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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman have a jam-packed show - responding to the WGA Strike, the drone attack on the Kremlin, the ridiculous Coronation proceedings for King Charles, a ridiculous poll asking Republicans what kind of presidential candidate they want, and the fall out from McDonalds in Kentucky employing 10 year olds.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Dean Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
Nick, you have seen the outline for this show.
This is not a double-stuffed Oreo of a Weekender Edition.
This is a triple-stuffed Oreo, quadruple-stuffed Oreo.
We have so much to get into today, do we not?
Oh, I mean, as long as it lives up to the taste of a real Oreo that I'm in.
Absolutely.
I gotta tell you, as I've gotten older, not to stall on getting to the stories that we need to talk about.
I have only come to appreciate the more Oreo stuffing within the Oreo.
Oh, absolutely.
There's no question.
And it's definitely probably horrible for you.
It can't possibly be good and healthy.
But, you know, all the good stuff isn't.
Awful.
Just awful for you, but fantastic.
Listen, we gotta talk about things going on in New York City.
We gotta talk about 10-year-olds working at McDonald's without getting paid.
That isn't technically working.
At the end of this, in the section where I usually talk about what we're watching, I'm gonna tell everybody about my Ketamine experience.
We gotta talk about the GOP.
We gotta talk about Hershel Walker, I mean, criming like nobody's business.
We gotta talk about Matt Walsh.
I can't wait for people to hear this if they haven't already.
We gotta talk about Trump, primary debates.
We gotta talk about the coronation of Prince into King Charles.
We gotta talk about an attempted assassination of Vladimir Putin and also, like, a threat of nuclear war.
What else is new?
But Nick, we have to start in your backyard.
Hollywood, California.
La La Land, where dreams are made and shattered.
11,000 members of the WGA Union are on strike.
This is the first time that has happened since the strike that took place from November 2007 to February 2008.
We're going to talk about exactly what's happening here, but Nick, this hits pretty close to home.
You know your fair share of writers, Hollywood types.
How is Tinseltown?
Are the feelings tight?
People are on edge.
They are upset.
I remember the one from then, not the first one, but the 2008.
And it does cause a lot of problems only because it serves to just sort of exacerbate the tensions that exist between the studios and that system of production companies and the talent.
Which, you know, really I'm not even sure it's a great debate.
I think it's pretty clear that the writers are the ones who create it and that without them you don't have anything.
And it's a constant battle now to figure out how that pie is supposed to be divided up.
The problem is, is that, you know, the studios want their traditional model to be placed on top of the new streaming side, and obviously that comes with a lot of pitfalls and makes the writers, you know, not nearly as handsomely played as they had been, and of which they deserve.
Yeah, and to go ahead and start breaking this thing down.
First of all, solidarity today, solidarity tomorrow, solidarity forever.
We are on your side, writers of Hollywood, just as we are all for all laborers trying to get their fair share, especially in this economy, this market, this absolutely exploitative system that we're in.
This is just absolutely a clear-cut case of right and wrong.
In Hollywood, we have a system right now that does not work.
It doesn't function.
This is another side effect and consequence of monopoly mania.
Merger, merger, merger.
Everywhere, every corporation is joining another one.
It's trying, basically, to recreate Highlander.
That's some good IP, by the way, if anybody's into that.
They're trying to get to the one.
They're being underpaid.
They're being overworked.
They're being exploited.
The deal is bad when it comes to streaming.
This has been a free-for-all.
Of course, Netflix broke the model, started it, broke it.
Everybody else is trying to catch up.
We've gotten to the point where we are only using existing IP in order to continue to churn it and churn it and churn it.
Creators are not being respected.
They're being mistreated.
This was a long, long time coming.
And there are other things in play here that we have to talk about, but I want to make something very clear.
Anytime there is a strike, One of the things that happens is that the cushy sort of American existence gets interrupted, right?
If it's a railroad strike, you might not find your groceries where you need them.
You might not find the goods where you necessarily need them.
This is going to be something in a streaming content world that somewhere down the line, it could very well affect people's entertainments.
And let me tell you something in the United States of America, that is sacrosanct.
Do not take away people's content.
Do not take away people's entertainment.
You have to understand that your inconvenience is going to help these people.
Already, the studios are being hurt.
They're already looking at losing billions of dollars.
Eventually, there's going to be a choice, which is either belly up to the bar and treat these people with respect, or, you know, hand it over to robot overlords, which we have to talk about before we're done on this subject.
