Writers Strike Leads to Hilarity Online

While televised comedies are counting their days, satirical online papers are having a field day with the Writers Guild of America strike. Here's a "story" from ScrappleFace that literally had me LOLing.

Hollywood Writers Strike Panned, Ratings Tank by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace

(2007-11-06) — Critics slammed the new strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA), which debuted Monday, calling it “unimaginative,” “derivative” and “a tired rehash of previous work by other unions.”

Variety, the daily newspaper for the entertainment industry, excoriated the WGA strike for what it called “monotonous, repetitive dialog, and a bunch of boring characters who appear to be sleepwalking in circles.”

“When the greatest minds in Hollywood get together,” the unnamed Variety critic wrote, “what do they produce? Picket lines, posters, inane slogan chanting…in others words, exactly what the United Auto Workers or the International Ladies Garment Workers have done before. You get the sense that the studios could fire the WGA guys and hire the folks who make cars and underpants to write scripts, with no loss in creativity or quality.”

Meanwhile, overnight ratings show the writers’ strike tanking with network television’s key demographic of 60-to-80 year-old, lonely, obese people.