Mark Evanier's Blog, page 241

Online Help That's No Help

I find myself dealing lately with more and more companies that have reduced the cost of labor by replacing competent employees with computer bots and/or people who don't seem to know how to do anything except apologize for problems. The latter don't fix the problems. Though they are in "Customer Service," they don't serve customers. They either don't know how to fix the problems or their employer hasn't given them the means to fix the problems. About all they can do is apologize.

This morning, I was trying to get onto a website to place an order. Please note: My goal here was to give this company money.

You'd think they'd want that…but somehow, their site wouldn't let me in to place that order. I called Customer Service and got someone who, first of all, sounded like they were on some other planet, leading me to suspect they do not live or work in the country in which the company operates. And secondly, they were utterly clueless as to how to get me back on their site. I got about as much help as if I'd asked a goldfish to hand me a crescent wrench.

Finally, they — whoever "they" are — suggested I use the "Live Online Chat" feature of their site. It did not seem to actually have a live person on the other end…or if someone was there, they were just selecting canned, pre-written responses. At one point, I asked something for which they did not seem to have a pre-written response and this happened…

I just let that sit on my computer screen to see what response, if any, I would get.  After another 22 minutes of receiving no reply, I gave up and ordered from someone else.  Somewhere in this world, some minimum-wage employee is still trying to pull up my account and additional resources to assist me in the best way possible.  Or maybe they really are being held for ransom.

An Observation

I used to be rather confused about the meaning of the word "woke" in its political context. Hearing people use it in their sentences, I could not figure out a consistent definition. I finally realized it has no consistent definition. It just means "anything me and my friends don't like."

You probably figured that out a long time ago.

Mushroom Soup Friday

I have an awful lot o' stuff to do today so things may be quiet on this blog. Surely, somewhere on the World Wide Web, you can find something else worth reading.

Today's Video Link

Here, from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for May 20, 1987, is one of my favorite comedians, Pete Barbutti. Pete was on with Johnny more than any other comedian who performed "in one" on the program. This is him demonstrating the Cordeen…

This Week's Political Comment Here

I didn't watch Donald Trump's "town hall" on CNN, although it was impossible to be on the Internet and avoid excerpts here and there. It was, of course, exactly what you'd expect of a Trump appearance these days, especially one conducted in front of an audience that D.T. would consider "his people." Choosing to watch one of those and being outraged is like deciding to watch The Three Stooges and being upset because Moe poked Larry in the eyes and Curly ran around going "Woo woo woo!" [Insert obvious quip about how any of the Stooges would make a better president than Donald.]

The Trump event spawned two kinds of articles from those who think the man is a dangerous, lying psychopath. On one hand, you have folks who are furious that CNN gave this person a platform to lie, make light of sexual abuse, lie some more, claim he won, lie some more, etc. Just when on-air Fox News personalities are occasionally pushing back against Trump untruths, CNN is letting him do an infomercial for himself. Typical of such indignant articles would be this one in the Seattle Times but you can find hundreds of others like it.

The other category would be articles — and there have been a lot of these, too — that say that in that infomercial, Trump bestowed all sorts of gifts on the many prosecutors who are now working to hold him accountable for many misdeeds. Here's one such article and here's another.

Here's an excerpt from a piece on Slate…

When asked why he took government documents from the White House, Trump answered: "I was there and I took what I took…I had every right to do it. I didn't make a secret of it. You know, the boxes were stationed outside of the White House."

With those fateful words, Trump admitted that he was involved in willfully removing the documents from the White House. It is a federal crime to "willfully and unlawfully…remove…any…document…in any public office…of the United States." Indeed, the Justice Department has identified "improper removal," or "unlawful" removal, as a key concern in court filings in the Mar-a-Lago litigation.

There are a lot of such comments online. I can't be the only one who sees a contradiction between the two reactions. It's like "How dare CNN give that man who should be in prison more opportunity to say things that will help put him there?!"

Today's Audio Link

Here's a great jazzy rendition of the theme song from one of the favorite cartoon shows, Top Cat. I even had Top Cat himself on my answering machine for a while. (Don't believe it? Listen here.)

From the E-Mailbag…

My pal Pat O'Neill and I were discussing the upcoming Tony Awards ceremony here. Then he sent me this…

I note, in regard to my question to you about them, that the administrators of Tony Awards are now contemplating two equally uncomfortable ideas: either holding the ceremony without a TV show, or postponing the whole thing until the strike is over…because the WGA refused to give them a waiver.

