At the strike meeting, someone had suggested that because a number of us would be gainfully employed for the duration of the work stoppage, we should have to kick in an additional 3% to the strike fund.  That seemed fair to me, so I raised my hand along with just about everyone else.

Then another writer suggested that because the networks would be using re-runs in order to keep product on the air, the same 3% levy should be placed on residual payments.  That seemed an equally fair notion.  This time, however, when I raised my hand, I found I was one of very few.

That was my initial wake-up call.  The second occurred during a strike meeting in the 80s, when our negotiating committee reported that we had come to terms on DVDs.  We were agreeing to accept 1.2% of producer’s gross.  Oh, and by the way, it would pertain only to movies produced after 1971.

When I saw Julius Epstein trudging up the aisle, it dawned on me that the Guild had just screwed him out of “Casablanca,” not to mention dozens of other Warner Brothers classics of the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, that he’d co-scripted with his late brother, Phil.

Why, I wondered, hadn’t the Guild settled for, say, just 1% of producers gross, but insisted that the deal cover every movie going back to “The Great Train Robbery”?

The answer, of course, was that once again the members of the Guild had decided to cannibalize its own.  After all, most of the members wrote TV, not movies.  And even among those who wrote screenplays, most of them hadn’t even been in the Guild prior to 1971.

The next time the Guild showed its true colors, which mainly consist of various shades of yellow, I was a member of the Board of Directors.  I was in the final few months of my second two-year term when a couple of lawyers showed up at a Board meeting.  They were seeking a donation for legal expenses, along with a request that we lend our moral support by signing an amicus curiae brief.

The case involved an art gallery exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s pornographic efforts.  Mapplethorpe, in case his name doesn’t register, was a photographer whose artistic vision required full-frontal nudity of pre-pubescent children.

When the director of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center displayed the traveling exhibit, Mapplethorpe’s “The Perfect Moment,” the city shut it down.   (Predictably, the exhibit was funded with American tax dollars, courtesy of the National Endowment of the Arts.)  That, in turn, led to the lawyers coming west, hat in hand.

Because the Board of Directors was authorized to spend up to $5,000 of Guild funds without requiring a vote of the membership, we were often approached by lawyers involved in censorship cases.  Needless to say, they usually got it.  Just like the politicians in Washington, we found it not only easy, but morally uplifting, to spend other people’s money.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R, S.C.) had already gone on record to state that he found Mapplethorpe’s work reprehensible, and urging that no additional tax dollars be allocated to the NEA.

Although, over the previous few years, I had gotten along well with most of my fellow Board members, who included David Rintels, Carl Gottlieb, Hal Kantor, George Kirgo, Ollie Crawford and Jean Butler, I was aware that I was definitely in the minority when I rose to voice my objections.

I argued that, one, Mapplethorpe was a pornographer; two that in a country with well over 250 million people, no “artist” should have to be supported with tax dollars.  If people didn’t wish to buy what you were selling, it wasn’t a subsidy you needed, it was vocational guidance.  And, three, that we had a fiduciary responsibility not to squander the money of our fellow WGA members in such a morally questionable manner, and that, furthermore, community standards trumped what a bunch of Hollywood writers 2,000 miles away thought.

I was prepared to be out-voted.  After all, a fair number of my fellow Board members had been blacklisted in the 50s and still believed that this gave them a moral authority denied to mere mortals.  But I guess I wasn’t prepared to be out-voted 18-1.  I also wasn’t prepared for the way they reacted.  Initially, it was shock and dismay that someone in their midst was agreeing with a reactionary Southern senator, but it soon became clear that they refused to even pay attention to what I was saying.  They had that quickly decided that if Sen, Helms was on one side of the issue, they had no option but to be on the other side.  At one point, during my brief remarks, I recall feeling like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” wondering if I should drop a heavy book on the floor to get their attention, just to make sure they still had faces.

In the intervening years, I have taken very little part in Guild activities.  But that doesn’t mean that the Guild hasn’t continued to annoy me.

