Editor’s Note: This story is not made up.

Dozens of pickets lined Main Street in the tiny rural town of Baylord in Recession suffering Michigan.  No they weren’t with any union against the massive lay-offs and downsizing the state had been suffering do the short falls of the car manufactures, namely Ford and GM.  No, they were on strike against the writers who are on strike.

Our renegade reporter Dave Strange--still MIA— couldn’t hit the scene, so it was left to me to do so.  Normally I’d describe the locale, set the scene, but there just isn’t much to the place.  Two main streets cross at the only three-way light and crosswalk in town. It’s at the center of a John Cougar Mellencamp song, little black houses with church like steeples for you and me.  Lodging, above the town hotel/bar was cheap though, and my hat is off to the establishment.  So, back to the real deal, what where these people so mad about, that they would brave the freezing temperatures to stand up in protest?

“My livelihood is gone,” said one protestor, Gerald Kraft, one of the local firemen.  “Every night of the week I had a favorite show and now… it’s all re-runs.”

“And Leno’s monologues are just not funny now,” added another, Meg Hill, the local librarian.  “It’s like they’ve ruined everything.” 

“I don’t know what we’re going to do without the Golden Globes,” piped in a high-school student.  “If they close the Academy Awards, we’re bringing the strike out there to that there Hollywood.”

The pure audacity of the whole affair really left me without words.  It was almost as if a few pictures and a title would tell all.  I pulled for anything I could. 

“What about reality shows?  Every TV watcher has one or two guilty pleasures.  Surely you all have your favorites.”

They all chanted in response:  

“Hell No, Hell No, the WGA Strike has got to go!”

I snapped a few photos and walked over to the coffee stand.  The town restaurant, “Beaners” was supplying the dark brew for free.  As I sipped, the owner filled me in on a secret. 

“You don’t know what it’s like to have 24 delayed for months… To have no more episodes of House or King of Queens…  I hear that they screen shows for the “mid-west”, Middle America, this little town here, in the dead of winter.  And they’re right.  We do eat it up.  We live through those characters to get through our lives.  And damn them if they’re going to put the people on hold that make it happen.”

I sipped the warm liquid from the Styrofoam cup, just about burning out my front teeth on contact. 

“Well, what do you all expect to achieve from this?”

“A movement.  You see, we’re not watching anything anymore.  And the more and more of us that do it, those ratings will drop and drop and drop until they have nothing and they will have to beg us to come back.” 

“But aren’t you shooting yourself in the foot?  Won’t you be losing the entertainment that gives your life meaning?”

“That’s absolutely it.  They’ll have to pay us!”  He moves his over-weight frame around the cart, and it was the first time I did notice—and I’m trying to be as unbiased as I can here—that everyone was packing on more weight than we are accustomed to seeing at the old Crackpot Press offices in Los Angeles. 

“We’ve finally got a reason to get off our fat assess!”  He handed me a picket and walked in line.  I looked at it, WGA with a line through it. 

I thought to myself, Can there be a world without writers?  No, because there’s always a story to tell.  

I finished my cup, froze my nads off in the cold, and marched with Nielson ratings, waiting only to get back to the hotel, take out the laptop and type up the words you’re reading now.  Sleep could wait for the plane ride home.

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