What, Indeed, Is in a Name?

A couple of days ago, one of Curmie’s friends posted link to a Facebook page, which in turn showed a guest essay by Bud (né Howard) Herron. Here’s the link to the original source, The Tribune in Seymour, IN, so you don’t have to mess with Facebook if you don’t want to. 

Herron is reacting to a new law in Indiana (there’s one in DeSantistan Florida, too, of course, and probably elsewhere) that prohibits teachers from addressing students by their chosen names, even, apparently, by a shortened version of their “real” first name, without a signed permission slip from their parents. 

This is all in the name of “parental rights,” a charming euphemism for removing rights from students and teachers and transferring that power to the state. Curmie is so old that he remembers when conservatives were in opposed to governmental interference in personal matters. This, of course, was when they didn’t control the statehouse, and therefore wailed incessantly about stuff like mandatory inoculations against measles or mentioning the fact that slavery was once a thing in a large swath this country. 

The laws in question, of course, are a paean to cis-gendering at the expense of individual liberty. What passes for the argument suggests that insisting on parental control over what a child can be called will somehow preserve that kid’s retention in the ranks of the cis-gendered. It won’t, of course; it will only add another layer of stress to a young citizen trying to figure things out. 

And Ron (who, being an adult, can be called “Ron” without a note from his Mom) DeSantis’s claim that this effort will eliminate the need for pronouns is nothing short of daft. A few months ago, Curmie compared the two frontrunners (or at least they were then) for the Republican nomination thus: “Donald Trump is just as wrong [as DeSantis] on the issues, just as authoritarian, and even more narcissistic, but at least he’s stupid.” Curmie hereby apologizes to Mr. Trump, who does not, in fact, have a monopoly on stupidity. 

For the moment, let’s leave aside issues that involve physical actions: hormonal injections, surgery, etc. These areas are more contentious, and an argument that a 10-year-old isn’t mature enough to make that kind of decision, even with parental consent, carries a good deal of validity. Calling someone who used to be Bobby “Bobbi,” though, is a lot less permanent. 

That said, if young Dana (to pick one of more than a few names that could refer to a boy or a girl) wants to be Daniel or Danielle, and the parents object… THEY’RE THE PROBLEM. Curmie shudders to contemplate the fate of children who cannot trust their parents to support them as they work through questions of identity. And now, the state wants to take away their sanctuary: adults who see them as they believe themselves to be instead of what the parents want them to be. 

Curmie happens to have a nephew who used to be his niece. He remembers going to dinner with the family, and cringing as this young man, then in his mid-20s, was consistently dead-named not only by idiot cousins who thought this was all a joke, but by his own father. If, while he was still in high school, he’d sought consent to go by his chosen name, a standard non-gender-specific nickname for his middle name, it probably would have been denied. To what end? 

This is the principal reason to oppose legislation like this: it’s cruel, and it denies reality. There are other arguments against this inanity, of course. 

Even the authoritarian pols who support this restriction on personal liberty are smart enough to avoid mentioning the real reason for their action. They therefore insist on consent for any name other than the full first name. So young James needs parental approval to be called Jimmy, and then needs another form to shorten that to Jim, a variation on a theme that is quite common, especially among boys, generally around the tween years. It’s unclear whether teachers could still call him Jimmy after the change, so a simple slip-up could conceivably be a fire-able offense (or worse). 

There are, of course, a host of names that do not automatically signal a specific gender. Curmie mentioned Dana, above. Let’s see… Curmie has also known both male and female versions of folks named Ashley (Curmie once had two Ashleys with the same surname in the same class: one male, one female), Austin, Avery, Beau, Beverly, Carson, Chandler, Christian, Cleo, Cory, Dominique, Jan, Jody, Kelly, Kim, Lauren, Lee, Lynn, Ryan, Stacy, Taylor, Tyler, Whitney. There are probably others that have slipped Curmie’s mind. Notice, Gentle Reader, that many of these names conjure up a specific gender identity… which might very well be incorrect in a specific instance. 

These are just the ones that are spelled the same and pronounced the same: alternatives would be things like Angel in English or Spanish pronunciations, or Jordan/Jordyn. Then there are the standard diminutive nicknames: Alex, Andy, Chris, Mel, Mickey, Pat, Sam, Terry… that list goes on forever. Finally, there are the names that may seem to be a nickname but aren’t: Curmie has known a Betsy (not Elizabeth) and a Billy (not William, not even Bill), for example. 

