Well, it's not like they tried to cancel the Super Bowl, but if there's any consensus to be found on line or in the Hollywood ether about the Writers Guild threat to February's Oscar telecast, it's that they're taking on a mighty big institution. There may be real danger in that for or an organization that's been relying on the added pressure of a generally favorable public response to their strike. (A USA Today/Gallup poll says their support is at 60 percent, while the studios scored 14 percent--which makes emphatic that underneath the WGA versus AMPTP battle lies a generally unmentioned sense that, in a wider societal view, it's the consumers versus the oligarchs.)

The AMPTP's response to the poll was to cite an Internet-based survey, conducted earlier this month by TNS, showing that the strike has caused no impact on the viewing habits of 74% of Americans, with 22% watching less TV . (And with 34 percent supporting the writers.) However, TNS VP Dan Ryan added that the coming spate of reruns means that for mainstream viewing habits, "the decline is quickly approaching".

This past week saw the usual strokes and counter strokes. A specimen issue saw the writers taking ownership of a Los Angeles City Council meeting that bore a message of despair over the pyramiding harm to the local economy--even as the companies didn't deign to show up, were browbeaten for it, then supplied a rather ineffectual retort that such things are handled for them by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Another to-and-fro occurred around a letter written to Variety by Hollywood mandarin David L. Wolper, who likened the strike to the
1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics called by President Jimmy Carter,. Wolper evoked the pain of "over 460 American athletes ...who trained four years for their moment in the sun" (As I recall, my marathon training partner, a fencer who would have had a shot at a medal in saber, was entirely philosophical about it.) No, the Russians didn't pull their troops out of Afghanistan as a result--but that was in great part a propaganda war (not to dismiss Charlie Wilson's deadly shoulder-fired missiles), just as the strike is. The AMPTP quickly cooked up an oddly gaudy web site called wewanttheawards.com in the hope of popularizing Wolper's sentiment.

In politics, this is called "exciting the base", but--as was pointed out with sneering wit by Dubya when he called an audience of fat-cat donors "My base"--the AMPTP's base is a pointy little subsection of the power elite whose shape on a 3-D wealth chart would resemble the top five feet of the Transamerica Building. Even Variety's Peter Bart, so often accused of catering to the companies in his coverage, put it this way in a column:

To a major degree, the writers strike itself (and follow-up clashes) are being fueled not by movies or TV, but by the money and power of the congloms and by their potential stranglehold over future technologies....

Today, as the events of '07 remind us, Hollywood is a mere plaything of the international congloms, and Hollywood product represents a relatively minor sector of the product line.

Meanwhile the holiday break left the town's Oscar plans in something of an informational black hole. Having already pretty well undercut the Golden Globes--barring an AMPTP return to the bargaining table--with the denial of a waiver for writers and also the threat to picket, the guild has, in a rather wobbly way, brandished the same gun at the Oscars. Putative host Jon Stewart has remained mum, though he and his mate in satire Stephen Colbert, as the WGA wrung its hands over Comedy Central "forcing" their shows back on the air January 7, issued a statement:

We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.

Cute, but some writers walking the freezing picket lines may be asking, where's the meat?

That said, the WGA does have a way of playing favorites, as they showed by granting a waiver this week to the Independent Spirit Awards (including host and WGA member Rainn Wilson), and the two pleasingly subversive hosts' obvious empathy (and clout--Colbert was just chosen AP Celebrity of the Year) has preserved them from heavy criticism. (Of the labor-doctrinal sort, anyway--though they're probably not looking forward to the reviews when their writer-less and necessarily padded and jury-rigged telecasts resume.)

Closely related was the effort by David Letterman's Worldwide Pants to win a waiver from the guild for a return to the air. Even though executive producer Rob Burnett took a stab at personally negotiating the waiver, the most the WGA could come up with late Friday was:

Representatives from Worldwide Pants and the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East met today. A lively exchange of information took place. The WGAW and WGAE will not comment further.

With their still-buoyant poll numbers the WGA is clearly sticking with its stated thesis: "The best way to get the awards season back on track is for the AMPTP to return to the bargaining table to negotiate a fair deal with the Writers Guild to get this town back to work."

Meanwhile, the message embodied in one specialist's comments to the Associated Press might reverberate through the holiday season as the writers hibernate and the moguls rusticate:

Mike Asensio, a partner at the national law firm of Baker Hostetler and a specialist in labor law, called the awards shows "a golden opportunity" for the guild, but "whether it works or not remains to be seen. It's a great weapon to have but it's an easy one to misplay and aggravate the public.

(Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart host `Night of Too Many Stars', October, 2006; photo by Duffy-Marie Arnoult/WireImage)