For one thing, there are the constant homages offered up to the victims of the Hollywood blacklist.  What’s fascinating about the adoration of the handful of writers who were sent underground for a few years 60 years ago is that if those who were despised as squealers, condemned for naming names, people like Elia Kazan, Larry Parks, Lee J. Cobb, Robert Taylor and Budd Schulberg, had been ratting out fascists instead of communists, Hollywood’s liberals would have hailed them as patriots and erected statues in their honor at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

What’s ironic and pathetic is that the very same people who utter the names of Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, John Howard Lawson and the rest of the Hollywood 10 with the same reverence that some people extend to Jesus and his disciples, not only choose to ignore the blacklisting of older scriptwriters and directors, but make it a practice, as reported in Ben Shapiro’s “Primetime Propaganda,” to bad-mouth their conservative colleagues every chance they get.

It is no accident, after all, that the WGA’s slick monthly, Written By, has never published an article about the decade-long ageism class action lawsuit that culminated earlier this year in a $70 million settlement by studios, networks and agencies, just as there will never be an article about the widespread practice of blacklisting those on the Right.

The dirty little secret of the Writers Guild is that those who are most responsible for blacklisting over the past six decades are its very own writer-producer members.

Recently, I sent an email to Richard Stayton, editor of Written By, to point out that in a recent issue of the monthly there had been 26 photos of members, and not one of them was over the age of 50.  When taken together with the fact that nothing had ever been written about the ageism suit, I suggested that this displayed an obvious bias against older writers.

Inasmuch as writing scripts, unlike, say, playing centerfield for the Yankees, doesn’t require young eyes or young legs, it suggested that even after the lawsuit, nothing had changed in terms of employment or perception of veteran writers.  I felt that the magazine should devote at least some of its attention to a problem that affects a large number of its current members and will, God willing, eventually plague them all.

It seemed a better use of the magazine than devoting yet another article to some thirty-year-old who insisted, with a straight face, that it was his passion that led him to write “Nightmare on Elm Street: The Blight That Wouldn’t Die, Part XXIV,” and not his mortgage.

Within the hour, Stayton informed me that my letter would not run.

Frankly, I wasn’t too surprised to find that if you’re 71, you can’t even get a letter published by the WGA.

—–

Museum of Broadcast History:

FREDERICK S. PIERCE.  … Began career as analyst in TV research, ABC, 1956; director of sales planning, ABC, 1962; vice president planning, 1970; vice president in charge, ABC TV planning and development, and assistant to president, 1974; president, ABC-TV, 1974; president and chief operations officer, ABC, Inc., 1983; resigned from ABC, Inc., 1986; formed the Frederick Pierce Company, Inc., 1988, and Pierce/Silverman Company with Fred Silverman[.]

More on Mr. Pierece here.

—-

This is remarkable video where Brian Williams’ knee-jerk reaction is defend President Obama — “might be a bit unfair” “got all of his people with him” “appearance” “perception” “gets very little time off” — from the growing narrative that the President is disconnected and distant from the ongoing economic, energy, and international emergencies staring down on every American right now. The golfing, the NCAA brackets, the vacations, the date nights… From an isolated point of view, you might be able to defend Williams here, but when you look at the left-wing media as a whole, you don’t see them doing to Obama what they did to Bush. When a Republican is in office, the MSM is always looking for a narrative to fixate on that will define and diminish. When an Obama is in office and that same narrative opportunity presents itself, they do what Williams does here with Jimmy Fallon: they fight that narrative from gaining a foothold and try to snuff it out.

Another example: Sarah Palin has a successful overseas trip and what does the MSM do? They ignore it until they can make a little hay out of which travel agency she used. But Obama’s addiction to golf, the NCAA, and his dance lessons in Rio while launching  a war of choice with no Congressional approval against a Middle Eastern, oil-producing country that’s not a threat to us gets no play whatsoever. And don’t get me started on the teleprompter.

This is how the corrupt media operates and kudos to Jimmy Fallon for not operating that way, for asking questions all American are asking right now about a president who seems completely removed from our faltering recovery, punishing gas prices, and our desire to better understand the whys, hows and whens of his Libya adventure.