What this boils down to is that the rule is fundamentally unenforceable, meaning that it will inevitably be applied capriciously to punish a teacher who calls Donald “Don,” not really for that infraction, but for suggesting that no, maybe segregation wasn’t all that great an idea. Meanwhile, a more obeisant teacher in the next class continues to use a different Don’s deadname without repercussions. 

And there are a lot of people who go by their middle names, or initials, or like Mr. Herron, by Bud or Butch or Bubba, to choose three examples from the same part of the alphabet. 

The imposition of stupid rules won’t work, not merely because the requirements are so unwieldy, but because even self-righteous politicians can’t come up with a way to stifle the speech of children. Stephen wants to be called Stephanie; the teacher can’t do that without a permission slip, but classmates Johnny, Suzy, and all the rest are free to do so, and quite likely will. (This also, of course, increases the likelihood that a teacher might call a child the name they just heard another student use.) 

There’s also the potential for embarrassment. Kids giggle and make fun. So woe betide Quint (he’s actually Hollingsworth V) or Bud, whose real name is Cantwell or something. The teacher can’t call him Bud because the parents forgot to sign the form? Really? Back when Curmie was teaching, he’d call role on the first day by reading the last name aloud and asking the student what they wanted to be called. Then he’d write it down so he’d get it right in the future. Simple, yes? Of course, Curmie was dealing with a slightly older clientele, but extending this rather rudimentary level of respect to an adolescent seems pretty damned reasonable. 

Pronunciation can also be an issue. Curmie once had a young man named Sumarliði in his class. Care to take a stab at the correct pronunciation of that one, Gentle Reader? The student in question was kind enough to supply a more pronounceable (to Americans) name we could call him instead. But if he were a current high school exchange student in Indiana or Florida, he couldn’t do that without parental permission, leading to embarrassment for all concerned as every American teacher butchered his name. 

At one level, the unenforceability of this legislation matters. At another, it doesn’t. The driving force of this movement is—hat-tip to Stevie (or should I say “Stephanie”?) Nicks—hauntingly familiar. The GOP, or at least its political leadership, is all about the rights of the “unborn,” coining phrases about “fetal heartbeat” when there’s no heart to beat and the transition from embryo to fetus hasn’t happened yet. 

But once those kids are born, they belong to the state: they’ll will be sheltered from realities like the fact that racial prejudice currently exists, or even that it ever did. They’ll miss out on experiencing art, literature, or theatre if one loudmouthed parent in the school district doesn’t like exposing their child to ideas that might challenge their dogma, so no student can have that access. And the ability to define yourself, to forge your own path, the erstwhile central tenets of the American Dream: forget it. 

Curmie is no fan of the Democratic Party or its leadership, but when the alternative is this…

Athletes Are Both the Most Pampered and Most Abused Students; Both Situations Are Getting Worse

The first part of the title above ought to be self-evident. Far too many universities operate as sports franchises with a few academic courses offered on the side. This, despite the fact that most athletic departments lose money despite TV revenue, ticket sales, etc. 

Even average (by intercollegiate standards) athletes are likely to get a full ride: tuition and fees, room and board.  And that’s not counting NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals which often run well over $100,000 a year for even average players in a major sport at a Division I school. High-end programs in football and basketball get bowl games or in-season (or pre-season) trips to tournaments in exotic locales. The best student physicist at the school might get travel money to a conference in Pittsburgh or something like that, but there’s not going to be a lot of hanging out on the beach on someone else’s dime, much less a tuition waiver and a six-figure income. 

NIL also means that at least some elite athletes in football and basketball are shopping their services to the highest bidder. Every time a star player enters the transfer portal and moves to a different university, the accusations pour forth from the new school’s competitors that they’re “buying players.” Some of those allegations are simply sour grapes; many (most?) aren’t. Of course, the practice has existed under the table for decades, but NIL has certainly exacerbated the problem. 

Then, there are the tutors, the luxurious housing, and other forms of special treatment. A goodly number of athletes, of course, wouldn’t be accepted at Duke or Stanford, or even at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople (extra credit if you get that reference, Gentle Reader), if they didn’t have a jump-shot or some equivalent skill in another sport. 

