Word: picketers
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...late March of 1979, with the talks at an impasse, the comedians went on strike. A picket line was assembled in front of the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard, the strikers carrying placards with slogans like no money, no funny and the yuk stops here. The spectacle of stand-up comedians, many of them well known from television, recasting themselves as extras in F.I.S.T., was an irresistible national story. Johnny Carson made jokes about it on The Tonight Show. Some of the more established comics were scornful ("This strike is the biggest joke I've ever heard come...
...That brings us to Saudi Arabia, another soldier in our Iran picket line. The $20 billion in arms that Bush agreed to sell Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states is meant to deter the Iranians from taking the Gulf. All well and good. But the question remains, as always, whether the Arabs will figure out how to use them. They didn't in the last war in the Gulf (1990-91), when the Kuwaiti army collapsed in a blink. As the Saudi army did when Saddam attacked Khafji. Both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at the time were armed with...
Politics intruded on the writers' strike too, in complicated and ironic ways. Huckabee, who has cast himself as a worker-friendly Republican, took heat for crossing Tonight's picket line. Meanwhile, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, TV's havens-in-exile for Bush bashers, found themselves getting turned down by Democratic and left-leaning guests, since they were working without striking writers. Stephen Colbert, in character as a conservative pundit, railed against Barack Obama for pledging, if he's President, to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yet turning down the Report: "He's saying Stephen Colbert is worse than...
...writers picket, "we're stayin' home," says one publicist of a nominated actor, a view echoed by most others. Early in the day some publicists were optimistic that a deal could be worked out that would allow their clients to attend. Kelly Bush, CEO of ID Public Relations, a firm that represents a long list of nominees including Ellen Page, Casey Affleck, Tim Burton, America Ferrera, Mary-Louise Parker and Kyra Sedgwick, said, "I will certainly encourage our nominees to attend and hope other? publicists do the same." The announcement of the press conference format changed Bush's plans...
...Even if the writers don't picket, the press conference format raises all sorts of questions for the nominees, say their publicists. Do you attend a press conference for an award you may lose? What do you wear to a press conference? Isn't it tacky to borrow tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewels when people have lost their jobs? Part of the fun of the Golden Globes in the past has been the spontaneity of an event put on by journalists rather than producers, but this Golden Globes may be just too unscripted for actors to handle...