that strike thing : part v : love, writing & baseball
Kitty says this is a post —
Really it was a comment —
Over here to something Zenformation Guy said.
[The Zenformation Guy gets into the most interesting sexual peccadilloes when he is not being Southern poetic.]
Zen said [paraphrased] Middle America is hearing things bad about WGA and mostly not sympathetic to striking writers [Zen is sympathetic his neighbors are not].
And I said —
[not paraphrased]
It reminds me of the baseball strike. People were outraged “those over paid baseball players were depriving their fans.” All anyone ever heard about was multi-million dollar player deals. And that sewed a lot of resentment. People allegedly getting millions allegedly asking for more millions. But —
Only a handful of players get those kinds of contracts. And no one seemed to be outraged at multi-million dollar owners who were more than willing to deprive fans in order to beat the lesser paid players into the ground. The same attitude is being sewn now. Blame the workers because they are not giving you the entertainment you are accustomed to getting whenever you want, forget the owners who actually control the situation, make the real money and could give a damn about you or the workers.
This works in part, I am pretty sure, because we live in a puritanical society that considers arts and sports frivolous occupations. There is a certain amount of resentment of people who get paid to “just write stories” or “just play a game.” Those are not, after all, real jobs, right? And I think in general terms a good deal of the populace does not consider us real “workers” with real occupations.
Oddly, everyone gets really pissed if we stop showing up for work though.
where the art work comes from :
that is mer02 by ian sanderson
8 Responses to that strike thing : part v : love, writing & baseball
Hear, hear!
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You’ve hit it with this. Yes, the life of a writer or professional athlete is all fun and games! We writers get to sleep in, work from home in our pajamas, I mean, come on, how easy is that?
I, too, find it really interesting that people aren’t more supportive of the folks who bring them so much pleasure, entertainment, downtime, escapism, drama, excitement, inspiration…
I don’t discourage them… but I do warn my writing students that there are easier ways to make a living.
Now I beg you to write what you told me about The Core.
Remember that one?
I do not you will have to remind me.
I like the parallels you’ve made here. Thanks for making sense out of it for me.
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Thanks for clearing up that baseball thing. Now I hate those guys less.
Those guys work so hard. All the training and work and fighting your way to the top of the game and weathering injuries and going out and playing in suck weather and then they just got abandoned by their fans and raped in the press war.
Yeah, I guess. Because of what seems like numerous strikes on their part, I basically dismissed them all as spoiled brats. But I suppose you make a good point.