Bolenciecwcz, the dim-witted football star of James Thurber’s “University Days” (1933) who finally is able to name a mode of transportation after professor and fellow students alike prompt him to say “train,” is a satirical construction, of course, but satire works only if there is the ring of truth. And I suspect the scandal at the University of North Carolina a few years back is more likely the tip of the iceberg than an anomaly. 

Curmie has had a number of students in his classes who actually were the “scholar-athletes” the NCAA pretends anyone with an athletic “scholarship” is. There was the multi-year all-conference tennis player who was also a fine student (in her second language!) and an excellent actress (she got a graduate degree and now works for one of the country’s leading regional theatres), the middle-distance runner who missed the Olympic team by a fraction of a second and did quite well in Curmie’s non-major class, the starting safety on the football team who asked for permission to miss class because he would be interviewing with one of the nation’s top med schools (he got in). 

But there are plenty of examples in the other direction, as well. There was the basketball player who couldn’t write a coherent paragraph about literally anything. There was the football player who complained about his grade in an acting course because he had nothing in common with the character I’d given him in a scene; the character was complaining to his professor about his grade. (Sigh.) Another football player whispered disgusting sexual advances to one of the women in an acting class when I was working with other students. (He came to regret that.) 

My… erm… “favorite,” though, was the star football player who missed about a half dozen more classes than department policy allowed. There were three hour-exams in the course: he got a D on one and failed the other two. He didn’t write either of the required short papers, and he got something like a 31 on the final exam. He subsequently showed up at my office, position coach in tow, to protest his failing grade because one (yes, just one) of his absences should have been excused. His excuse: he was in court… being convicted of an E felony. (Sigh.) 

All that said, it would be easy to make a case that athletes, especially those in sports other than football and basketball, are the most exploited students on campus. Unless, like LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, what you’re selling is that you look great in a bikini or a miniskirt, you’re not going to get as good an NIL deal as the backup quarterback does. Plus, most sports require that you’ll play more than a dozen or so games; baseball and softball, for example, generally have about 50 games in a regular season. That means, among other things, more road games, and that means more travel, more time out of class, etc. 

The situation is exacerbated enormously by conference re-alignments. Back in the Dark Ages when Curmie was in college, conferences were aligned geographically: schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference were located (wait for it) along the Atlantic coast, the Southeastern Conference was in the southeast, and so on. The Big 10 was in the northern Midwest, and the Big 8 was a little further south and a little further west. 

Rivalries usually centered on proximity: Pittsburgh against West Virginia, Washington against Washington State, Oklahoma against Oklahoma State, and so on. Some rivalries were sport-specific, like Syracuse against Georgetown in basketball. As of about a year from now, none of those pairs of teams will be in the same conference. At the most personal level, this may be the greatest cost of the wholesale shuffling of conferences. Those intense rivalries are part of the fabric of intercollegiate sports. Their prospective demise saddens me. 

Schools moving from conference to conference is nothing new, of course; I can’t think of any conference other than the Ivy League that hasn’t changed at least somewhat in the time since I was an undergrad. But the last couple of years, especially the last few weeks, have been insane. Last year Oklahoma and Texas, two really big names in college athletics, announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC; fans feared for the future of the former conference, which was now down to eight schools. The league responded by adding four new teams to get back to being the Big 12. 

But a few weeks ago UCLA and USC, the two biggest names in the Pac 12, announced that they’ll be joining the Big 10 starting next fall. And then the floodgates opened. The Big 10 and Big 12 have cannibalized the Pac 12, which as of now will be down to four schools come next fall, and one would have to believe that those programs are currently considering their options. And the SEC has its eyes on the two highest profile programs in the ACC (at least in football), Clemson and Florida State. Note that the long-term excellence of Duke and North Carolina in basketball is borderline irrelevant. Nary a women’s team matters in the slightest in this calculus. 

All of this is about one sport, football, and one thing, money. This is aggravated by the fact that universities in general seem incapable of understanding that both income and expenses matter. If it’s a famous faculty member whose presence attracts a handful of tuition-paying new students a year: “look at all the money we’re spending on this guy!” If, on the other hand, it’s going to increase travel costs for sports teams by literally millions of dollars, it’s “look at this spiffy TV deal.” 

So now we turn to the University of Missouri’s head football coach, Eli Drinkwitz (that’s him in the photo), who notes that all of these decisions seem to ignore other sports than his own. He wonders aloud, “did we count the cost for the student-athletes involved in this decision?” The answer to his semi-rhetorical question is “OF COURSE NOT.” 