My headline’s a lie. But *gasp* can you imagine?

Bill Maher uttered a female vulgarism when referring to former Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin on his HBO show Friday night.

“Did you hear this – Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb tw**s, did you…”

Maher was offering an imagined Palin response in an apparent attempt at humor, as Palin had made no such statement.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) refused to comment on Maher’s use of the derogatory term. A rep told FOXNews.com it is a “known fact” that NOW does not correspond with FOX News.

Again, it’s the media’s raging double standard at issue here. Rather than discuss the coarseness of our culture or use whatever excuse they could to defend the First Lady were she the target of this kind of degrading humor, they instead chose to try and turn Governor Palin’s successful overseas trip to India and Israel into a negative by nit-picking over which travel agency she used.

No. Really.

Last year History featured the terribly produced, politically correct The Story of US that featured such well-known “historians” as Donald Trump, Melissa Etheridge, Margaret Cho and Sheryl Crow. The whole idea of History demanding exacting historical accuracy in such dramatizations as The Kennedys wouldn’t be so laughable if the reorganized network took such care in its now rare historical documentaries.

The British produced Story of Us’ recreations of iconic American events like Custer’s Last Stand, the Alamo, and Lexington and Concord were not only poorly realized, but so inaccurate as to be almost unrecognizable. Back when the old The History Channel did recreations of historical events, many companies like Greystone, Digital Ranch and Native Son, went out of their way to create top quality, authentic visuals with far less money than the amounts spent by the London based company who threw together The Story of US.

In researching some 90 dramatic film and television representations of George Armstrong Custer for my up coming book The Celluloid Custer, I can assure you that few come close to the real Custer, though his true warrior’s charisma was vividly captured by swashbuckling Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On back in 1941. But Custer is out of favor with the left-leaning media, despite the fact that New York Times best-selling writers like Evan Connell and James Donovan have accurately repatriated Custer’s reputation. And so the inaccurate ravings of Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1969) on the famous Indian fighter still live on. A naïve peace and love hippy-dippy type might retort,“Oh, but Custer fought Indians, he must have been evil!”  All I can say to that is go read a fact-based history book, maybe even one with footnotes, instead of Howard Zinn’s “I get to lie because I want my kind of social justice to win out” propaganda.

Dramatizations of true events have to take some liberties, it’s just one of those messy facts of storytelling on film. Discussing the Oscar nominated The King’s Speech in the Los Angeles Times, British historian David Freeman acknowledged that dramatists all the way back to Shakespeare have had to occasionally tweak or telescope historical events in order to tell a good story and entertain. With History’s abandonment of The Kennedys, it’s about something else, about whose historical/political ox is getting gored.

Still, the media’s most revered modern president, John Kennedy is a sacred cow and only partially because of his tragic assassination. So History is being incredibly sanctimonious by not letting new generations of viewers know that besides his courageous handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK was also indeed a serial womanizer, as was his power-hungry father. To quote Dennis Miller on the subject, “Didn’t that horse get let out of the barn a long time ago?” Yet, Oliver Stone, whose films often screen on History, is considered perfectly accurate in his depictions of Richard Nixon, George W. Bush and. . . the JFK assassination. I think not.

Actually, it was political pressure from the Kennedy family, a family that has direct business links to several large media companies in the History corporate group, that pushed hard to kill the Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes-starring  mini. History must have known that they were getting a less sanitized look at the Kennedy clan. Network execs had seen and okayed the script before it was shot. Thankfully, the fledgling REELZ Channel picked up The Kennedys as an excellent way of increasing their viewership and should do well with it..

Meanwhile over at the HISTORY Channel, Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Ice Road Truckers, Monster Quest and other such contrived reality programing have become the network’s staples. Series that sometimes garner upwards of five million viewers, now making History one of the top seven cable networks. Going for the lowest common denominator has not only increased the once respected network’s ratings but also increased advertising rates aimed at the coveted 18-49 viewers. So unless those viewing habits change, there’s no going back to the kind of quality historical documentaries on World War II, the Civil War, the Old West and the Founding Fathers that helped establish the old The History Channel in the mid-1990s. I don’t begrudge History making money, but given their now non-history schedule shouldn’t they have the decency to take the title HISTORY off of their network title?

