Rushfield: Impeach the Poobahs
Our catastrophe cup runneth over
Well, geniuses, you've done it again.
If the goal here is to set some kind of leadership record for the most trainwrecks, meltdowns and catastrophes on one generation's watch, then we're on a good track.
Or perhaps they are conducting a science experiment to show how lack of leadership can actually become a quantifiable negative force, like a black hole, sucking all matter — in this case, the entertainment industry — into its doom.
If that's the case, my hat is off to you all. The Nobel Committee awaits.
But beyond that, this is now beyond infuriating.
Seeing this recent collapse and the double strike likely come to pass at some point later today, I feel like the poet Auden, hearing of the coming of the Second World War.
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade
(Not comparing our labor trouble to that! But the collapse of clever maneuvers bringing us to despair rings a bell.)
I'm aware that the entertainment industry isn't a democracy. There's no mechanism in the Hollywood by-laws to impeach our CEOs, but some kind of general "no confidence" vote is very much in order.
Our poobahs are starting to resemble the GOP establishment who met the Trump onslaught with the fierce conviction that... there would always be another day to deal with it. Or it would be best left for someone else down the road.
In our case, swap for "Trump", "Wall Street", "tech bromides", "master of the new universe pack thinking" and "defeatist, reductionist death-spiraling detachment from their own product". And then the analogy holds pretty nicely.
Any CEO out there who wants to be the hero of the moment, the floor is yours.