{"id":395,"date":"2008-02-05T02:10:39","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T02:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html"},"modified":"2008-02-05T02:10:39","modified_gmt":"2008-02-05T02:10:39","slug":"striking-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html","title":{"rendered":"Writers Guild, Stop Whining"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit that I was secretly thrilled when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert-\u2013my sole pop-cultural fixes-\u2013announced that they would be coming back on the air at the beginning of January, despite the ongoing Writers Guild strike.<br \/>\nNow, I know that Jews go back to the beginning of organized labor and that such figures as Samuel Gompers and Emma Lazarus helped create a proud legacy of Jewish activism on behalf of exploited workers. I certainly would never cross a picket line to patronize a store or hotel whose workers were on strike. So why can\u2019t I get myself worked up that the Writers Guild strike is an issue that Jews should be supporting?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nMaybe it\u2019s because the writers are a far cry from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers, or maybe it\u2019s that this strike\u2013as with so many others\u2013<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/talk\/financial\/2007\/11\/19\/071119ta_talk_surowiecki\" target=\"_blank\">seems more about ego than about attaining practical results<\/a>. Maybe it\u2019s the relentless media coverage: clearly journalists\u2013who, after all, write for a living\u2013think it\u2019s far more interesting when other writers strike than, say, teachers or janitors who have gone more than a year without a contract.<br \/>\nYes, it seems clear that the producers are being greedy and ridiculous when they deny writers a share of online royalties, as though they weren\u2019t making money hand-over-fist from web-based ad revenues. But neither side is exactly covering itself in glory, and meanwhile the rest of the country is subjected to the spectacle of rich people and richer people whining about one another&#8211;that and American Gladiator.<br \/>\nIf the strike has shown me anything, it\u2019s that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both enormously talented and perfectly capable of creating gems without their writers, despite their protestations to the contrary. <a href=\"http:\/\/video.aol.com\/video-detail\/colbert-report-colbert-jewish\/3177461457\" target=\"_blank\">And since they\u2019re both Jewish<\/a> (no seriously, check the link), that\u2019s something I can really feel proud of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit that I was secretly thrilled when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert-\u2013my sole pop-cultural fixes-\u2013announced that they would be coming back on the air at the beginning of January, despite the ongoing Writers Guild strike. Now, I know that Jews go back to the beginning of organized labor and that such figures&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-issues"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Writers Guild, Stop Whining - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Writers Guild, Stop Whining - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have to admit that I was secretly thrilled when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert-\u2013my sole pop-cultural fixes-\u2013announced that they would be coming back on the air at the beginning of January, despite the ongoing Writers Guild strike. 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Now, I know that Jews go back to the beginning of organized labor and that such figures&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2008-02-05T02:10:39+00:00","author":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html","name":"Writers Guild, Stop Whining - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-05T02:10:39+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-05T02:10:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2008\/02\/striking-out.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Writers Guild, Stop Whining"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f","name":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/jwaxman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}