Comments on The Morning News

Nicole Brodeur is a man.

I watched Daily and Colbert both. Strike, strike, strike, blah, blah, blah. Colbert's still having just as much fun off the cuff; Stewart seemed desperate and lost without his stuff slid in front of him.

Just saw this on the CBC news website this morning: Sexually active gay men no longer allowed to donate organs

Where are all those Slog commenters who said "Seattle is special! Prices will never go down!"??? I need to give them a big "F-U" with a heaping pile of "I told you so"

@2: I saw things in the complete opposite direction. Stewart's been at his recent best when given room to ad-lib and roam. He proved it again last night by doing what the Daily Show does best: attack all sides and have fun in the process. Colbert's shtick requires a shit-ton of prep and writing--a fact he and his staff have admitted to on many an occasion--and I had to turn his show off after nine grueling minutes of floundering.

Stewart himself touched on the meat of this linked NYTimes piece--that Stewart and his staff went to the Guild to work out an interim arrangement, only to be turned down. I get why they turned down Stewart. But I still don't get why they didn't do the same to David Letterman. So what if the Late Show is wholly owned by a separate company? The show still creates profit and advertising for Viacom, as does Daily/Colbert. If the Guild wanted to hurt Viacom, why are they helping Viacom?

Anyway, the most interesting thing of both episodes was when Jon Stewart made a World of Warcraft joke, only to get the night's loudest burst of applause from the studio audience. "That's what you've been doing for the past two months?" Jon jokingly shouted. But, uh, dudes? That's what is happening. Can someone in Hollywood please get his/her shit together before everyone abandons American Gladiators in favor of the 500,000 other, BETTER entertainment options people have? Thanks.

What is at the end of Nicole Brodeur's column?

...I remembered a dog once bit my sister in the throat, where she still has a scar.

Which breed?

"A dachshund," she said.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Muffy never bit.

So maybe "Muffy never bit" was cut off from the column and moved below the contact info. But are there more words missing too? Words that might cause this column to start to be coherent?

I thought Stewart's guest was a little dry, but the first half was still pretty good.

For local news, what about Crazypants Hutcherson, who's trying to take over Redmond?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/346431_antiochmsft08.html

The "Iron My Shirt" guys are from a radio station in Boston, doing a stunt. According to this blog, with pictures!

http://cancelthebee.blogspot.com/2008/01/fake-iron-my-shirt-protesters-at.html

@4 - oh noes, a house that has more than doubled in value in the past ten years loses 10% in a year. you're right, homeownership is TOTALLY not worth it. those people should have rented.

owning a home isn't like trading day stocks, yo.

@4 - Also, I don't think the owners of the multimillion dollar mansions in Medina are sweating a 10% drop. The only people it's likely to adversely affect are middle class people who work for a living and decided on buying a home as a way to invest their money, just like a 401k or IRA. So, it's real classy for you to celebrate their loss in equity. I guess those fuckers deserved it because - wait a minute - why are you celebrating their loss in equity? Dick.

@9:

i think you missed my point. In 2005/2006 the mentality on Slog (and Seattle in general) is that prices will never go down here -- silly notion, isn't it? I disagreed, and look who was right. Seattle is not special. We have not had a paradigm shift and, surprise, housing prices are still affected by the economic fundamentals that have driven them in the past.

Additionally, if you bought a home 10 years ago and are really concerned with its value, the time to sell is now -- although it could be argued that the time to sell has already passed. The point is that renting is so much cheaper than owning right now that you could sell, pocket your appreciation, rent while the bubble deflates, then buy again at the bottom. Your home's value means nothing until you sell it.

Sam M - I wonder if Stewart and Colbert are united on getting writers back at the same moment. It would have to happen that way, but I sat wondering what it would mean if the guild somehow came out for one show and not the other. Stewart seems to care a lot more; Colbert seemed to care less. That unending ovation at the beginning of Colbert was really weird - he's more of a cult of personality figure and Stewart is more of a, uh, newscaster.

Hee hee -- nicely done with the videos.

"Go iron yer own shirt, why doncha bub?"

"Life upon the wicked stage ain't nothin' for a girl!"