One of Curmie’s mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” And the NCAA sure does tell us a lot about how much they care about “scholar-athletes.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows it’s all what my mom would call “balloon juice” (I might opt instead for a term suggesting bovine fecal matter). The NCAA has never, ever, cared about anything but itself, its self-image, and its power. Students? Fans? Who? Alas, too many universities are following their lead. 

Drinkwitz cites three really significant facts. First, an inevitable result of conference realignment is lack of sleep for the athletes, the number one cause of mental health issues. He mentions baseball and softball: “They travel commercial. They get done playing at 4:00, they gotta get to the airport, they come back, it’s 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, they gotta go to class? I mean, did we ask any of them?” 

He also points to tweets (Curmie is still going to call them that) that the reason a number of students chose their school is so their parents didn’t have to travel to see them on the road. Asks Drinkwitz, “Did we ask them if they wanted to travel from the east coast to the west coast?” Again, OF COURSE NOT. He doesn’t mention other students at their university, but that’s part of the deal, too. You just might want to see your best friend or significant other play their sport. 

Back when there were, you know, ten teams in the Big 10, the greatest distance between two conference teams was 644 miles. Next year, it will be 2686 miles, over 2000 miles more. When there was a Big 8, the longest distance between schools was 747 miles. It will soon be 2320 miles; make that 3125 if, as rumored, Oregon State also joins the Big 12. Having driven a round-trip from Texas to New Hampshire last summer (a mere 1742 miles, one-way), Curmie can attest that 2000+ miles seems like a rather long commute. 

And it’s not just the big conferences. The university where I taught for a couple of decades joined a new conference recently. It’s now 2379 miles to one of our new conference foes… in an FCS (1-AA) league. This is insane. 

Someone on social media noted also that these huge distances will make it more difficult to recruit athletes in sports other than football and (maybe) basketball. Who wants to play softball for UCLA if you’re going to have to travel to New Jersey to play Rutgers? Maybe Long Beach or San Diego State start looking more attractive. Good. 

Finally, Drinkwitz points out that the athletes most directly responsible for giving the universities the ability to get those multi-million-dollar TV contracts don’t share in the profits.  They have restrictions placed on them; “the adults in the room” can do as they please.

There is one advantage to conference re-alignment, of course. Because the University of Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC a few years ago, they are no longer the arch-rival of my beloved Kansas Jayhawks (I got my PhD at KU). I am therefore no longer duty-bound to despise all things Mizzou, and can, if I might borrow Jack Marshall’s term, declare Eli Drinkwitz an Ethics Hero.

This essay was first published in the Curmie’s Conjectures series of guest posts on Ethics Alarms.  Some minor stylistic changes have been made here, but the argument is unchanged.  As with earlier posts of this type, there are likely to be more comments there than here.  So head there... or don’t... as you will, Gentle Reader.

Overdue Comments on the WGA and SAG/AFTRA Strikes

What’s not to love about this guy?

Given Curmie’s long-time profession, it will come as no surprise to you, Gentle Reader, that he knows a fair number of people who are currently involved in the WGA [Writer’s Guild of America] and SAG/AFTRA [Screen Actors Guild/ American Federation of Television and Radio Actors] strikes. Nor will it come as a shock that all of them—and Curmie, too, of course—are on the same side of the issue. 

Not so curiously, Curmie knows nary a studio exec, so you may feel free to assert that he hears only one side of the dispute. Curmie would even agree with you if he thought the studios actually had an argument other than greed, hubris, and a particularly insidious form of predation. 

Curmie has seen a fair bit of sniping about the strikes from two predictable sources: news outlets which (ever so coincidentally, of course) are owned by the same folks who own the studios, and the kind of blinkered conservative who really thinks executives ought to be paid a zillion or so times as much as the people actually doing the work. 

The former generally takes the form of “look at all these innocent people affected by the strike,” to which the most reasonable response (other than “up yours”) is “then get the AMPTP [the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] to negotiate, instead of literally saying (privately) “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” 

The other variation on the theme is to blame the unions who are trying to negotiate instead of the fatcats who aren’t: hence, for example, the New York Times headline, “Emmy Awards Will Be Postponed Because of Actors’ and Writers’ Strikes.” Yeah, it’s all their fault, right? We might also add that the short-term suffering of non-actors affected by the strike (makeup artists, caterers, wardrobe rental companies, etc., etc., etc.) may lessen if and when the strike is resolved, but much of the damage will become permanent if the most obscene of the AMPTP’s proposals is enacted. That would be the belief that background actors ought to be paid a single day’s wage for the rights to use their image in perpetuity without consent or remuneration. As soon as some studio exec agrees to submit to that arrangement (and their daily wage is a helluva lot more than that of a background actors), we can talk. 

