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As the days pass, there seems to be no end game to the Writers Guild of America strike against the movie and TV studios. But no matter what else is or isn't accomplished, here's a potential major victory: If the strike continues, the writers are planning to boycott the Oscars and Golden Globes later this winter, possibly saving us all from the truly soporific annual media pile-on. Appropriately, it turns out that the history of the Academy Awards is tied to union-busing. At HuffPo, John Ridley writes:
...true recognition of hard work has as much do to with awards shows as Christ does with the modern consumerized concept of Christmas. That is, unless the Three Wise Men were somehow behind the phrase: "90 days with no payments."Fact is, awards shows were never really about recognizing achievement. They were a publicity ploy cooked up in the late 1920s by MGM topper Louie Mayer and his newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which was itself, back in the day, nothing but a front organization to discourage unionizing.Hm. Wonder if the fawning media coverage of the white-collar strikers will continue if the WGA denies the MSM the advertising dollars associated with Oscar hype...--Dana Goldstein