@12: I'm surprised Colbert didn't use his shtick to "attack" the writers, unions, and other liberal ideals...I'm sure Colbert was just staying in character rather than opening his heart to a cause worth fighting for. But, yeah, that opening ovation reeked of "WE NEED TO FILL TIME PLEASE CLAP SO I CAN SKIP A MINUTE OF BAD JOKES." Sad.

@11 - My bad. I've been getting irritated by the liberal shaudenfreude about the collapsing housing market for a while. I'm mad at the policy makers (e.g. Alan Greenspan) for their contribution to this debacle, but I feel like some people forget that the people feeling the pinch are below the growing income divide in this country. Sorry for reading that into your post.


That being said, it's hard to imagine someone who bought a house in Seattle ten years ago being worried about its value. Unless you bought a property under the viaduct.

@10:

I am not ashamed of my desire to own my own home. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hoping for prices to return to reality so I can do that. For the people who bought at the peak and immediately rely on their home as some sort of retirement fund -- that's just extremely poor planning on their part. Now if those people have a bit of time before they plan to retire then they have nothing to stress about. They made a poor decision to buy at the peak, but since they don't plan to sell for many years and assuming they can make the payments, they can just ride it out.

Speaking of sad, Conan - who's done pretty well in the free-space of no writers - looked pretty sad last night, running out into the audience to give away NBC store swag.

No one wants my Mighty Wurlitzer?

DINGOS ATE MY AABY!!!!

Stewart's a scab. I don't respect him anymore. Last night was embarrassing.

The time to sell is NOW? I don't think so. The housing market will rebound. It always has. That 10% isn't spread around equally, either; it hurts worse at the extremes of the market -- cheap condos and super-expensive ones. But, you know, most people who own houses aren't buying and selling every month, or every year. It doesn't mean anything. The people who are really suffering are the ones who got sucked into the sub-prime market that caused this, and other losers who signed on for interest-only mortgages and the like. Me? Doesn't affect me one bit. My house is still worth twice what I paid for it.

The problem with your argument, happy renter, is that it shares an extremism with the "boom forever" people. The housing market isn't collapsing, which is what some people were saying it would. It's just off a little. And it's an average; houses for sale now are not knocking ten percent off, nor are they asking ten percent less than they were planning to a month ago. Markets don't work like that.

@20 - Comedy Central apparently threatened to fire the entire staffs of both Stewart's and Colbert's show if they didn't both go back on the air. I can't hold it against them. And both of them dedicated time on their show to tout the writers' cause, too.

Yeah? So fucking what? It's a STRIKE. You don't cross the line. Stewart's a member of the fucking union! And "oh, I support the writers" while you are crossing the picket line in order to put money in the bosses' pockets doesn't cut it. The goal isn't "be reasonable", it's WIN THE MOTHERFUCKING STRIKE. They won't, now; the scabs are trickling back.

The least Stewart could have done is call out each and every member of Comedy Central's management team BY NAME and called him or her a motherfucker.

Well, technically a scab would be a replacement, non-union writer in this situation. Stewart and Colbert went back without writers, dissed their bosses on air, and dedicated their shows to the union cause. Cool down, Fnarf. And what's with the WGA forging interim deals with Worldwide Pants but not Comedy Central? Stewart said that he and his bosses were completely willing to make a deal with the guild.

Anyhow...first Slogging in more than a month for me, I think. Busy times.

THE SHOW WAS WRITTEN. Just because there were no visible pieces of paper with words printed on them doesn't mean it wasn't written. Who do you think decided what pictures to put up on the screen, and when? You think stage directions aren't writing? THAT'S A SCRIPT.

And Stewart is a member of the striking union.

Special deals? There shouldn't be any special deals for anybody, and the union made a grave mistake in bargaining separately with Worldwide Pants. As a result, they're probably going to lose their strike, and it will all have been for nothing.

It disgusts me to see so many people happy to throw over the strikers as long as they get their favorite shows. Excuses, excuses. "Oh, yeah, I support the writers, maaaannnn, but where's my Colbert, that dude is seriously funny" and "whoa, so angry, what's the problem, the strike's still on just because the shows are coming back, how could that affect anything"? This is why the union movement has fallen apart in this country. Get serious.

