Charles Finch

As probably goes without saying, I support the writers' strike. There's a lot of nonsense circulating about this subject, most of which seems to focus on the scales of pay involved. Today at a coffee shop I overheard an ABC producer (the studio is quite near my house) describing in vivid detail how spoiled the writers of, for example, Grey's Anatomy, must be to strike. But that objection misses the point. For one thing, as professional sports have proved over and over, poverty isn't a necessary condition for unionization -- which is a good thing. And more importantly, the attenuation of one union is equal to the attenuation of all unions. It's terrible to read about workers crossing this picket line; that's exactly what big corporations must want at this moment.