CEO in the pages of a major newspaper. I’m not, per se, opposed to feting J.W. Marriott. If you can get past the creepy fact that he’s a high elder of the Mormon church, he’s just a charming old man who values family, tells hokey jokes and makes a point of being personally courteous to his workers. However, when the Washington Post goes so far as to twist the words of a leader of the hotel employees union to make the CEO of one of the most viciously anti-union companies in the country sound like a good boss, well, that’s when I get mad.

The Marriott corporation runs an anti-union operation as pervasive and sophisticated as Wal-Mart’s. First-line managers are trained to call the corporation’s central union-busting office at the slightest sign of discontent. Corporate’s union busters fly in and do the usual mix of firings, captive audience and one-on-one meetings, and maybe even a slight raise in wages – all in order to keep the status quo of “on-call” employment with no job protection.

The author of the piece, Michael Rosenwald, interviewed the hotel division president of UNITE HERE, John Wilhelm, for the piece. Wilhelm presumably used the opportunity to speak at length about Marriott’s anti-union track record – such as the fact that only ten percent of its operations are unionized compared to better than 30% of Hilton and Starwoods, or the briefly-alluded-to 20 year fight to unionize San Francisco’s flagship Marriott hotel – but the author shallowly focused on the few positive things that Wilhelm could say about J.W. Marriott.

Like, for instance, his common man touch when dealing with employees on a personal basis. Okay, so the man introduces himself and engages in chit chat with the bellmen and doormen when staying at one of his hotels. Well, that’s nice…I guess. But is this only notable because most corporate suits act like total dickheads around the “hired help?” How about the doozy that in the three cities where UNITE HERE has managed to make dealing with the union a cost of doing business that Marriott “live[s] up to the terms of the contracts?” When does living up to the legally enforceable contracts you have made become laudable, or even notable? Only in the context of a company that breaks the law with impunity when resisting its workers’ rights to organize and improve the job.

The Washington Post owes readers a complete picture of Marriott’s union-busting human resources policies, or else it owes us their traditional silence on wrong-doing when praising a charming elder statesman.

Not to belabor the point, but Barbara Ehrenreich doesn’t get it. Writing in the Nation (online edition), she declares, “Of course it’s the ho, not the hair, part of Imus’s comment that hurts.” Actually, it is the hair that hurts.

Once again, Barbara can’t see past her white, middle class nose to define an issue for what it is. In this case, it’s a blatant case of racism as Imus was contrasting the looks of the Rutgers players with the cute, blonde Lady Volunteers. You don’t have to be black to know how culturally sensitive hair is. Just look at the beauty products that are advertised to black women – the hair relaxers, the weaves, the weird blonde dye – all designed to satisfy white standards of beauty. Look at the handful of books and poems by black artists that we are assigned in high school (out of some token notion of diversity, so that we can look past our white noses). There’s Langston Hughes’ “high yaller” girl. There’s Lorraine Hansberry’s Beneatha Younger, whose brother scorns the afro that she grows. There’s Toni Morrison’s Soaphead Church, who prizes his mixed blood and “good hair” and takes pity on an “ugly” (and delusional) black girl who wants to look more white.

Hell, just take that term “good hair.” Google it and you will see the tortured relationship that black women have with their natural kinky hair. You’ll find salons and hair products to get rid of the nappiness. You’ll find African-American chick-lit about “moving on up.” You’ll find websites dedicated to empowering black women. Somewhere along the way, you’ll find a far more articulate essay on this subject by Malena Amusa on hair weaves and black women’s self image.

The fact that Imus could be so casually derogatory about something so sensitive to black people is what makes his remarks so offensive. It’s the racism that gave this controversy legs.

There was an enormous protest today on the traditional women’s college campus of Rutgers University over Don Imus. Imus, of course, disparaged the University’s second place NCAA women’s basketball team in crudely racist and demeaning terms about two weeks ago. The controversy, which has raged across the country and which threatens Imus’ career, started out with very little notice here: a “dart” to Imus in the Daily Targum newspaper’s traditional “Darts and Laurels” Friday editorial. Today’s rally, however, seemed to attract the majority of the student body of Cook and Douglas Colleges, and cleared out the staff from most of the offices.

