The Destroyers on Strike

The work at corroding America’s cultural bedrock has been placed on hold in the name of the Almighty Dollar. America’s television writers have gone on strike.

But for news reporting on the matter, I’d be blissfully unaware of it, as would many other Americans. While blame is often thrown at directors or even actors, the wires of trashy TV content are rarely given their appropriate share of blame.

American Television programming has, with few exceptions, been a mix of poor quality tripe, liberal brainwashing, and unnecessary sex and violence. Given the cultural sewage spewing out of the laptops of most of these writers, I don’t care if they ever resolve their contract.

In addition to this, with the average TV writer earning $200,000 a year, it’s hard to take “labor’s” side, particularly as the writer’s success in getting their concessions met will come at a cost to the American consumer.

I was reminded of this over the weekend when I watched Part 7 of Michael Argusso’s Marvel/DC: After Hours series. Argusso began his series of short films with a simple parody of the MAC/PC commercials involving the principle characters of the Marvel/PC comic book universes and comparing the two Comic book giants’ films.

Argusso began to branch out into longer and more involved pieces, even garnering some positive attention from Marvel as he went. His “After Hours” saga mixed parody and a fond respect for his subject matter in a way that was at times hilarious and at other times thought-provoking.

Of course, this production had its issues and who are we kidding-this was a production done entirely with action figures. But, I think it says something about the state of the professional television industry that a great many TV shows can be outdone by a talented amateur with a cast purchased off Ebay.

Although I missed them the first go around, I listen to many Old Time Radio programs, such as Jack Webb’s Dragnet from the 1950s. Webb was a pioneer of the police procedural drama. He broke ground, experimented. His scripts are filled with realism, honesty, and a sense of dedication to and respect for America’s police. Webb built up American civilization, while modern American television is helping drag it down.

From the You Tube standouts to the old stand bys, America has more than enough alternatives to wait out the writer’s strike. The only question is why anyone would waste their time on the mostly substandard fair that Hollywood offers these days when the writers come back.

Comment by Cameron

$200k? Sign me up! How hard could it be to write Horatio’s lines on CSI? I mean, really.