Comments on: Bear Sterns Calls Bullshit On Studios — Support The WGA

By: Christy Hardin Smith

Christy Hardin Smith — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:10:17 +0000

hawkseye36 — You are most welcome for the post. Here’s hoping the other studios follow Letterman’s lead and stop being such greedy asshats…if the WGA, DGA and SAG stay united, along with the production unions, it could be a very powerful leveraging force against studios.

By: hawkseye36

hawkseye36 — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:31:45 +0000

Good for Bear Sterns! And thanks for this post.

By: cinnamonape

cinnamonape — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:27:02 +0000

First off, the honorifics are standard. When someone said it sounded like a bad movie script I simply point out that Muslims DO talk this way to one another.

I also pointed out that ISI isn’t going to be viewed as providing legitimate information.

AAs far as the comments about the names …are the names real? Or aliases/codenames? Is there actually such a place?

Admittedly I would think that anyone legitimate would code up the message with words like “asparagas” or “Dhal”.

“The three sprigs of asparagas were very courageous” “The dhal boiled over, I was very happy”…”Let us meet at the place where they play cricket with the Turtle eggs”. Stuff like that. Makes it a lot less suspicious something is going on.

By: cinnamonape

cinnamonape — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:15:55 +0000

OBL was never omnipotent…which was an image that the Bush Administration largely engendered. It was a group that largely could have been bottled up in Afghanistan. But there are lots of other groups that took to branding themselves with the same image after Bush invaded Iraq. Suddenly you had these guys everywhere…but they were only weakly affiliated with bin Laden. One can create (in ones psyche) all encompassing networks if you are obsessed with playing 6-degrees of separation. Find terrorist “A” and then try to find out his links to al Qaida…do enough work and you’ll find intermediate links. But those links may be accidental, not causal. But if one thinks that the intermediate individuals MUST be involved they become a “network”. One can then imagine their “roles” and arrest them, interrogate them, tap their phones, look at their hard drives. And those may offer suggestive links to OTHERS through oblique networks.

By: cancercures

cancercures — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:15:45 +0000

ISI intercept made up or not? Well, even though an org like ISI has members of questionable ethics, there is bound to be a radical who takes the killing of Bhutto more serious than others.

Just like how we’ve seen renegades in the Justice Dept (Comey) and the CIA (Plame) in the past few years under Bush, is it possible that a renegade exists in the ISI who wants to release -anything- related to the assassination public?

By: IrishJIm

IrishJIm — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:12:15 +0000

Exactly. And there is the simple fact that they said exactly were they were going to meet up. Ummmm, why didn’t they go and arrest them? More propaganda to try and blame the boogey men Al Qaeda.

By: Rayne

Rayne — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:10:28 +0000

One percent? That’s it, one freaking percent?

CBS is trading around $27.29 today, down approx. 24% from its 52-week high.

Disney (ABC’s parent) is trading at $32.50, off 11% from its 52-week high (likely boosted by holiday season).

And GE, NBC’s owner, is off 11% as well; it’s a good thing it doesn’t rely on NBC for income.

If 1% is all that’s at stake, that’s chickenfeed. Studios are losing money not having fresh content, and the share prices we’re seeing aren’t yet showing the real cost to these corporations.

It’s bad business on their part to toss out so much shareholder value for such a nominal amount. Cripes, their travel and energy costs rose far more than 1% this year and you don’t see these studios whining about it!!

I say boycott all CBS, Disney and NBC products until they cough up this pittance of 1%. And dump their stock, too, especially if you need a loss before the end of the year (dialing spouse now and telling him to dump that pitiful GE stock in his portfolio…).

By: Redshift

Redshift — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:10:00 +0000

The audiences will tune on, not find it as funny as before, and tune off. Possibly a good reason to ‘yank’ funnymen from networks altogether.

Not a chance. There was an NPR show a week or two ago about the strike, and one of the points made was that because “blockbuster” prime-time series are so expensive to make, and so hit-or-miss, late night talk shows are the most profitable segment for the networks. (All this information was coming from union reps or other guests sympathetic to the union; the moguls refused to send anyone to participate.) That doesn’t exactly apply to Comedy Central, but I’m pretty sure the picture there is the same for different reasons (low audience for other shows, rather than high cost.)

By: LS

LS — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:09:32 +0000

Anyone with knowledge of the honorifics could make that shizzola up. It is made up. It is pure baloney. First of all, they would never name the people involved; secondly, they would never say where they were or where they were going, on the phone.

They make this stuff up by the batch whenever convenient.

By: Christy Hardin Smith

Christy Hardin Smith — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:07:03 +0000

cancercures — Yes, they could be fired for breach of contract. Hosts often have a dual role on those sorts of shows — they often have a comedy background, so they write some of their own material. And, in the case of both Stewart and Colbert who are WGA members, they are prohibited from pre-writing material for hosting throughout the strike. Their second role as performer/host (and/or producer as well, as a third role in a lot of cases) comes with contractual obligations separate and apart from the writing portion of duties.

With those obligations come contractual strings, and they could be sued and/or fined and/or fired under contract requirements. As I’m not privy to the details of the individual contracts involved, I can’t tell you what they’d be facing individually — but there are often pretty steep contract breach provisions put in just in case this sort of situation arises (doesn’t happen all that often, but an entertainment lawyer for the studios would be a dolt not to insist on some deterrent provisions in a contract of this sort).