The women’s basketball team’s success in the Final Four tournament united the women and the bleeding hearts of Rutgers University in a way that the comparable success of the school’s football team – which came at the expense of budget cuts to academic programs and less popular sports – never could. Such feminist support was underscored by the signs that protesters carried, which read “Rutgers Women R Strong Women” (Imus described the team as “rough-looking” tattooed women and “nappy-headed hoes” and expressed a preference for the “cute” Lady Volunteers of Tennessee). But Imus’ racism – no matter how much he insists he is a “good person” – is clear and unmistakable. Kinky hair and eurocentric standards of beauty are enormously sensitive topics and the rooting for “white” over “black” is the very definition of racism. And yet, this racism bubbled up and spilled forth so effortlessly, coming from the same dark pit (more like a shallow ditch) as Michael “Kramer” Richards’ “joke” about lynching niggers who dare to talk through his set, or as your crazy uncle’s “jokes” about black moms and velcro.

I’m inclined to agree with the protesters (most famously Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) who complain that Imus’ apology rings hollow, and call for his termination. Our media and politics have coarsened to such a point that a great number of shock jocks and pundits profit by saying outrageously insulting and offensive things, and if any of them result in a controversy that proves dangerous to their careers, they quickly apologize and claim it was a joke. But what was the joke here? That Don Imus doesn’t really think the Lady Volunteers were cute? That the Rutgers Scarlet Knights are actually blonde, light-skinned and unmarked by tattoos?

There was no joke. Just mean-spirited taunting, the kind that is casually tossed around in talk media. Examples should be made. Don Imus made the poor choice to elect himself to serve as that example.

I have a confession to make. I go on internet dates. And why not? It’s a perfectly reasonable way to meet people in this new century and have a reasonable expectation that you’ll at least have enough in common to sustain a dinner conversation. I’ve started a few good relationships this way. A few have lasted as friendships. What makes the whole endeavor truly sporting is the ever-present threat of a Really Bad Date. On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself trapped at a restaurant, puzzling over what crazy computer monkey thought we’d be a good match, only to leave wondering, “What did she think about that car wreck of a date?”

Rubbernecking is the main appeal of the Washington Post’s newish Sunday feature, Date Lab, wherein our favorite community newspaper sets up two complete strangers based upon some dubious shard trait or desire, and then documents all the gory details.

Take, as a deliciously typical example, the young woman who wanted to be set up with a Jewish doctor. Quickly, she finds, “he monopolized the conversation and totally excluded me. And he asked why I wasn’t showing any cleavage.” (“It was totally within context at the time, but I can’t remember how,” he defends.) Each column ends with the Date Lab Rats rating the experience (“I’d rate the evening a 3 [out of 5]. We’re not the best match, but I’m not entirely convinced that if I went out with him again, it’d be awful.”), and a post-script updating our potential couple’s follow-up. In this case, our young woman e-mailed the Jewish Doctor, “listing 14 things he’d done that ‘you should never ever do on a first date.’”

So it goes, week in and week out. It’s a comforting format, one which helps us imagine how to fill in the blanks from our own (non-major-media-sponsored) blind dates. The Date Lab Rats are interviewed a few days later, and the column is structured chronologically in a “he said / she said” format, which really brings out the venom. Take these (revisionist) first meetings:

Ultimately, there’s the wonderfully awkward parting of the ways:

And, best of all, what all dates need: A rating on a scale of one to five!

It’s enough to tempt me to move to D.C. just to participate in Date Lab. At the very least, I’ll continue to read every cringe-inducing moment every Sunday morning.

If Gerald Ford was trying to live down his image as a bumbler, he made a curious choice of dying right after Christmas when most of the half-way decent reporters must be on vacation. On a good day, the New York Times annoys the crap out of me, but a couple of doozies slipped in that have really driven me nuts.