It is not difficult to imagine that those images could be used for all manner of purposes for which the real person thus portrayed wouldn’t want to be associated, even with remuneration. And we don’t appear to be talking just about the films per se, either. For example, Curmie has a friend and former student who happens to be quite a beautiful young woman in a real-people-look-like-this way. She’s not a professional model, but she’s made a little money from appearing in print ads, at least one for a national corporation. But if the AMPTP have their way, they, not she, would control the rights to her image if she’d ever appeared as a background actor. 

Another of Curmie’s friends and former students, also a beautiful young woman, appeared in several episodes of a network TV show. Her character had a name but no lines, meaning she was “background.” She damned well ought to own the exclusive rights to her own image. 

Jack Marshall may be right that “SAG-AFTRA is whistling past the metaphorical graveyard.” Well, in the long term, at least. But this proposal from a cabal of amoral goons betrays the simple truth that AI is not yet at the point at which it can create realistic human images from thin air: it still needs a model, or you can be assured that the AMPTP would eliminate background actors altogether. In the short term, background actors are a necessary part of the process, and the AMPTP knows it. 

Of course, the other AMPTP (and minions) tactic is to remind us that the best-paid actors make eight-figure salaries for every film. That’s true, of course, and some of them aren’t terribly proficient thespians. But (and as the say in burlesque, it’s a big but), having the name of Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Brad Pitt (yes, the list is mostly men, but that’s a rant for another day) attached to a movie actually sells tickets. So would a handful of big-name directors—Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Peter Jackson, et al.. But Curmie has to meet anyone who says something like, “ooh, that movie was produced by a studio headed by David Zaslav [salary a little over $39 million a year]. I’ve gotta see it!!!” 

The overwhelming majority of SAG/AFTRA actors, of course, aren’t even close to bringing in pots of money. [Note: Curmie is about to quote a series of statistics pulled from social media posts. He hasn’t verified their accuracy, but he knows enough about the industry to know that these figures are completely plausible. Still, you have been warned, Gentle Reader.] 98% of SAG members make less than $65,000 a year. 87% don’t even make the $26,470 a year to get insurance through the union. Meanwhile, execs at studios you’ve never heard of are pulling in eight-figure salaries. 

Residual checks are absurdly low. Jana Schmieding recently posted that she receives 3 cents every quarter for her appearance in six episodes of “Reservation Dogs.” Oh, but she was a lead in “Rutherford Falls,” appearing in all 18 episodes. For that, she raked in $33.15 a quarter. That makes… $132.72 a year for unlimited worldwide streams for the 24 episodes of the two shows. Surely she can retire on that, right? 

Other actors have shared similar stories: Kamil McFadden posted his residual payments—including some negative numbers (!?!); The problem here is that streaming wasn’t as big a thing when the last contract was negotiated. But, partially as a result of COVID, a number of movies are bypassing movie theaters altogether, and corporations like Netflix are now producing their own material. So compensation plans based almost exclusively on literal butts in seats are outdated. The studios know that, of course, but they like making huge profits—Netflix has a market cap of over $190 billion (yes, with a “b”); surpassing Disney’s paltry $157 billion. And, of course, they don’t want to share any of that lucre with mere actors… or writers. They know it’s unfair; they know it’s unethical. But they think they can get away with it. 

You can check out the SAG/AFTRA proposals here. In addition to the items noted above: Per diems haven’t increased in over two decades, and payments are habitually late. Payments for dry cleaning when performers need to provide their own clothing for a role are inadequate. The AMPTP rejected anything that even resembles revenue sharing. And on and on. 

To be fair, some of the union’s proposals are a bit over the top, some of their characterizations of the AMPTP’s positions are less than entirely accurate (assuming the AMPTP’s public proclamations and private negotiating positions actually align), and some of the counter-proposals seem pretty reasonable. 

But it’s rather a tell when the studios keep changing their standard of measurement from dollars to percentages and back, according to which makes their side look less absurd. For example, hefty percentage increases in residuals for SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand, e.g., Netflix or Amazon) performances don’t mean much: 122% of bupkes is still bupkes. There are plenty of other variations on this theme, of course. Curmie won’t bother to enumerate them all. 