There has been a price to pay as older and more traditional viewers have left History in droves, replaced by younger and more female viewers. During the traditional era of the network’s programing, from 1995 through around 2005, a very good ratings night was 2.5 million and the network wasn’t unhappy with a million viewers on fairly basic shows that had little promotion. Last year History literally bought the opening night’s ratings of The Story of US by spending huge amounts on a massive advertising campaign that got them 5 million viewers the premiere night and dwindled to around 2 million for the subsequently silly and poorly executed episodes. Many of those now missing-in-action viewers weren’t getting the kind of quality history they were expecting.

We need a new Fox-like history channel, one that extols the values and virtues of tradition while entertaining and informing, especially on the subject of our own American History. The left-leaning Fox haters just blew a blood vessel here, but if you know the controversies and the facts and can back them up while still providing good quality “info-tainment,” the viewers will come. Given the major ratings that Fox routinely trounces CNN and MSNBC with, just imagine what they, or another enterprising network that appreciates an accurate, traditional and entertaining approach to historical programing could achieve.

There are still tens of thousands of great historical stories that were never touched by History, as well as new historical research and fresh finds on many well-known subjects, as well. Stories with courage, integrity, honor and, yes, controversy that still need to be told.  God knows our kids aren’t getting them in most public schools, and actual history, not the network, isn’t boring when told well. Who will step up to the real history mound and strike out the no-history History network with good, straight up American history, instead of the far-left lunacy centered on race, class and gender that predominates in the intellectually bankrupt world of academia and History the network today?

Well, except for me. I sent the Media Matters mope a bouquet of edible underwear – since it may be one of the few things George Soros won’t pay for.

But what a gloomy day for E-B. He has just one job: watching Fox News in his tie-dye onesie… and he even screwed that up. Days ago, his hive of hacks mistook a Leno skit for a Fox Special Report clip. And this caused them to issue a “regret the error” note.

Now – don’t get me wrong. This is NOT a big deal. People make mistakes like this all the time. I probably made seven of them in the last sentence. So no gloating over here.

However, it should offer a moment of contemplation for Eric, as that curved line of middle age descends toward death: this is what you do for a living, and you don’t do it well.

Think about it. Your job is to focus all of your energies on “media bias.” But because the media world – i.e. television news, motion pictures, the art world, news papers, academia, all forms of pop music and pop culture in general – are liberal- it only leaves your progressive outfit with one real target.

And that’s Fox News. So that’s got to tell you something: if your time is consumed needling just one outlet – that says you’re barnacled to the bloated side of liberal bias. Or, you would have many more targets.

Simple, no?

Worse, that’s a cushy job, and you mucked it up. You’re like that kid in class whose only assignment is to carry around an egg – a lesson in responsibility – and you dropped it. That’s got to be a sign: as another birthday passes, it’s time to do something for a living an adult can be proud of. Churning out repetitive spurts of envious whining doesn’t make for a life – even if Soros pays dearly for it.

An alternative: pressed flower craft. it’s like decoupage, but with pressed flowers.

And if you disagree with me, you’re worse than Hitler.

Tonight:

the lovely Lauren Sivan!

the lovely John Gibson!

the lovely Imogen Lloyd Webber!

Bonus for Media Matters tonight: the Robots recreate Eric’s birthday!

The reasons behind the “Conversation” were legion: The economy Obama promised to save is in shambles, the unemployment he campaigned on erasing is hovering near 10%, and his healthcare overhaul, which was supposed to provide affordable health insurance for everyone, is literally poised to break the bank (which is why McDonald’s and other well known companies have asked to opt out of it for a year in order to figure out how they can afford to continue insuring their employees.)

