By CHRISTOPHER MANION
The current labor unpleasantness in the film and media industries is nothing new. It calls to mind how strikes, rumors of strikes, and similar union operations work on the ground.
Fifty years ago, I was working my way through grad school as a roadhouse musician when the South Bend Country Club asked me if I’d be interested in entertaining at a private party on St. Patrick’s Day.
As a loyal Son of the Old Sod, I quickly agreed.
But members of the local musicians union — as I recall, the “American Federation Of Musicians” — were not my big fans, because I performed as a single act and was I was making more than any of their members were, so I was told.
Of course, that was because I didn’t take 15-minute breaks every half hour. In fact, I didn’t take breaks at all. When I wasn’t on stage, I was working the crowd, banjo in hand, following the house rule — “keep them in their seats so they order more.”
Curiously, when the St. Paddy’s Day invite came in, I had been in touch with William F. Buckley, Jr. He had asked me to cover the Young Americans for Freedom convention that summer in Washington for National Review — a rare opportunity for which I am grateful to this day.
In those days, he had been writing, with the classic arched eyebrow, about his trouble with AGVA — the American Guild of Variety Artists, if I recall correctly. His show, Firing Line, had been on PBS for a few years at the time (in fact, it was on the air for 33 years, from 1966 to 1999). It was in his capacity as host of the program that the union went after him.
I told him about my union woes and asked him about his own battles. “How did you handle it? Did they force you to join?”
“No,” he said, “they were frustrated, but at the end of it all, they told me that if I so much as played a piccolo on stage I’d have to join up.”
Well, speech was still free in those days.
I had been approached back then a couple of times by the union local with friendly invitations to join. I politely demurred, but it never went further than that (unfortunately it often had gone further than that. We all knew about non-union musicians closer to Chicago who had been attacked with acid in the face or other acts of violence if they refused to join their union local).
So, I wouldn’t join the union. And when the advertisements for the St. Paddy’s Day Party went out, the union local was outraged. Their bands entertained at the Country Club every Saturday night for years, it seems, an undoubtedly joyous affair in which I had never participated. On Saturday nights I was across town singing to a bunch of roaring drunks somewhere along route US 31 down the road from Notre Dame. No time for waltzing at the Country Club.
The union knew that it would be a waste of time to bother me about the gig. Instead, they told the Country Club that “if Manion plays, we will never play there again!”
Whereupon the Country Club board had a brief conversation, which ended with their response to the union’s demand: “So long, it’s been good to know ya.”
Uh-oh.
Well, the union board called an emergency meeting. From what I heard, they actually told the Country Club that, “OK, just this once, but don’t let it happen again.”
And come St. Paddy’s Day, the whiskey and the blarney flowed.
All this comes to mind because of the fracas going on in Hollywood right now. I’ve got no dog in that fight, although the disappearance of lousy movies and boring television blather doesn’t seem to be a great loss.
But Mr. Buckley stayed tune while I was having my battle of the bands, and, when it was all over, he roared — “You should write this up!”
So here I am, fifty years later, just following orders.
Blinken Nods
We recall that Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, was blown away by the Chinese Communist Foreign Minister Yang Jieqi when they met in Alaska for the first time in February 2021.
The meeting had been carefully structured, allowing a two-minute opening statement from each side.
After Blinken and his National Security Advisor Jacob Sullivan gave their brief remarks, Yang lit into them with a propaganda tirade that lasted for over fifteen minutes.
China scholar Steven Mosher takes it from there:
“Rejecting criticism of China’s ongoing cyberwarfare against the U.S., Yang accused the U.S. of being the ‘champion’ of cyberattacks. On the human rights front, he claimed that the U.S. does not represent ‘global public opinion’ and that it has ‘deeply rooted human rights problems,’ including its ‘history of killing black people’.”
“The final insult came when Yang said, ‘So, let me state here, in front of the Chinese side, the United States doesn’t qualify to lecture China from a position of strength’.”
With Biden in charge, Mosher continues, “the new China tactic is to use the rhetoric of our own leftists against us, in the hope of robbing us of the moral high ground and embarrassing our negotiators into silence. So, we heard Yang claim that America has no moral authority to lecture China on human rights given that the U.S. itself suffers from structural racism that systematically oppresses blacks and other minorities.”
“When Blinken finally had a chance to respond, all he could do was to acknowledge America’s imperfections. ‘We make mistakes,’ he said. ‘We, we have reversals, we take steps back. But what we’ve done throughout our history is to confront those challenges — openly, publicly, transparently — not trying to ignore them, not trying to pretend they don’t exist. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s ugly. But each and every time we’ve come out stronger, better, more united, as a country’.”
So, a month after Biden’s inaugural, his administration’s position was set in stone. The United States agrees with Communist China (and with leftists all over the world, both foreign and domestic) on the ideology of Mao Tse Tung regarding the analysis of current realities and the principles that must govern our dealing with them.
A total moral, metaphysical, and political collapse.
Celebrating Bastille Day
So Blinken’s latest — however dismal — should come as no surprise.
On July 14, Bastille Day, the anniversary of the event that marked the beginning of the French Revolution, Blinken’s official Twitter account carried this celebratory paean of praise:
“The War of Independence and the French Revolution were fueled by the same aspirations for freedom, democracy, and human rights. Today, we are more committed than ever to defending them — together. Warmest wishes on Bastille Day to the people of France.”
Anthony Blinken shares the same “aspirations” with Robespierre and Danton, “aspirations” that set up a thousand guillotines throughout France, that murdered thousands of priests, nuns, and religious, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Catholics who stood up for the Truth of Christ and were willing to die for it.
God was mocked, replaced by the worship of the lubricous “Goddess of Liberty.”
In view of the current devastation that plagues our land, this illiterate moron Blinken has become Exhibit A of the incompetence of Biden’s bungling cabal.
Or maybe it’s competence after all — inspired by a malevolent spirit, too easily (and shrewdly) camouflaged as ignorance, with which it acts to destroy everything good. Blinken is merely playing his assigned role.
Either way, the destruction continues unabated.
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