Writers' strike, day 44

So: writer, pop culture aficionado, Jon Stewart fan.

Those three clues should provide all the evidence required to figure out where I come down on the subject of the Hollywood writers' strike.

What has been shocking to my apparently sheltered sensibilities has been the number of comments I've found strewn across various message boards in recent days demanding that the lazy no-good commie bastard writers get back to their computers and get cracking on those fresh episodes of According To Jim right now, dammit!

Forget about fairness, forget about the networks and producers reaping literally billions in profits off of creations that simply would not exist without both the imaginations and the skills of the writers behind them -- we want our TV and we want it now! Like the surly, strung-out addicts they appear to be, middle America is quivering with outrage that there WON'T BE A NEW EPISODE of Las Vegas until further notice. It's almost like the outrage you might expect if our political leaders had lied their way into an unwinnable war and then destroyed what was left of our nation's moral authority by torturing prisoners -- oh, wait.

Be that as it may, I found it astonishing how many people -- many of them, apparently, regular working people -- seem to just want the writers to quit whining and get back to cranking out their (i.e. the viewers’) shows. Have none of these people ever sought (a) a raise or (b) fair treatment from their own employers? Or is it just that, in the minds of middle America, the writers who created all of these memorable characters and shows rate no higher than the proverbial million monkeys tapping away at typewriters in hopes of one day accidentally cranking out Shakespeare?