Barry Diller. Sumner Redstone. Steven Spielberg. David Geffen.
Gods. On. Earth.
I'm just thinking about the fact that we've just been through a writer's strike and an entire gaggle of Hollywood types - entertainers, technicians and multifarious yoemen of the Industry - have had their romantic flirtation with all sorts of 'power to the people' sloganeering in their own defense. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest ever, that the moguls of the entertainment businesses be run out of town or stripped of their pay and hauled off to jail.
Sure. It's not the same. Or is it?
Let's say we've run the economy into the ground, for argument's sake. Where should we pull our money, from banks or from entertainment? What do you suspect are the chances that any of those four will suffer after this recession is in its deepest trenches? So how many people will call on them to suffer?
It begs a lot of questions that relate to the culture war. I mean consider this short train of thought. What if Proctor & Gamble simply canceled their media buys? Would Americans stop bathing with Ivory Soap? Would we stop using Tide detergent? In 2005, the only figure I could find, P&G spent 2.5B on TV ads. That's supporting an awful lot of awful television. Do we actually need that TV? Do we need to spend the money on the electricity to watch the TV and power those cable boxes? I mean you know how much the entertainment industry hates Tivo. What if we just cut back on TV and movies and... I don't know, played sports instead of watching sports.
Blockbuster did 5.5B of revenue last year. Why not consider them a drag on the economy. I mean after all isn't this entire crisis about smart investing?
I know, this is crazy out of proportion and nobody would dare suggest that we get rid of the humor liquidity of the entertainment biz. We'd have a happiness crunch in addition to the credit crunch, and then we'd all join the Crips, smoke crack and start shooting and raping each other, like our friends at Subrealism believe.
Just thought I'd throw that out there as the populists start lighting their torches and sharpening their pitchforks on Capitol Hill over Lehman executive pay.
Want your money back? Think about where you spend it.
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