Yeah, I mean, listen, L.A.
is, the economy had been based for about 50 plus years on the notion that you come to L.A., you toil away on your craft, get hired as a writer on a TV show, and then hopefully you get on a show that gets to 100 episodes, and then you get syndication, and then you get a lot of residuals.
And if you got that kind of a deal, and you were a writer of any, a significant amount of those episodes, you were set.
Like, that is gonna cover you for a great portion of your life.
That no longer exists anymore.
We do not have syndication like that.
We do not have residuals like that.
And I think that in 2008, there was no sense of streaming.
So of course, the second that that agreement was inked, which I don't even think the writers liked then, but after enough time and after enough, you know, starving of not having any, you know, any mode of income, they kind of had to make an agreement, but it didn't have any forward thinking to what would happen.
And maybe, and I don't know if I blame them, who could have envisioned sort of what Netflix was going to become.
So, you know, they need to have a strike.
They need to be able to renegotiate this.
And the question now is, you know, how much hardball are the studios going to play?
And, you know, are they going to be completely greedy about this?
Or are they going to be willing to finally, you know, share some of that pie a little bit more, knowing that without those writers, they would have nothing in that pie?
Here's a spoiler alert for anybody sitting at home.
They're going to be greedy.
The way that strikes always happen is that the fat cats running things, they let the strike go on, and they hope that popular opinion will go their way.
There is an immediate tug of war over who is going to be perceived as being wrong in the dispute.
And already, I mean, you know, these people are going to push forward the idea.
These greedy rioters, these greedy Hollywood types, all of this stuff.
Don't they know they're replaceable?
Don't they know that the people out there just want to enjoy themselves?
Can you believe these people are going to put their interests ahead of yours?
That's the way that's going to go.
Undoubtedly.
Oh, can I add to that though?
They're also going to say, oh, costs are so high now.
We can't afford to do this.
These deals in the past have bankrupted us, all that stuff.
So that's what they also say.
It's not, it's not good.
Absolutely.
And that is always how these things occur.
The problem, and by the way, you're not, you couldn't be more right about nobody could have imagined what was going to happen between 2008 and 2023.
Like, there is weird stuff that is happening right now with these mergers.
Like, the things that you and I and the people listening have known about for forever, like, something like, I don't know, a CBS, an NBC, an ABC, these things that used to be, like, cultural bedrocks, are just kind of going away.
And a large part of what's happening in all of this is one of the major problems with American culture and the American economy anyway.
These things used to be passion projects, right?
If you were part of a studio or if you were one of these producers, you did it because you love making movies and television shows.
You wanted to be part of the process.
Now, just like it is in politics, just like it is in everything around this country, sports, economics, you name it, Everything now is, no, it's not about the movie.
It's not about the TV show.
It's not about the burger.
It's not about whatever it is you're selling.
It's what that thing you're selling can go ahead and increase, right?
There used to be at least the illusion of an attachment to the product, right?
You took pride in what you were doing.
Now, we have in these streaming wars, Nick, they'll produce a show like a Westworld.
Westworld, by the way, and I have problems with Westworld.
Real problems with how that show was run and how it eventually evolved into what it became.
Like, they were just like, nah, it's too expensive.
Matter of fact, we're not even going to carry it anymore.
They'll make a movie and just completely flush it down the toilet because it saves them just a couple of cents on the dollar.
Like, that is where it has gotten, and this has gotten to the point where everything that we've been seeing in terms of labor movements, the writers had to go on strike.
And this isn't a Hollywood issue, this is an American issue, and this is part of a larger movement that should be taking place right now.
Well, some of the pressure that came to bear in 2007 when they went on strike then was the reality TV situation, which the studios and the production companies were like, oh my goodness, you mean I can make really wildly popular shows without having to have writers at all?
And it was much cheaper to do.
And I think we've all seen the think pieces that have come out in the last couple of days, right, about the connection between the writer's strike in 08, Donald Trump's The Apprentice was about to be pulled, And because they needed programming, they said, well, let's reinvent this with Celebrity Apprentice.
Now, what's interesting about that, which also catapulted him to another stratosphere of that show, or at least for a couple more seasons, kept him in the public eye until he could start denying Obama's birth, or birthplace.
But the thing that I was thinking about today is that all those B-list or C-list celebrities that came on Celebrity Apprentice were going across the picket line during that time.
And that is interesting to me.
And that was interesting that they'd be willing to do that.
And it kind of shows you the lack of solidarity across actors and writers and directors.
All those things, they're battling for themselves.
No, you couldn't be more right.
I mean, one of the things that happens in all of this is you start to see where people's priorities are.
You know, I think you have to start to understand the interconnectedness of all of this.
