In defense of the late-night scabs

I'm going to do something here I never thought I'd do: Defend Jay Leno. Of course, I'm going to defend Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the other late-night hosts who have opted to perform their own scripted material, as well, so that absolves me in my own mind, at least a little.

Jon Stewart was a little slicker and a lot funnier Tuesday on his second night returning to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," as he returned to what he does best - political satire. (Stewart seemed to cross the line even further, recruiting British correspondent John Oliver for a short, not terribly funny bit about the picket lines, until Oliver explained that if he didn't work, labor laws insisted upon his deportation.) Colbert was faster out of the gate on Monday and didn't falter Tuesday. Both shows depended, as I predicted, on acutely edited sequences underscoring political and news-reporting idiocy and hypocrisy.

Still, they're clearly writing a lot of material on their own, as is Leno, who's been offering nightly monologues ostensibly penned by him and him alone. Which the WGA insists is contrary to union rules, and so they're decreed bad guys, and something more than a wrist-slap is impending.

They're doing this not for their own gain - they're wealthy enough to withstand a strike - but for the benefit of their staffs, for whom they have this weakness: They care for the well-being of their co-workers, who'd be up sh!t creek if these shows weren't on the air.

So, let's put you in something akin to their shoes, and let's not even lay the additional burden of the well-being of co-workers upon you. Let's say you work for bosses with whom your own sensibilities don't gibe, which isn't, shall we note, an uncommon occurrence. What do you do? Roll over and do what, to your mind, is mediocre work in order to appease your bosses but in your mind humiliates yourself to the people expecting better from you?

Like hell you do. You acknowledge that the exigencies of your current situation may diminish your work, but you do your best anyway. After all, it's your name, not theirs, on the final product, and you aren't going down, in the same fashion at least, with those champions of mediocrity.

So the late-night guys working overtime writing their own material without the benefit of vast writing staffs are doing the Lord's work, to my mind - they're doing what they can to ensure that, once (or if) this strike is resolved, their shows will still have at least a modicum of the same sort of credibility that they had before the strike began, that their writers will actually have something of value to return to.

We've all worked for people who didn't quite appreciate what we brought to the party, who considered us too recherché or too coarse or too this or too that to contribute capably and profitably to their bottom line, who've threatened us with our very livelihoods if we didn't adhere more closely to the corporate ideal. And you either molded to their demands or you didn't, and you either hated yourself in the morning or you didn't.

And right now, the late-night hosts are getting it from both sides - from corporate uberlords demanding product, any product, and from their writing brethren demanding they withhold their best work.

But each individual's sensibility and idea of perfectionism, each person's notion of what defines their value and their ability to rewardingly contribute to society, is as innately ingrained into their DNA as their height and hair color. Simply put, Stewart, Colbert, Leno et al are compelled to put forth their best work, under breathtakingly difficult circumstances, to America.

As a writer (albeit one who earns exponentially less than a working WGA scribe), I'm naturally far more sympathetic to the WGA's cause. But, as a writer who has frequently toiled under circumstances that demanded (or resulted in) diluted work I considered less than my best effort, I can only be sympathetic to guys who are trying to be funny under circumstances that are anything but.

The WGA is more or less pressing these guys to give less than 100%. Giving less than 100%, it seems, has resulted in sh!t like "According to Jim" and all the other shows that have allowed reality TV to emerge as a viable alternative that has prolonged this strike.

So before you hit these guys with the "scab" label, consider what you'd do under their circumstances. And if you'd fold, I wonder what your A-game would look like in the first place.

Other opinions, of course, are welcome...