My friend DeLisa White is the queen of telling me things I’d rather not know. Usually it leads to me no longer being able to use a particular product or patronize a particular business because they’re – I don’t know – torturing kittens in the rainforest or something. But I trust her, so I paid close attention when she included me in this e-mailing about the writers strike, reprinted here with permission from the author.

(By the way, when I told DeLisa I was going to put her writing online and not pay her for it, she said “Wow, I feel like an official Guild member!”)

Dear Friends,

The studios, networks and producers of The Office made $13.9 million dollars last year on iTunes downloads of the show alone.

Amount the writers, directors, and actors got of that?

Zero percent.

While among the Writers Guild’s 12,000 members there are television writer-producers like Shonda Rhimes, the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice,” who take home up to $5 million a year, on the other extreme are junior writers who – if they work at all – make $50,000 or less (just like the rest of Americans.) Furthermore, about 48 percent of West Coast members are unemployed, according to guild statistics, and rely on residuals to do things like, well, eat.

IMHO, I think this is a thoroughly just cause – I support the writers and their creative colleagues completely. I was sick at heart to discover that the shows and movies I’ve downloaded from iTunes did not compensate the people who created them, without whom my joy in them wouldn’t exist. This should have been automatically addressed by producers and studios. It’s egregiously unethical for them not to have done so and that they continue to resist is unconscionable to me.

I have just read and signed the online petition:

“In support of the WGA strike”

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/WGA/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.

Very best wishes,

DeLisa :-)

I don’t think I need to belabour the point. After all, the people who come to this site are here because of their adoration and admiration for an individual writer, and his tremendous contribution to our culture and language. But enough about me.

Let’s do what we can to support the writers who have brought so much joy to our lives, and who deserve to benefit from the fruits of their talent and hard work.

What’s in the box?

When director Kenneth Branagh set the opening speech of Henry V in a movie lot, he was announcing a new philosophy for putting Shakespeare on film. This philosophy is well explored in his latest film, As You Like It. It’s not a perfect film, but I greatly enjoyed watching it, and I expect to give it many more viewings in the near future and likely for years to come.

Shakespeare was writing for the stage, but Branagh has the ability to show with vivid action events that Shakespeare could only describe. In some cases, that worked well, like in the exciting palace coup in the beginning. In other cases, I missed Shakespeare’s language. Believe it or not, actually seeing Orlando wrestle with the lion was far less satisfying than those times when I’ve heard Oliver describe it.

Branagh set his film in Japan, a bold choice that is supported by an on-screen description of 19th century British enclaves in Japan. This had the potential to draw a much sharper distinction between those fleeing the court and the rustics of the forest. However, Branagh contrived to allow Corin and Audrey to remain English. Both actors did a fine job, but an opportunity was lost. Phoebe and Silvius seemed to be English actors of Asian descent. Only the character of William truly embodied the potential of setting the play in a 19th century Japanese forest. I was left wondering why the film was set in Japan at all. Still, the external trappings of the Japanese setting were visually impressive. I enjoyed the ninja soldiers and Charles as sumo wrestler, the Japanese characters and kimonos, but in the end, there seemed to be very little actual consequence to choosing Japan as a setting.

I enjoyed most of the performances, but I feel that Phoebe and Silvus were botched, in that their relationship was not well articulated. I would not have minded if the issue was simply that they didn’t remain faithful to the play, but I didn’t know what they were supposed to be. Most troublingly, the lines explaining the “bargain” between Phoebe and “Ganymede” in the end were cut, and so we don’t even know why Phoebe is marrying Silvius. In general, there were more script cuts than I generally like to see, but again, Branagh is adapting for another medium and we must allow for the conventions of film.

I’ve always felt that Rosalind carries this play on force of personality, and Branagh found a wonderful Rosalind in Bryce Dallas Howard. Adrian Lester is brilliant in everything he does, and this is no exception. But the real standout for me was Brian Blessed in the double role of Duke Senior and Duke Frederick. As the former, he is able to set one of the main themes of the play – the contrast between the false court and the natural world of Arden. As the latter, he movingly demonstrates the transformation and ultimate redemption of the evil Duke in a way that I’ve never seen before, nor found more satisfying.

As You Like It continues to run on HBO. I highly recommend checking it out!

Kenneth Branagh’s new film of As You Like It premieres tonight at 9pm on HBO, and will continue to run for at least the next month. Be sure to check it out!

The problem here – well, in addition to all of O’Reilly’s usual problems – is that he seems unaware, or pretends to be unaware, of the difference between an online community forum like Daily Kos and traditional corporate-owned pre-Internet media. Inviting users to participate in an interactive, Web 2.0 medium doesn’t make you automatically agree with everything they post to your site. If it did, there would be very little reason to do it.

O’Reilly even seems unaware of the comments left by people on his own site. Again, it’s possible that he just chooses not to be aware or he pretends not to be aware. But given O’Reilly’s demographic and the hate he peddles, it’s not hard to imagine that O’Reilly has more than a few viewers who would be willing to express views in a public forum that even O’Reilly wouldn’t want to be associated with.

I don’t consider comments on the O’Reilly site as coming from O’Reilly himself. It’s inappropriate for O’Reilly to use the comments on blogs or the postings of Kos diarists to compare progressive blogs to the Nazis and KKK.

The rebuttal to this lunacy was, of course, put best by Stephen Colbert:

Exactly. The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis were both notorious for allowing people to express unpopular views in an open and free forum.

And that basically sums it up. If O’Reilly wants to make the argument that people who instigate hate are responsible for all of the comments and opinions of their followers, he’s free to do so. But then, we’ll all need to have a word with O’Reilly himself.

I had a dream last night. It was the morning after the primaries for the 2008 presidential election, which in my dream were all held on the same day. I had gone to bed early and missed the results, so upon waking I checked online to see who had won.

Surprisingly, the Democratic nomination went to John Edwards, the charismatic Senator from North Carolina who campaigns primarily on the issue of poverty. He hadn’t been my first choice, but I was somewhat pleased to see him win the nomination anyway and I looked forward to the possibility of his winning the presidency.

Even more surprisingly however, the Republican nomination went to Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century American revivalist preacher, known primarily for his fire-and-brimstone sermons.

Turning on the television, I was dismayed to see that the media was entirely focused on the fact that both nominees had the same name. They had an expert on doing a statistical analysis of names of politicians to see what the odds of this happening were. I was frustrated, because I felt like the top story should have been that the Republicans nominated a Bible-thumping Puritan from the eighteenth century. Didn’t that concern anyone?

I went into the office – in my dream I worked in an office – and all of my co-workers in this office-type place were absolutely giddy with the coincidence of the two candidates having the same name. I noted that the Republican Jonathan Edwards was a dangerous religious zealot who would destroy all of the freedoms we currently enjoy, but – of course – nobody paid me any mind.

Even so, I woke up more amused than frustrated. And today, I learned that the debate tonight would feature questions being asked by voters via YouTube. So of course, that’s now the story far more than anything that was said during the debate. Can I dream ’em or what?

Anyway, the Question of the Week was suggested by Lee after reading that the ’92 Vice Presidential Debate was my favorite political debate ever. As always, free to answer the question, or just continue the conversation.

What was your favorite debate ever and why?