Seat at the Table

Letterman’s a hero for entertainment consumers; Leno’s under fire for crossing the picket line.  Leno may be looking like the loser in the fight about the writers union with so many accusations of him crossing the picket line.  However ridiculous it may seem to the public to hear the WGA say Leno can’t write for himself, he has had no good defense and still comes across as crossing the union.  But there may be a solid turn-the-table strategy.

If Leno is will to cross the picket line then he should be willing to put a steak in the ground and offer a public deal that puts the negative focus on the WGA.

What if Leno went out there and declared that he would not cross the picket line as long as the WGA provided fair compensation to his non-writing staff and people that had paid vacations around seeing Leno shows (there are people who do this).   The core message is that the WGA is costing other individuals including staff and consumers who don’t have the writers big salaries a lot of money and there are a lot more of these people than there are writers. 

At the core of this position is the statement that "I can stand with one group that does well financially or I can stand with many groups that don’t do as well financially…I feel the responsibility to do the latter." (for those that say Leno can compensate out of his pocket he can commit that if he ever declares his own strike, he’ll do that).

Leno, why let yourself get all beaten up.  Take a stand for so many people for whom they are an innocent bystander getting hit by WGA stray bullets.

(note: I actually have no position on the strike at all but just am wondering aloud why Leno, as long as he’s crossing the WGA line, doesn’t take an aggressive stand to defend his position).