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Friday, December 21, 2007

Free Ham
Posted by Jill | 2:06 PM
Remember that old joke (I'm allowed to tell this one under the "It's OK to knock your own team rule) about the Jewish dilemma of free ham?

Well, it looks like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are about to give us the liberal equivalent of that free ham: They're going back to work January 7, with or without writers.

Alan Sepinwall of the Star-Ledger reports:

Can you do fake news without real writers?

Following the lead taken by late night personalities like Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel -- and possibly David Letterman -- "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart and "Colbert Report" host Stephen Colbert announced late Thursday that they would return to work on their Comedy Central shows in early January, whether or not the Writers Guild of America strike is over by that point.

"We would like to return to work with our writers," Stewart and Colbert said in a joint statement. "If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence."

[snip]

While "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" feature interview segments, both shows devote far more of each episode to written material than their talk show counterparts. Stewart doesn't come up with those punchlines about government and media hypocrisy off the top of his head, and Colbert's "The Word" segment isn't improvised.

Comedy Central declined to reveal exactly how each show will be put together if the strike continues into the new year. (At present, no new talks are planned between the WGA and the entertainment companies.)


Does it count as crossing the picket line if Stewart and Colbert produce their shows, even if they don't hire scab writers to do it? And what does it mean for organized labor when two of the biggest progressive media icons cross the picket line?

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher says that this is Comedy Central's (read: Viacom's) decision, not that of Stewart and Colbert.

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3 Comments:
Blogger STP said...
I was surprised by their decision. I wonder what went on behind the scenes with them. I had hoped they would remain loyal to the writers.
12/21/07, 2:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Strangely, I'm feeling remarkably untroubled by this supposed quandary.
12/21/07, 3:18 PM  
Blogger Joshua said...
I'm sure the two of them will come up with some appropriate way to pay tribute to their writers still on the picket lines. After all, Colbert is the guy who ruthlessly mocked the President and the entire White House Press Corps right to their faces. Somehow, I don't think Viacom intimidates him either.
12/22/07, 11:21 AM  
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