I had been planning to write Part 2 of my somewhat premature retrospective on the strike, and in that essay (still forthcoming), I had intended to be somewhat complimentary.

Yup. And then…

…I, along with everyone in the WGAw and WGAE, received an email from Patric Verrone. You can read the full text of the letter here, but I’ll excerpt the worst of it below.

In the face of enormous personal and financial hardship on the part of many, you sacrificed in the knowledge that your refusal to work would reap benefits not only for yourselves but countless others in the creative community, now and in the future. Your stalwart resolve paid off. Yet among the many there were a puny few who chose to do otherwise, who consciously and selfishly decided to place their own narrow interests over the greater good. Extreme exceptions to the rule, perhaps, but this handful of members who went financial core, resigning from the union yet continuing to receive the benefits of a union contract, must be held at arm’s length by the rest of us and judged accountable for what they are – strikebreakers whose actions placed everything for which we fought so hard at risk.

The letter goes on to link to a page with the names of all the writers who went FiCore during the strike. Not the writers who went FiCore before the strike…or the writers who’ve gone FiCore since the strike…just the ones that really piss Patric off.

You see, we’re all in this together…or else.

Now, if you adhered to the strike like I did or like every writer I know did, you feel a natural antipathy to people who didn’t. And yet, as a pragmatist, I must ask…if a handful of soap opera writers went FiCore (and they did)…well…so what?

Electing to become a financial core non-member is a legal right available to all union members, enshrined by a United States Supreme Court decision. It is as non-criminal an act as opting to become a union member. We don’t have to like it, but must we now publicly shame, humiliate and punish those who opted for this? To what end? What are we achieving here? Is this a warning to the rest of us? Or is it merely an opportunity to smugly shower the impassioned mob with traitor’s blood?

These writers were frightened and intimidated, no doubt, by their corporate employers. These writers have not made millions of dollars screenwriting like many of our WGAw Board Members. Nor have they made millions running television shows like many of our WGA Negotiating Committee Members. I do not approve of what they did, but I’ll be damned before I judge them and their circumstances without knowing them, their families or their extenuating circumstances.

No such scruples for the man who “sleeps the sleep of the just.” Here is Patric’s institutional declaration that these people are “puny.” Here is his demand that we “hold them at arm’s length” for all time.

If Patric could throw stones via email, no doubt they’d be whistling toward those daytime writers right now.

Nietzsche wrote, “Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” Indeed. This letter is an unnecessary kick to the face of people whose punishment ought to be the weight of their own consciences. They pose no threat to us…unless, like Patric, you believe that any show of disloyalty is enough to bring the whole godforsaken house of cards down around us.

The word “blacklisting” keeps cropping up. There are obvious differences between this letter and the blacklists of the 50′s. The blacklists involved the government and prison. This ain’t that by a long shot. And yet, the public exposure, the thinly-veiled exhortation to not hire these people, the list of names and the accusation of disloyalty and treachery…made by the powerful against those making unpopular but legal choices (communism, ficore)…is born of the same human frailties that led to the blacklists of the 50′s.

Paranoia and fundamentalist zeal.

What an embarrassing and sad day for our union. This letter isn’t something that will destroy us. It’s just a stain. An ugly, unnecessary stain.

I’m not the only writer with a strong opinion about this letter. You can read John August’s thoughts here and Lee Goldberg’s here. I’ve also offered this space to others who wish to voice their feelings. Most have done so under their own names. A few were concerned about reprisals and wished their thoughts to be anonymous. Hard to blame them.

Their opinions are their opinions, just as mine are mine. I post them here, in the hopes that a public protest might achieve precisely what loyal opposition is intended to achieve: accountability and improvement.

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That might be one of the creepiest emails I’ve ever received. I’m surprised a professional writer wrote it, much less the President of our guild. We’re blacklisting people now? Count me out. – Derek Haas

I guess our union isn’t really as strong as Patric and David have said it is. I guess the truth is, in order to hang together, we need to resort to small minded tactics to scare our membership into acting as one. Reasoned debate and tolerance for other opinions are now considered either weak or outright treasonous. Members exercise their legal rights and are singled out as traitors. Yet irresponsible plateheads make gross misstatements about our health coverage during the strike and go unpunished (while those who speak out are asked to leave). It’s sad that a mere 50 some years later, the WGA would be using the same tactics and rhetoric as HUAC. How does publishing this list help anything? It only hurts and makes us all look “puny.” – Scott Frank

Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo. It was wrong then. It’s wrong now. – Greg Strangis