And now, according to this and other online articles, they've negotiated the terms of a waiver and the show must (will) go on. This is probably wise on the part of the WGA because if the strike is still on — and especially if an actors strike seems imminent — the Tony Awards could be a show of support for the strikers. This is in addition to promoting the shows currently running on Broadway.

And it frees up a lot of attendees and presenters from the awkward-for-many choice of crossing a picket line. That's often a damned-if-you-do, damned if you don't decision. This next e-mail is from Brent McKee and it takes us into that area…

It recently came out that Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings crossed the WGA picket line to film the final week of Jeopardy! episodes because the other host of the show — Mayim Bialik — refused to cross the picket lines. He is being roundly condemned because of this. Can you clarify for me what is going on here?

The questions were written by WGA members months ago. No new questions will be written until after the strike is resolved. I also understand that they shoot one week of episodes in a single day. Jennings is not a member of the Writers Guild. I believe that he has to be a member of SAG in order to do the series, but I'm not absolutely certain. So I suppose my question is what obligations does Ken Jennings have in the current situation, and is the hatred being directed towards him valid?

I'm a devout Union Guy but I'd be reticent to condemn the man without knowing more about the situation. There's a thorny area here because there are folks who are in violation of their contracts to not cross picket lines. There are also instances where the host of a show may elect to cross a picket line for the good of the show and the others who work on it. Sometimes, they get condemned for this, sometimes not.

During past WGA strikes, a number of late night hosts — including the much-revered Mr. Carson — elected at some point to go back to work and to do new shows, allegedly without the employment of scab writers. Nobody faulted Johnny. David Letterman, when he was back on NBC, returned to work during the strike and even made a running joke about doing pointless, non-written bits because his writers were absent. I don't recall any hatred of Dave then…and he was returning his show to nightly new episodes.

As you note, Jennings chose to go in and host one day of taping five shows with questions that were already written. Then the show was already going to go out of production for a while. It would be a different issue if Jennings were writing questions or working with material written by scabs. Or if his crossing the picket line was enabling the production company to deliver an ongoing stream of new product to the broadcasters.

Ms. Bialik refused. Someone wrote to ask me if I thought that was just because she knew that Jennings would do it. I have no idea but it's commendable either way. If Ken Jennings henceforth refuses to host the show without the striking WGA writers, I would think that was commendable, too. Let's see what happens.

My Current Most-Asked Question

I have an awful lot of e-mails asking me how long I think the current Writers Guild strike will last and whether I think the directors and/or the actors will join us on the pavement and if so, what will that mean. Here is the absolute best, most accurate answer I can give you…

I don't know and neither does anyone else.

You can browse Ye Olde Internet these days and find umpteen jillion predictions, some fairly dripping with wizened certainty. A couple of them may be right but if so, they’re right the way randomly-selected lottery numbers are sometimes right. No one knows.

We're in uncharted territory, people. To have a smidgen of an inkling, you'd probably have to have the offices of the AMPTP bugged. At best though, all that might tell you is which aspect of the current labor situation they're focusing on at the moment and which internal disputes between which member corporations are preventing them from agreeing on the next offer…to some union. It might be to the costume designers and it might be about Velcro® for all we know.

I am reminded, as I've often been in the past on this blog, of a great quotation from the late news guy, Jack Germond. He once said, "The trouble with the press is that we aren't paid to say 'I don’t know' even when we don’t know." Most people don't click on headlines that say that. A lot of them think any answer is better than no answer even if it's wrong. So a lot of sites are posting any answer.

This is my fifth Writers Guild strike. There are only so many lessons to be learned from my first four. All involved a different AMPTP with different member companies who marketed their product in different ways, bartering with a very different Writers Guild. Some of the issues are familiar but many involve marketplaces that didn't exist at the time of previous negotiations…and some of them aren't mature, fully-developed business models, meaning that no one is sure exactly where the money will be in them.

Past strikes were about contracts covering cable channels before anyone knew how new channels like HBO or Showtime would evolve. Or they were about the financial structure of the videocassette biz back in the days of the Betamax. Everyone thinks there's a tremendous future in A.I. but no one's sure where that's headed. And don’t even think of asking a chatbot to write out a solution.

In spite of the above, I'm optimistic it will all get settled and the strike(s) will end. One thing that's certain is that the studios need product and they can only exist so long on reruns and reality shows. It will all get worked out.

I'm just not putting any stock in anyone's predictions about how and when.

Today's Bonus Video Link

Randy Rainbow's latest…

Today's Video Link

I have paid no attention to the silly controversy about Disney casting a black lady as Ariel in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. I don't even care about the less-silly but still silly controversy about there being a live-action remake of The Little Mermaid at all. All I know is that Halle Bailey sings this song about as well as any song has ever been sung…