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“Brilliant” Hollywood Funnymen Can’t Do Shows Without Writers

by Rush Limbaugh - May 19,2011

RUSH: This writers strike. The Writers Guild of America, they’re picketing. I’m not quite sure if the strike is full-fledged yet or not. It might be. What I’ve heard about this is that the first casualties are going to be soap operas and the late-night comedy shows, such as Leno, Letterman, things like that. I have to be honest. When I saw that late-night comedy shows would have to go into reruns, which might happen tonight, Leno and Letterman, my first reaction was, ‘You gotta be kidding! You have all these brilliant funny men, Leno, Letterman, Stewart, Colbert, and they can’t do their shows without writers?’ You know how many writers we have here at the EIB Network? We have zilch. Even if we did and they went on strike, we wouldn’t have to go into reruns because the host is the focus and the drive of the program here. I’m thinking, ‘For crying out loud, what a bunch of wimps.’ Okay, so the writers go on strike. Do the show yourself, sit there, write up some jokes, do a monologue, unless that’s considered crossing the picket line. I’ll tell you, this is just… and now the news writers may have to go on strike?

What kind of writing is involved in the news, for crying out loud. The news is what happened! Well, that’s a big tell-all, isn’t it, that news writers go on strike? Just take Reuters and read it as your own anyway. In my case, these late-night comedy guys — well, I don’t want to go any further than what I’ve already said. I have to chuckle at all these people with great reputations, great comedians, the writers never do get the credit, and this is one of the things the writers are striking about. Really one of the things they’re striking about is the distribution of revenue over these new sources, the New Media, like the Internet and downloads and this kind of thing, DVDs, rather than broadcast, because there are a lot of shows being downloaded now through services like iTunes, and the writers don’t get any credit for that. They want some. They don’t get a participation in that, and the studios are saying screw you, you get paid for writing it and that’s it. We’ll continue to give you your residuals and so forth on things that are broadcast, and the writers are saying fewer and fewer things are broadcast, and fewer and fewer DVDs are being sold, and more and more downloads are taking place on the Internet where the writers don’t get to participate.