In a television column that itself comments on how substitutes are reporting the news of Ford’s death, reporter Alessandra Stanley notes:

On “Today” the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell mentioned that she last spoke to Mr. Ford in California last February, “when he came over to see me, and we had lunch.” (It is hard to imagine a former president in his 90s going out of his way to meet a television reporter, so it was hard not to suspect that Mr. Ford was going out of his way not to invite Ms. Mitchell over to his house.)

How clever? What a fucking idiot! Either she doesn’t know that Andrea Mitchell is married to the then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, or else she was intentionally obscuring how cozy journalists and official Washington can get. Either way, it’s outrageous.

More outrageous is Sam Roberts’ attempt to exonerate Ford for his role in New York City’s fiscal crisis. Yes, it’s technically true that, just as Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” Ford never told New York to “Drop Dead,” but their actions and policies made clear the contempt that was summed up in the better copy that the journalists of their day (far better than this sorry lot) screamed in headlines. His defenders may insist that he “liked New York,” but insisting that the city raise the subway fare (part of the completely separate and solvent MTA budget), raise CUNY tuition, end rent control and hack away at public hospitals, museums and social services showed real – I’ll say it again – contempt for what New York stood for politically and for its heroic effort to be more than a playground for the rich and famous.

Roberts finds a number of people to praise Ford’s neoliberal hatchet job, mostly the politicians who subsequently turned New York into a playground for the rich and famous, but makes no attempt for balance. There is no questioning the wisdom of drastic cuts in public spending, nor the dubious “fact” that the crisis was the product of “inevitable hemorrhaging inflicted by bankrupt liberalism” (rather than a conspiracy of a handful of big banks that encouraged the city’s debt and then without warning demanded their money back).

The only voice of dissent slips in, almost by accident, from 30 years ago in DC37 chief Victor Gotbaum’s witty complaint that the Ford administration aimed to shrink government down to just police and fire protection, “and he’s not sure about fire.”

Like a brontosaurus trudging into a tar pit, the New York Times just blundered into a debate that up to now has been best left to feminist journals and Queer discussion groups, in the Fashion & Style section, no less. With the nuance of a brickbat and the keen understanding of someone who has watched “The L Word,” writer Paul Vitello takes a look at lesbian response to transmen and finds (surprise!) some unease.

Unhip and straight as I am, I still know that not every woman who identifies as a man pauses to identify as a lesbian in between and that any woman who successfully passes as a man never quite gains the male privilege that the rest of us are born into.

I’ll leave further criticism of the Times for being out of its league to more qualified blargers, but did want to highlight this illuminating quote from Natasha, a lesbian whose partner became a man, putting an end to their relationship:

“You’re in love with a person, but there is something about gender that is so central to identity it can be overwhelming if the person changes,” she said.

What I had never quite gotten about transgender identity is that if gender is supposed to be just a social construct, like “race,” something that we made up and that has nothing to do with biology, then why change the physical form? Why go through a series of expensive and less-than-satisfying surgeries and hormone treatments just so that you can be who you always felt you are? Why not just be?

As I thought more about what Natasha said, I realize that I can accept my trans friend who identifies as a man, because to accept him as a man means to drink beers together and talk about what’s the best strategy for grooming facial hair. But if it was a man asking me to accept him as a woman, I could do so, or tell myself I could. But I wouldn’t countenance dating her. I would view her as a sexless being, like nuns or my grandma.

Yes, yes, nuns and grandmas are women, and femininity and womanhood comes in all varieties. I could certainly be saying this more eloquently, but I am writing this in the first flush of realization that saying that gender is a social construct (much like saying the same about “race”) does not make it a contemporary fact. Saying it is merely the first step towards making it true. In the meantime, we live in our culture and society today, where gender is so central to our identities, and sometimes extreme physical changes through medical science are important for acceptance.

You can’t even pump your gas in this town without people interviewing you for a newspaper article (See next to last paragraph).

