Los Angeles Times: “All over Hollywood, people are bracing for a strike. Writers could walk out as early as Thursday if their union can’t hammer out a new three-year employment contract with the studios to replace one that expires at midnight on Wednesday.”

Obviously, I support the writers in this. I’m biased. Talent has never been respected in LA. It’s been appreciated, I suppose, the way a lumberjack appreciates a tree. Not the same thing.

I hope there’s no strike. The timing sucks, with the economy generally ravaged by the inept indifference of the Bush years, and deeply singed by the fires. Also, I fear that every time the writers in Hollywood get their hackles up, the industry grows less interested. I mean they can live without writers, can’t they? They can go on making TV and movies without ideas, let alone scripts. They started doing it several years ago. You think there’s a writer on Survivor? Or Fear Factor? Naw. And if you gathered all the producers and directors and especially the contestants from those shows, you couldn’t find enough aggregate gray matter to make the brain of a newt.

I’m not a WGA member, and as far as I know there’s nothing we consumers can do to help put pressure on the AMPTP. So I guess we just hide and watch.