And of course, we can’t forget that Obama has taken George W. Bush’s $1.3 trillion deficit and turned it into $14 trillion. That represents a 90% increase in national debt from a guy who spent the 2008 campaign making fiscal responsibility and transparency a cornerstone of “hope and change.”

While these facts have been hard for some to swallow, even former supporters of Obama (including the young voters) have finally accepted the reality and, as a result, a Carter-like malaise has fallen over the country. Because of this, Obama finds himself at the helm of a Democrat-led titanic set to sink on November 2, 2010.

Thus various members of the BIG MEDIA held a pep rally for Obama, cleverly disguised as a townhall meeting. And while the viewing audience was supposed to watch the event thinking questions would be spontaneous and anything could happen, in reality nothing was left to chance in the televised program (which was actually a well-scripted event where every question and questioner was prescreened).

Heck, some of the questioners were actually actors who played their roles for free.

MTV not only proudly hosted and promoted the “Conservation,” but also took part in screening Obama’s would-be questioners: A screening process characterized by an effort to insure that questions would be light and that the supposedly non-partisan event would be pro-Obama. (No wonder the interns from the Republican National Committee who wanted to attend the event were told “thanks but no thanks.”)

And of all the questions that made it through the screening process, those on the issues of gay rights and the push for a repeal of  “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) were predominant. Such questions provided Obama a perfect opportunity to make policy statements designed especially for the MTV crowd.

For example, in one exchange, Obama was asked why DADT was still on the books and why he hadn’t simply used his Executive Powers to end it? This gave the him the opportunity to promise the gay community once more that if they’ll stand by him, DADT will not only end, but will actually end on his watch.

How scary is this? The very President who knew absolutely nothing about economics, and who has subsequently driven our economy into the ground, knows perhaps even less about the military, yet he plans to tell the military which personnel policies are acceptable and which aren’t. (Of course the execs at MTV don’t care. Rather, they seem fixated on using the “Conversation” to carry water for Obama and to help themselves somehow regain the political clout they enjoyed during the Clinton years.)

But the attempt is a faltering one. For MTV and the rest of the BIG MEDIA don’t sway nearly as many young minds as they did in the 1990s, and the small taste of success they experienced via Obama’s election in 2008 has long been undone by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and voter’s remorse.

Therefore the bottom line is this: There is really no way to stave off the referendum Obama is going to face over his policies in the coming midterm elections. The American people have seen his “hope and change” for what it is: a facade just like MTV’s “Conversation.”

Like most bloggers, I write for more than one website.  It’s rather like being a syndicated columnist, except that little or no money changes hands.  But, as a writer who hopes to influence public opinion, you want to have as many readers as possible.

The strange event took place on a Tuesday.  It came in the form of an e-mail from Jonathan Garthwaite, who runs Townhall, a website I’ve contributed to for nearly four years.

The message read: “Dear Burt: As everyone is painfully aware, the economy is forcing companies to make difficult decisions.  Townhall.com is no different.  We take our commitment to our readers and our bottom line very seriously.  Similarly, we are constantly reassessing our editorial lineup.  We end up making tough decisions that aren’t always fun.

“I know it won’t please you to know that we’ve decided to discontinue carrying your column.  It was not a decision make (sic) carelessly.  Picking between colleagues, friends and talented writers is never easy.

“Thank you very much for sharing your insights with Townhall.com readers over the years.  Sincerely, Jonathan.”

I must confess I was shocked to receive an electronic pink slip after all this time.  I sent Garthwaite an e-mail asking which other writers were being made to walk the plank, but he said he wasn’t free to share that information.  I did get him to agree to post a notice on the following Friday, lest readers simply assumed that I had died.

The reason I’m sharing this with you isn’t because I regard this as a case of blatant censorship.  This isn’t the federal government silencing me.  Townhall has every right to post or not post any writer for any reason.  I don’t believe I or anyone else has the inalienable right to have his articles disseminated.  There are many more important issues than whether or not a blog decides to cut me loose.  Okay, I exaggerate.  There aren’t many things more important, but there are, I’m almost certain, several that rival it.

