Writers Guild elections tend to be messy and argumentative and there are times when we seem more interested in clobbering each other than in besting those we should be uniting against. I have a certain respect for anyone who wades into WGA politics just for the sheer selflessness it requires. No matter how reasonable or moderate you are, there will be times when you're a Democratic Congressman addressing a town hall full of Glenn Beck fans.
It's campaigning time for the next election and it comes down to one slate versus another. One has Elias Davis as its presidential candidate; the other has John Wells. Both men have long histories of Guild service and anyone who tells you that either would destroy the WGA is engaged in hysterical hyperbole.
Davis and his cabinet have been endorsed by Larry Gelbart in a much-circulated open letter. I respect the hell out of Mr. Gelbart as a writer and as an advocate for writers, and I'm also backing the Elias crew. I do think though John Wells scores some solid points in his rebuttal to it.
For what, as they say, it's worth: I think it's true, as Larry says, that the years John Wells was our president were years when the guild was too timid and should have been more militant. What I'm less sure about is how much of that was John and how much of it was the mood of the membership at that time. There's only so much any leader can do to drag unwilling, bickering combatants into battle. I'm pretty much a hawk on Guild negotiations but I'm not willing to write off the view that there are times when we just aren't "together" enough to go that route, and it's better to get what we can get via non-confrontational discussions. In that context, John Wells just might be an ideal Chief Exec.
But I also think that an approach of that kind can only serve us in the short run and in times of weakness. Moreover, being non-confrontational almost always leads to the kind of rotten offers that sooner or later make confrontation mandatory. In a very real sense, every time the WGA has found itself in a position where a strike was necessary, it was necessary because Management thought it could exploit a perceived unwillingness to strike…so strike we must. Or at least, we have to make it clear that we will walk if they try to force a package of rollbacks and bad terms on us.
The last negotiation was one such period of necessity. We'd been too accepting and we paid for it. We had to go on strike to prove we wouldn't roll over and take what was truly a dreadful offer. Striking or acceptance were the only two options open to us and striking was the lesser evil.
Fortunately, through the wisdom and courage of our wartime prez Patric Verrone and his administration, the WGA got its act together…and I thought they handled a bad situation about as well as humanly possible. Given the spectacular collapse of the Screen Actors Guild in its subsequent negotiation, and given that the studios have obviously not abandoned their wish-dream of keeping all the revenues from New Media and not sharing, it would be insane for us to to forsake the momentum we've established. The best guy to keep that up and running is Elias Davis.
One other point. If you read the above links or other discussions of WGA politics on the 'net, you will do yourself a favor to remember the following. Ignore (do not even read) messages that are not signed by someone who at least appears to have signed a real name. Folks who sign themselves "Working Writer" may be unemployed gardeners. Six people in a row hiding behind pen names may all be the same person agreeing with himself. An anonymous person who claims to be working on a hit TV series may be working at Baja Fresh. It's not so much that they're lying but to get a sense of the "electorate" by reading those messages is like trying to gauge the mood of America from the people who phone in to Talk Radio. They're not the most representative. They're just the angriest.