Like, this isn't just about whether or not you get to see a new episode of the show that you love.
This is about whether or not you, at your job, are going to get paid what you should be paid.
It's whether or not this country is going to either get better and redistribute the trillions of dollars that got redistributed in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s, or is it going to go towards the authoritarian nightmare that you and I talk about all the time?
That's about interconnectedness.
That's about understanding that all these things happen.
And I want to make a quick point.
The answer on all of this, just as it has always been, whenever factory workers went on strike, or whenever miners went on strike, you name it, It's technology.
That's where this artificial intelligence is coming in.
And if you think that during this writer's strike, if this lasts very long, that there isn't going to be a program that debuts that has been written by artificial intelligence, you are fooling yourself.
Because that's exactly what's happening here.
And every time you turn on, like, social media and it talks about artificial intelligence art, whether it's paintings, whether it's, like, things that have been made, videos or whatever, you have to understand the treats that you are being given, the entertainment that you are receiving, there is a price for it.
And your entertainment and your ability to zone out and watch something and experience it, I have to tell you, you have to remember that you are connected to the people who are trying to get treated better here and you are all in the same situation.
Are you worried that that's going to actually work and that Chatty BT could create something that we could resonate with?
Yes, absolutely.
That's terrifying to me.
I break it down, beat it with axe handles.
Now.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, compare the art that it created like a few years ago compared to now.
That's frightening.
I just saw a thing where they did an advertising based on, you know, famous Impressionist artists.
And there's a whole thread.
And it was fascinating because nothing was real, right?
None of the models were real, none of the back, nothing.
And yet this AI created Very compelling imagery.
And it wasn't the kind that with the scary teeth and the extra fingers, you know what I mean?
This was scary.
And by the way, having worked on commercials and seen how much money it does cost to do all those things.
And then that extrapolates to TV and movies and all that stuff.
Yeah, it is.
It's a concerning thing that would eliminate the need for humans.
And we have so much to talk about with that.
By the way, speaking of weaponized reality, again, solidarity to you writers out there.
Good for you.
Also, the teachers who are going on strike out in California.
Solidarity to you as well.
Speaking of weaponized reality, Nick, weird stuff happening in Russia.
On Wednesday, a drone appeared to be flying to attack the Kremlin in Moscow.
It was supposedly on an assassination run to take out Vladimir Putin.
Of course, this has not been verified.
No one is taking responsibility.
Everyone is pointing fingers.
The Russian government and Putin are saying that it was trying to assassinate him.
They have now said this gives them no other recourse other than to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky.
They have also said that they are taking in consideration, which is what they always do.
They always say that they're going to consider using nuclear weapons.
They've also said there's no way that Ukraine did this on their own, that the United States ordered it.
I think there's some interesting little coincidental things here that make me wonder exactly what happened.
But this is, things keep getting weirder and weirder in this situation.
You know, Jared, I didn't serve in the military.
I didn't go to the war college.
I didn't study this in depth like experts do, but wouldn't it be clear that if you go to war with another country, isn't assassination of the president of that country on the top of the list anyway?
Isn't that sort of the default setting?
No.
You're not supposed to be going around assassinating leaders.
That's frowned upon.
Okay.
I mean, I'm actually saying it in the reverse, like, not that they're going to try and kill Putin, but now that they're using this to now say, well, we have to go kill Zelensky, it just seems like, yeah, they've been trying to kill Zelensky anyway.
I mean, I guess in theory, they could just carpet bomb Kiev and that would be it.
You're not supposed to say it.
You know what I mean?
Like, okay, like the United States of America, like when the Iraq war started, you know, they went after what they called a decapitative attack, which was, you know, they, they bombed Baghdad and, and we're hoping to kill Saddam Hussein, you know, even before the war had even officially began, which is sketchy.
But yeah, you're not supposed to be going around assassinating leaders.
And I know I feel bad that this comes off as dismissive or we're trying to make fun of the situation.
I.
I think I'm pointing out the absurdity of the situation.
War is absurd in general, for sure.
Yeah.
So yeah, so I think it's, you know, we've seen Putin do this before when he took control with false flag operations.
And I don't know, thinking about it from the Ukrainian perspective, you know, sending one drone to, like, drop a little bomb on the Kremlin, hoping that maybe it would hit Putin, like, I don't know.
It doesn't seem like a very well-thought-out plan if that really was what they say.
It almost seems like something that the Russian government did just a few days before Victory Day parades, which of course commemorates the communist victory over the Nazis in World War II.
It feels weird, you know.
It looked like something out of Missile Command.
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