Of course, the real clue to what’s going on and who’s to blame comes in the fact that a considerably smaller studio, A24, is able to meet SAG/AFTRA’s conditions, and therefore received a waiver. One of their recent films was “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” You may have heard of it, Gentle Reader. It received Oscars for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Directing, Leading Actress, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, and Editing, plus four other Oscar nominations and a raftload of other awards and nominations. That ain’t bad. 

Among the actors whose A24 projects can move forward because of the SAG/AFTRA waiver: Anne Hathaway, Paul Rudd, Matthew McConaughey, Sigourney Weaver, and Rebel Wilson. There are some folks there whose work people would pay to see! 

Let’s put this in the terms of The Horror Guru: “I want you let it sink in that A24, the smaller company that makes and distributes low budget independent films, is able to adhere to SAG-AFTRA'S terms while the big studios making the top 10 grossing films of the year are acting like they can't afford it.” Funny, that, innit? 

The WGA strike is framed a little differently, but the basics are the same: multi-millionaire execs thinking that people actually doing the work shouldn’t be able to pay the rent. The writers do a little better than the actors, in part because there are fewer of them, but an average income of $69,510 doesn’t go all that far if you’re living in Los Angeles, where the cost of living is over 44% higher than the national average. 

There are a number of areas of contention here: “minimum fees, royalties, staffing requirements, and even the use of artificial intelligence in script production.” Of course, the sniping here comes from conservative talking heads who couldn’t write a two-minute skit with the proverbial gun at their heads. “AI could do better,” quoth they. Here’s the thing: yes, there’s some bad writing out there. But there’s also some really good writing, and AI basically translates as the celebration of mediocrity, the literary equivalent of paint by numbers. It can re-create the same-old same-old really well; creativity is beyond its capability. 

In the realm of “if this isn’t true, it should be” comes a social media post which says that ChatGPT was asked which job could be more readily replaced by AI: screenwriter or corporate CEO. The verdict: the latter, of course.

As a CEO, much of the decision-making process is based on data analysis, risk assessment, and resource allocation, which are areas where AI is particularly effective. AI can process large amounts of data quickly and accurately, identify patterns and trends, and provide insights that can help inform strategic decision-making….

AI may be able to analyze data on successful screenplays and provide insights into what elements are more popular, but ultimately, the creative process of writing a compelling screenplay relies on human intuition and emotion. In conclusion, while AI can assist with some aspects of both roles, it is more likely to be better suited for tasks related to a corporate CEO than screenwriting.

Meanwhile, Netflix is advertising positions with high six-figure salaries for AI gurus, and at least a dozen A-listers have kicked in a million dollars or more apiece to fund SAG/AFTRA’s Emergency Financial Assistance Program. 

The battle lines are being drawn, and both sides seem firmly entrenched. Not all of the unions’ demands are reasonable (that’s why there are negotiations), but it is clear that they’re the good guys in this skirmish. And the stakes are extremely high. 

Especially on the issue of AI, Curmie finds it difficult to argue with the nightmare (doomsday?) scenario outlined by Justine Bateman. As a WGA and Directors Guild member, former SAG board member, and a coder with a degree from UCLA in computer science and digital media management, she offers a level of expertise and experience Curmie doesn’t come close to matching. So when she says “I believe this is the last time any labor action will be effective in our business. If we don't make strong rules now, they simply won't notice if we strike in three years, because at that point, they won't need us,” we—all of us—damned well better pay attention. 

Commerce and art are often at odds, now as much as ever. One of the things Curmie is most grateful for as respects his year in England in the late ‘70s was exposure to the Tom Robinson Band, which never made much of a ripple west of the Atlantic. Two of their songs come to mind. “Power in the Darkness” opens with “Power in the darkness / Frightening lies from the other side / Power in the darkness / Stand up and fight for your rights.” 

Even more relevant, perhaps, is this sequence from “Better Decide Which Side You’re On”: “You better decide which side you're on / This ship goes down before too long / If Left is right then Right is Wrong / You better decide which side you’re on.” 

Those songs, of course, had nothing to do with labor actions in a different country taking place some 45 years later. Or did they? Art has always opened doors to understanding far beyond its immediate context. It’s time to decide which side we’re on.