That said, I fear that there are dark forces at play.  You see, although there was the reference in Garthwaite’s e-mail to the weak economy and the bottom line, there had been no prior discussion between Townhall and me about money.  At least not for quite a while.  When I first started writing for them back in 2005, Townhall was paying me $35 for an article.  But I was writing faster than they were posting, so they agreed to run two-a-week, and I agreed to lower the price to $20 each.  And so it has remained.

But if they were cutting me loose over money, wouldn’t it have made more sense for them to suggest we revert to one-a-week or even ask me if I would write for less, even for free?  Isn’t that usually how these things work?

Therefore, I think reasonable people can agree that money makes a very questionable motive in all this.  And if I were popular enough with the readers to warrant Townhall’s posting two of my articles each and every week for all this time, lack of popularity wouldn’t appear to be the problem.

Now, understand, I am not the sort of person who readily subscribes to conspiracies.  If anything, I tend to pooh-pooh them because I don’t believe two people can keep a secret, and I’m dead certain that three or more can’t.  However, something about the timing couldn’t fail to grab my attention in much the same way that a mackerel lying under your pillow will certainly grab yours.

The piece that Townhall had posted on Monday of that week was an attack on our sworn enemies, which I had titled “The Straight Poop on Islam,” but which Townhall, in a fit of political correctness verging on insanity, had re-named “The Straight Talk on Islam.”

Perhaps it was sheer coincidence that the very next day, I was let go.  Maybe the one thing had absolutely nothing to do with the other.  Perhaps somewhere along the line, Cause and Effect had gone to Reno for a divorce and I just hadn’t heard about it.

But at least now you understand why I can’t help wondering if the folks at Townhall got an offer they couldn’t refuse — perhaps a call from someone threatening to send them a ticking CAIR package.

Mainstream news outlets have been caught off guard before, but they used to play catch up. Today they play “hide the ball.” For as long as I’ve been politically aware the media’s been biased, but willfully ignoring a major national news story at great cost to their credibility and relevance is a new low. So what changed?

Ironically enough, scrutiny and accountability is the cause of much of the media’s increasingly disgraceful behavior.

Once trailblazer media watchdogs like talk radio, The Media Research Center and Bernard Goldberg were joined with the awesome power of the Internet and Fox News, the media’s sins of omission and commission could no longer be hidden from the general public, or denied. This gave the Fourth Estate two options.  They could either: A) Clean up their act and do their jobs honorably … or B) Surrender their fig leafs of objectivity and run amok as the ideologues they really are.

Doing their jobs honorably would mean a setback for the Leftist cause, and so they chose B.

The good news is that this appears to be a suicide run.  

The Dinosaur Media is losing money, viewers and readers hand over fist. The reason they’re folding or on life support isn’t because there aren’t enough left-of-center Americans to keep them in business, it’s because, like everyone else, liberals don’t want to sit in a choir and be preached to. They want information. They want to know what’s going on in the world.

Our liberal friends may not like hearing Van Jones, the NEA and ACORN are under fire, but they still want to know.  What a disappointing revelation it must be to open the New York Times or turn on the network news only to discover after the curtain has already fallen that one of Obama’s Czars was forced to resign or that the U.S. Census Bureau let ACORN go.

The liberal media is failing for the exact same reason a dozen-plus anti-war films flopped: propaganda is dull. No matter your politics, people want stimulation and information, not affirmation. Obviously, that’s not true for everyone, but it’s true enough that those media outlets who haven’t figured it out are either dancing on the edge of financial ruin or, like MSNBC, continuing to double down on stupid thinking it will increase their abysmal performance metrics.

The rise of those who watch the Watchmen forced smart, savvy individuals to consciously choose between being tenacious, curious journalists who will hold the powerful accountable, or to finally come out of the closet and declare themselves the ideological warriors they really are.

They have chosen to become the Palace Guards.  

They are also cornered, scared and armed with the mighty weapons of the unethical: lies and the inability to feel shame.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we must continue to do our best as they let loose their worst.