Oct
24
Behind Closed Doors, “The Big Ask”
Filed Under Uncategorized |
by Michael Winship
Over the last three weeks, for different reasons, I’ve had inside access to two kinds of events that usually take place privately, behind closed doors.
In the first instance, I was invited — as a non-paying observer — to small political fundraisers for two major congressional candidates, one for the Senate, one for the House. The other invitees were quite well to do, possessed of very deep pockets. As opposed to me, whose pockets only jingle shallowly with quarters for the Laundromat.
At the same time, I’ve been a participant in the contract negotiations among the Writers Guild of America, East (the union of which I’m president), the Writers Guild of America, West, and the Hollywood studios and networks, represented by the AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
When “Entertainment Tonight” asks, “Are the movie and TV writers going on strike?” this is the negotiation about which they’re speculating — between their fervid analyses of Britney Spears’ driving habits and Marie Osmond’s case of the vapors on “Dancing with the Stars.”
First things first. New York City is the ATM of American politics, so at any given time on any given day, it’s safe to say that some candidate or other is in Manhattan raising cash for his or her campaign.
Last Monday, October 15, it was the popular, former governor of Virginia Mark Warner, who briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for president. Now he’s out to capture the Senate seat held by retiring Republican John Warner (no relation). A lunch was held for about 20 at the Harvard Club. I was plunked between Warner and Ned Lamont, who, in a surprise win, beat Joe Lieberman in last year’s Democratic Senate primary, only to lose the general election when Lieberman ran as an independent. He had the fish.
The other fundraiser occurred a week later at the law offices of a prominent, progressive New York attorney. With about two dozen in attendance, it was hosted by House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, dean of the New York State congressional delegation, on behalf of Democratic House candidate Eric Massa. He’s running in upstate New York’s 29th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Randy Kuhl, one of President Bush’s last remaining, knee-jerk acolytes.
In his first run at Kuhl’s seat in 2006, Massa came within two percentage points of victory, quite a coup in that heavily conservative district. Now he’s better funded and better organized, with increased name recognition, including his recent designation as one of Esquire Magazine’s 2007 Esquire 100, an annual register of emerging trends, ideas and people. “This country is in danger of losing the United States of America in one generation,” Massa told the magazine. How could he not run again?
Although they’re the price of doing business in 21st century political America, these private fundraisers remain unsettling, once again an argument for the public financing of campaigns, especially when you read stories like the one that appeared in Tuesday’s New York Times. It began, “Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.”
Yet the wealthy folks at the two events I attended had real concerns for the country’s future, and the questions they posed to Warner and Massa were well-considered, compassionate and sometimes provocative — questions about the war and global trade, health care, education and jobs. There was distress at the dysfunction and disillusionment of American society. “Everyone wants to connect,” Massa observed, “but they feel no one is listening.”
Part of the reason, Mark Warner suggested, was that our government has not chosen to ask the people for the commitment and sacrifice of which they’re willing and capable. “The Big Ask,” Warner calls it. We have to move from the “let’s go shopping” solutions the current administration has offered to a shared sense of working together for the greater good even if it requires some pain.
Warner noted, “Even if taxes must go up or Medicare is means-tested, that might be acceptable if there is a model that can be shown to work in the long term.”
“The Big Ask” is a phrase that originally referred to hitting up political donors for the maximum contribution possible. I’m sure that if they could, it’s also how the Hollywood studios and networks would tag what the Writers Guilds, East and West, are seeking in our current contract negotiation.
But all writers really are negotiating for can best be expressed in seven simple words: “When you get paid, we get paid.” A basic, small sharing of revenues for our work that extends from DVD’s to the new media exploding across the cyberspace landscape — everything from video games to downloads of movies and TV shows to future forms of entertainment we can’t yet imagine.
There’s not much I can tell you about what goes on in the actual negotiation sessions. It’s confidential. What I can say is that the AMPTP’s counteroffer to our proposals has been calls for headspinning, severe rollbacks. To characterize them as “Draconian” seems a disservice to the fine name of Draco, the ancient Greek lawmaker who punished the smallest offense with death and in return wound up suffocated by an angry mob. At the theater. Now that’s entertainment.
Our forceful response to their demands reminds me of story told by Adlai Stevenson when he was the US Ambassador to the United Nations.
It was during the Cuban missile crisis, just 45 years ago this week. The Soviets were complaining that the naval blockade and quarantine of Cuba imposed by the United States was an overreaction, a response somehow disproportionate to the presence of nuclear weapons that could hit New York City in ten minutes. (Think of all the ruined political fundraisers.)
Stevenson spoke of a man walking through an open field in the country on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Out of nowhere, an angry bull charged him.
In fear and self-defense, the man grabbed a pitchfork and stabbed the bull, killing it. The farmer who owned the animal sued.
In court, the man related the circumstances of the attack. When he described using the pitchfork, the farmer demanded, why didn’t you use the blunt end of the pitchfork, and just push the bull away?
The man replied, “Why didn’t the bull use HIS blunt end?”
Hooray for Hollywood.
copyright 2007 Michael Winship
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