A YELLOW LIGHT FOR POLICE’S RACE PLAN
Experts and LI drivers say Suffolk police should proceed with caution in project to record race of those stopped for traffic violations

BY JENNIFER MALONEY

Newsday Staff Writer

July 12, 2006

Law enforcement experts and Suffolk residents reacted with skepticism yesterday to the Suffolk police department’s plan to gather data as a check against racial profiling.

The opinions came a day after Suffolk police said they are recording the race of drivers stopped on the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway for routine traffic violations in an effort to document if cops are profiling residents by race. The department, which began the initiative about two months ago and will continue for the next six to 12 months, hopes the data gathered will help prove that Suffolk officers don’t give tickets more often to members of a particular race.

But many drivers interviewed yesterday objected to the method of gathering the data — and particularly to the fact that officers note the drivers’ race without consulting them.

“They’re assuming the race,” said Erica Lopez, 23, of Huntington Station. “What if I’m Italian? What if I’m black? That’s not going to get anything except some statistics that prove nothing.”

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the data gathered will be meaningless unless it is compared with statistics on how often different races commit traffic violations.

In New Jersey, a similar project showed that more blacks were pulled over for speeding than other races, he said. But an academic study later showed that blacks there were more likely to speed, he said.

“If it’s skewed, you need someone else to figure out if that’s justified or not, because it might be,” Moskos said.

Suffolk police spokesman Tim Motz said the department will consider “all potential statistical variables” when it analyzes the data. “It’s a very complex issue. They’re looking at everything.”

Motz did not say whether the department has access to statistics on how often different races commit traffic violations.

While many Suffolk drivers agreed yesterday that racial profiling occurs, some said gathering data on race will only exacerbate the problem.

“So they’re going to conduct racial profiling to test how much racial profiling they do?” said Shaun Richman, 27, a Queens resident who commutes to Hauppauge.

Others applauded the department’s effort. “I think it’s proactive,” said Marie Orlando, 43, of Brightwaters. “It’s not like they’re ignoring it.”

Four years ago, I was a guest on the “O’Reilly Factor,” part of a panel discussion on the income gap. It was a wonderfully surreal moment that, alas, I have yet to repeat. I just stumbled upon a transcript of the show. Below is a pretty funny bit that I believe is short enough that I can legally quote it.

Missing here is O’Reilly’s assertion that Cornell University is a socialist plot, “Parade” editor and DNC Treasurer Andrew Tobias inviting me to join the Democratic party, and, finally, Mr. O’Reilly brusquely ending the segment and announcing that Mel Gibson would be next after the commercials.

O’REILLY: OK, but here’s the deal. And you ought to know this, too, Shaun, is that for many years, I didn’t make any money. OK? And I lived in my younger time in a very frugal environment. OK? So I don’t believe that the government has the right, now that I’m successful, due to hard work and some luck, to come into my house and take my money and give it to other people, and they don’t even know what these people are going to do with it. That’s wrong, morally wrong.

…

RICHMAN: Are you living in poverty as a result of this 50 percent [tax rate]?

O’REILLY: Am I living in poverty? No, but what right do you or anybody else have, even in France, to take other peoples’ money and give it to somebody you don’t know? What right do you have, morally?

RICHMAN: It’s a basic system of fairness. Now when you weren’t making that money…

O’REILLY: Yes.

RICHMAN: When you were living in dire straits, wouldn’t it have been nicer to have a system where…

O’REILLY: No, I wouldn’t have taken a dime.

RICHMAN: You wouldn’t have taken a dime?

O’REILLY: No. Absolutely not.

RICHMAN: You would have died of tuberculosis?

O’REILLY: That’s right. And I wouldn’t have kids unless I could support them. That’s right, because I don’t believe in taking other peoples’ stuff and giving it to me. I won’t even take Social Security when I’m older. I’ll give it back or I’ll give it to charity. You see? That’s where you guys are wrong. You’re taking stuff, you’re making value judgments. You’re giving it to other people and you don’t know what those other people are going to do. That’s wrong. Am I wrong?

Why did they never invite me back?