@20:

"...houses for sale now are not knocking ten percent off, nor are they asking ten percent less than they were planning to a month ago. Markets don't work like that."

Please see Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, and Las Vegas for a very clear understanding that, yes, markets do work like that.

See, there you go again. All regional economies are identical, aren't they?

Jon Stewart = Nicole Brodeur.

@24 First of all, there's a difference between production and writing.

Second, I don't know the details of the Worldwide Pants deal, but such a strategy could be smart if done right. It puts pressure on others to compromise with the WGA sooner rather than later.

@6: Nicole Brodeur always puts some damn phrase way down at the end of her column. I guess it's her "final thought" about what she wrote, or something. It's annoying as hell, because the Seattle Times is not LiveJournal.

I don't support the writers, but I don't have cable so I'm not watching Stewart or Colbert anyway.

Jesus, have a drink Fnarf. Did you watch stewart last night? While he didnt call out each and every member of management as a motherfucker as you suggest in your senseless rant above, he did compare the producers group to NAMBLA. So not motherfuckers, but... child fuckers. Good enough? Look, they want proceeds from the internet content and Colbert and Daily Show are willing to give them that. So you could argue it would strengthen their position to negotiate. If the shows that give them what they are asking are on the air and have good writing, that is only going to force competing shows, networks, etc to comply as well.

I didn't say identical, but obviously they all influenced by the same kinds of economic fundamentals. That's what the "Seattle is Special" people didn't want to believe.

If you look at Seattle's market compared to others around the country you'll find that we're following roughly the same trend as them but we're staggered by about 18 months. Some people have posited that this is because the dot-com bubble hit us harder than other regions and we started our recovery later. Regional differences, same fundamentals.

If these guys are scabs, why doesn't the Writers Guild call them scabs? The strikers are directing their protests against Viacom, not Stewart and Colbert. How come?

Because they're scared to, and because they're stupid. And they're going to lose.

People who cross picket lines should be fucking kneecapped.

Because Stewart and Colbert are middlemen now. Their names are on the shows. They stand to lose their fame-momentum if they're swinging in the wind for too long. Not that I agree with what they're doing, but they've turned into pawns for both sides in the strike. Bring back the shows and it puts a freeze-out on the writers. Bring back the shows and they suck without writers. It's one-upsmanship; it's just not clear yet for which side it is.

@11, you hit the nail on the head.

people always cheer whenever the stock market goes up and boo when it goes down, but for most 401(k) investors that are DCAing their contributions, you'd want the market to stay about the same until you were a few years away from retirement and then you'd want to have the stock market rise to crazy heights. the value of something isn't real until some kind of transaction has actually taken place.

also, i cant believe how many people are duped into thinking buying a house is a no brainer great financial decision and is like a retirement plan. sure, once you sell your house you can pocket the profit and then what? are you going to rent in future dollar prices on prices in your retirement after you sell the house? buy a house in future dollar prices? the only reason the idea that there was free money out there was because of easy credit and a conflict of interest and incentives for almost everyone in the residential real estate biz.

I don't consider all unions the same. I've got enormous respect for some (and would support the writer's union if my line of work so lent itself to, compounded by my disdain for the networks), but gladly cross the cashiers union line about once a week to buy food. I was one of you for many years cashiers, and that union can go fuck itself. Carpenters Union (United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, to be exact) I'd gladly support however, as they did me when I carried their card.

Ok I'm rambling...

While I'm not a huge fan of his, I did enjoy Jimmy Kimmel's rant on SAG the other night. He received a letter (he's in the SAG) urging all members to boycott the talk shows during the WG strike, then when ahead and read some examples of movies currently in production.

It's a really hard decision Stewart and Colbert had to make to cross the lines, and while Comedy Central offered the writers the deal, it was for those two shows alone. The writers wanted the network and CC refused to budge. So no deal was made. As a huge Stewart fangirl, a fan of Colbert, and a fledgling WGA member, I feel like my heart is literally breaking. I couldn't watch the shows last night, so I don't know how they did or if they defended themsevles and Viacom or the writers, (it sounds like they at least want to be on the picketer's side-- I mean they did picket for nine weeks, it's not like they didn't even care a little) but I don't think that the term Scabs applies to either of those men or their remaining TV staffers.