Sully on Colbert
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are coming back on the air tonight, sans writers, and it appears that de facto Obama blogger Andrew Sullivan will be Stephen Colbert's first guest. Colbert should be able to do well, considering his background is in improv...we'll see about Stewart, that may be a bit tougher.
Regardless, does it make me a scab to watch their show? Not that I give a damn, I'm gonna watch it anyway, but I'm just curious.
3 comments:
To be a scab you'd have to go up there and actually work on the show. So you're not a scab but you may need a little brushing up on trade unions, which is not so odd for a twenty five year old Southerner, so don't feel bad about it. It takes courage to admit one's ignorance.
Fair enough, though I'm not a Southerner, I'm from Ohio...but we don't have a big screen writing industry up there.
Perhaps "scab" isn't the right word, but I know when trucking companies go on strike, they frown upon other union shops from using those products, and by watching the Daily Show, I'm using that product. So what do you call someone who doesn't necessarily break a picket line by working, but will purchase or use a product made under a strike?
I really don't think there's a term for a consumer who fails to support a strike. Strikes are a non-violent action aimed at production. The corresponding action aimed at the consumption side is simply a boycott, which of course you know. A union could call for a boycott of the products in question, but I tend to think of boycotts as a weapon of less disciplined organizations than unions, without very specific rules, so those who fail in solidarity in a boycott could be tagged with any "disloyalty" label, such as "traitor", "sellout", etcetera. I don't think that you, as a media person or union supporter generally, should feel obligated to boycott unless the striking union declares a boycott. Have they? But your voluntary solidarity is commendable, and I would suggest that watching the program may not be important, but the best expression of solidarity would be to not draw interest to the program, but rather totally ignore it, or perhaps inform us about the strike in more detail.
My mother's job, (and only 10 others), was saved by a strike of 1,000 union members in the early 1970's. That doesn't make me smart, but it makes me a strong supporter of labor unions.
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