This phenomenom of “social networking” websites certainly seems a lot odder when described by the mainstream media. To me and my friends, sites like Friendster and MySpace are harmlessly kooky ways to keep in touch and embarass each other with sarcastic tributary testimonials. They sound a lot more sinister when described by the AP in this wire story on a rash of statutory rape cases in Connecticut:

MySpace, one of several popular social networking sites, is a free service that allows people to create Web sites that can be personalized with information, pictures and movies. Searching for someone is as easy as typing the name of a high school and the photographic results are instantaneous.
…
Some teens keep their personal profiles scant, aimed only at their friends. Others describe their likes and dislikes, from the mundane to the profane, and encourage people to send them messages.

“That is a perpetrator’s dream come true,” said Middletown Police Sgt. Bill McKenna.

Worse is the news that Massachusetts’ recent gay bar murderer left behind a personal MySpace profile, as did the ex-girlfriend that he murdered. Both profiles, as of this writing, live on beyond the expiration of their authors. Hers more sympathetic for her role as victim, her vain attempts to disguise advanced age, a blog posting sarcastically titled “oh..yes…plz stalk me, i love it” (someone – perhaps the murderer – was attempting to log in and steal her identity) and the worried comment written by a friend (after she was already killed) saying simply “i love you Jenn! I miss you a lot. I hope everything will be okay =/. I love you.”

My friend, Alan Amalgamated, jokes (half-jokes, really) that when fascism finally comes to America, they won’t have to torture us to get us to name names. We’ve already done that, voluntarily, on MySpace. As it is, my coworkers use MySpace to research members of the bargaining unit during organizing drives and journalists, it seems, search for the names of criminal newsmakers there before going to press.

I really don’t like MySpace. I prefer Friendster, because it’s a simpler, cleaner way to maintain a collection of profiles of friends I rarely see, and the testimonials are more thought-out and composed for posterity. It’s silly, but it’s a silliness that I control and limit.

MySpace – pawn of Rupert Murdoch – is superficial, voyeuristic, utterly commercial and totally juvenile. It aims to be a totality of interweb activity: exhibitionist instant messaging, blogarhea, rate my photo whoredom, music and video filesharing – you name it. It’s your life, youngster, complete with corporate sponsorship. For Gahd’s sake. Get the hell out, before it’s too late!

In another lifetime, Norma McCorvey was the anonymous Jane Roe who allowed herself to be used by the pro-choice movement as the plaintiff in the case that established the constitutional right to privacy and abortion, Roe vs. Wade.

In the intervening years, the radical right violated her right to privacy, tracked Ms. McCorvey down and exploited her own ambivalence over her personal tragedy and its use in national policy debate. They turned Jane Roe into a pro-lifer, as if the simple change of heart of a turncoat would invalidate the legal principles of Roe vs. Wade, and convince all women not to have abortions.

Since that “change of heart,” Ms. McCorvey has played a farcical role in the abortion debate, not unlike the titular (anti)hero of the movie, Citizen Ruth. The New York Times has dug her up one more time for an article published today, on a drug for ulcers that could also be used as a black market abortificant when the Roberts court inevitably overturns Roe Vs. Wade. Here’s what the erstwhile Roe had to say:

“When women start using these self-induced drugs, and start seeing body parts in their potty, they’re going to go bananas,” Miss McCorvey said. “And it’s going to be horrible.”

The Times did not identify any medical or scientific credentials for Ms. McCorvey, nor did it really identify her for speaking for any organization. Nope. Guess they just decided to interview a puppet for the fun of it.

Over a quarter of a million people filled the streets of Washington yesterday to protest the war in Iraq and the Bush regime, but our nation’s corporate media has given the event scant coverage. The demonstration itself, with a large turnout from labor, was broad and impressive.

There is much debate in the anti-war movement about the value of these large mobilizations. The side that I am on argues that these are the most visible manifestation of the movement against war and Bush that we can muster, and that there is an additional value in buoying our spirits by bringing so many of us together.

Another side argues that we’ve been marching by the millions against this stupid war since before it began, failed to stop it then and have since been losing momentum and turning out fewer people (yesterday was the largest turnout in a year). It’s time for new tactics and strategies, they say, and I don’t necessarily disagree.

