On Baseball and Writer's Strike

The Mitchell report came out about three and a half hours ago and my mind is already overwhelmed with others opinions so I figured I should get my opinion down before it gets lost in some mass media black hole. It comes down to this: why enlist somebody like this Senator Mitchell to investigate what comes down to the competitive integrity of your sport if you're going to basically take the dirty laundry he found and ignore his instructions on what to do with it? Bud Selig's reaction was to say "Thanks for all your hard work, George. I'll take these names and do what I see fit." Mitchell did something I've rarely seen any politician/public figure do. He said that baseball needs to take the high road, turn the other cheek, and move on. He said it would take months or even years to go investigate the named players one by one and that it would only hurt baseball to do so. So Selig gets behind a podium and states he is going to do exactly that. Asinine is a word I use a lot, as you'll probably see if I keep this blog thing going. But Bud Selig might have redefined the word today. Pay $60 million dollars to a very smart and well respected politician (not to mention lawyer) to tell you how to save your league from its worst scandal ever, but basically state ninety minutes later that you're going to go in another direction (i.e. your own private witch hunt). Call Webster's. Whew. Then there's the Writer's Strike in Hollywood. Not as sexy as steroids and reports and ESPN's 24 hour coverage. But it is another situation where an entertainment industry is being shaken up from the inside out. If anything comes out of this strike I hope it's that that standard for movies and television programs rises. Of course writers should get their share of money from iTunes downloads and all that other stuff, but the executives who write their paychecks should also take this opportunity to recognize all the crap they've been putting on the air. Rarely do I laugh at a sitcom the way I laugh at some of the stuff I see on YouTube or in forwarded emails. A friend of my wife's just sent us a video the other day that he made with notebook paper and his cell phone that was funnier than anything I saw on TV this week. And what's with these two or three month hiatuses in the middle of the season? If Nip/Tuck hadn't started in October I wouldn't have a single show to watch for the next month. This happens every year when the writers aren't on strike. There are too many people that I know personally that could write/perform entertaining television, let alone all the people I don't know, for me to be watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond every weeknight and seeing the SAME commercials over and over. (Sidenote: I just watched an ad for the Honda Ridgeline. I need me one of those lightsaber turkey cutter things.)