The problem with a march on Washington that the media ignores is that it’s like a tree falling in a forest, with no CNN corespondent there to ask the tree why it chose today to fall and then interview three anti-tree-falling counter protesters to ask why they think the tree should keep standing.

My friend John Nichols argues in his book, “It’s the Media, Stupid!” (co-written by Bob McChesney) that the left should prioritize media reform amongst our many issues since the media has such an overbearing influence on public discourse and debate that they can effectively pretend we don’t exist no matter how many hundreds of thousands os us march in the streets. It’s on days like today, scanning the papers for any coverage of yesterday’s huge demonstration, that his argument should have a special resonance.

Today and tomorrow, dedicated activists remain in Washington to engage in acts of civil disobedience in order to ratchet up the pressure against the administration and its war. Most likely, they’ll block a few traffic intersections and maybe drop a banner or two from public places. Talk about overused and ineffective tactics.

I’ve believed for a few years now that our comrades who engage in direct action should focus on the headquarters and newsrooms of major media companies. Let’s see if NBC news can ignore the antiwar movement if activists block the entrance to their news studios and prevent Brian Williams from sitting in his comfy chair. Let’s see the NY Times ignore protests and arrests in their lobby. How about simultaneous CD’s and banner drops outside the various “window on the world” studies of the morning newscasts?

Remember “the whole world is watching?” Well, it’s not. Not anymore, and not yet again.

The column that I was hired to write for a certain Queens weekly has been canceled before the first piece was even published. That piece, a critical look at the fall-out from Congressman Greg Meeks’ support for CAFTA, did not appear in this past Thursday’s issue, although an editorial lavishing praise on the Congressman for his championing of banks over people, was featured rather prominently.

I called to find out what happened, and was told the next day that Rep. Meeks had called the newspaper to complain about the previous post that appeared on this blarg. That’s all, she wrote.

The managing editor – who hired me – explained over and over that “integrity” is really important to the paper, and that I had really crossed a line by posting the Congressman’s voicemail message to me, without explaining that I had called him first. Of course, I explained that I hadn’t called him, and that that’s what made his personal phone call to me so noteworthy, and odd. She explained that she hadn’t actually read the piece so much as glanced at it over the shoulder of the publisher, who was livid about the whole affair. (The publisher, it should be noted, was hectoring me about how labor’s position on CAFTA was “illiberal” within seconds of my being hired and explaining my first column.) She also hadn’t read the actual submitted column itself.

Again explaining how “ethics” were so important to this paper, she asked me if I understood their position. I said, well, no, I didn’t, really, since nothing was misrepresented on my website or in the column (neither of which, again, she had read), to which she finally answered something along the lines of “well, I guess you’re just not a good fit for this paper.”

This, finally, was an answer I could accept. This is a paper that does not endorse candidates, that takes no strong positions on controversial matters (aside from that perennial controversy of curbing one’s dog). This is a paper that wants opinion writers who have no strong opinions. That’s me out, comrades.

I hold no ill will towards the paper, although I am annoyed at having been jerked around all summer. I would rather have been rejected from the start, so I could focus my energies on writing for a newspaper that has enough backbone to withstand an angry phone call from an amateurish Congressman, and genuinely wants to drive home to their readers three lanes of political traffic, instead of just the middle of the road.

The Writers Guild of America, East, has been without a contract with the major networks since the first of April. The networks are demanding concessions in wages and work rules. The union will be staging a lunchtime rally in front of the CBS Broadcast Center (located at 524 West 57th Street) next Wednesday, the 27th of April, from 1:00 until 2:00.

If you are free, you should go, not only because you support union workers but because you demand quality television. You do realize that this whole “reality” television craze is just a union-busting strategy, don’t you? Not only are there no writers (hence, no writers union), but the editors are not covered by that union’s contract and most of the on-location crews are non-union, too!

Go to the rally as “concerned viewers for quality television.” Bring
signs: “Sick of Survivor!” “No More ‘Reality’ Give Us Fantasy!”