Patric and Michael are encouraging a blacklist of sorts. While they do not overtly ask the rest of us to avoid hiring or working with those writers who have gone fi-core, it is clear that their goal is to make it impossible for these individuals to stay employed. As someone who was on the picket lines, obeyed all strike rules, and put my pencil all the way down, in other words, as a guild member in good standing who sacrificed in all the ways I was asked, I find Patric and Michael’s letter totally offensive, embarrassing and without regard for context or history. Witch-hunts are always bad. Institutional witch-hunts always redound against the institution in the end. Let’s reject this ill-timed, ill-advised missive and move forward with a more united, hopeful and pragmatic guild. – Brian Koppelman

One might have suspected that Comrade Verrone – a comedy writer – would have been more sensitive to the irony of his guild, which through its Written By magazine so frequently reminds us of the dark days of McCarthyism, now taking such pleasure in the publication of its very own blacklist. – Gary Whitta

This is a goon move, another in a long line of dim thuggery that has come to define our guild. The insane righteousness of these bullies provide an interesting contrast to the limp, puny deal they managed to achieve. – Larry Doyle

Patrick and Michael, your recent email has given me the bends. I voted for the strike. I walked. I was “force majeured” out of my pilot—but always felt on the righteous side. When your choices of action were questioned, I’d take a moment to wonder if I could do better, and never felt certain I could. You were navigating so many fronts, with such high stakes… But this was easy. You don’t do this! At a time when we need to be creative and re-seed a barren landscape, you don’t try to aim us at those who chose to do something that is, in fact, legal. You don’t suddenly act in the vindictive style of the very people we were struggling against. I am not in THIS together with you. – Michael A. Ross

I feel like we’re being invited to set up stocks in the public square. Not writing for 100 days didn’t make me “courageous.” Nor did it empower me to peer into my fellow-writers’ souls and shun them for acts of conscience, whim, or desperation. – Brian Horiuchi

I know that a union has rules, and it must enforce them to be effective. However, the release of this list is not necessary to that effort, and instead seems only a petty, and pointless, act. In opting to go ficore, the listed writers were making a choice allowed under the WGA’s rules. It’s petty to publicly shame these few serial writers while many people who actively scabbed during the strike will go unpunished. Efforts to prove scabbing have little chance of being comprehensive or effective. Proof will be hard to come by. People were sneaky and in many cases left no paper trails. Most will get away with it. The WGA’s statement said that the daytime serial writers who went ficore are enjoying the gains from the strike without having had to suffer the pain of the work stoppage. But the WGA allowed many writers to go back to work during the strike under its interim agreements with various companies. Despite how the WGA tried to spin it, those agreements did not create leverage or pressure against the companies because they did not hold companies to the WGA’s proposed contract. They obligated the companies only to abide by a new agreement when one was reached. Writers under interim contracts went back to work while their WGA colleagues continued to suffer steep financial losses. They now enjoy the benefits of the strike without feeling the full losses that their fellow writers endured. It’s a strange and uneven justice that finds that situation acceptable but singles out the ficore serial writers for shunning. – Cheryl Heuton

Remember how the Guild refused to talk about Ficore during the strike? Dismissing it as a minor revolt by a few soap opera writers. Now screaming it from the heavens when it serves their purposes. – Don Rhymer

The recent decision by the WGAW and WGAE to publicize the names of WGA members who went financial core during the strike is appalling and shameful—and the most blatant example to date of how current Guild leadership attempts to achieve unity not through inspiration but intimidation. I was incredibly proud when I got my WGA card, but right now, I am embarrassed to be a member of a union that employs such reprehensible—and puny—tactics. – Denise P. Meyer

I’m not proud of these writers who abandoned their union in a time of figurative war. And I share in the frustration that they could do so with very little downside. But I don’t believe it’s the place of the guild to go out of their way to take the petty, vindictive, legally risky, morally dubious and historically tone deaf step of publishing an enemies list. These people didn’t make a dent in the guild’s ability to wage a work stoppage. Wouldn’t the smarter move have been to downplay their impact as negligible, rather than taking an action that suggests we were badly damaged by it? Lastly, if the goal is to discourage anyone from abandoning their union when it matters most, the comments here, on WA, on Nikki Finke, etc, suggest that this ill-advised move may have backfired, creating legions of members who suddenly find themselves questioning whether or not this leadership deserves their loyalty. It sucks that these writers went ficore. But at least, as they are stripped of voting rights, they no longer speak for me. Patric Verrone and the board the the WGAw, however, do speak for me. And I sure wish they could’ve been bigger about this. – Michael Gilvary

Long before I became a professional writer, I was aware of the fifties blacklist and the terrible impact it had on screenwriters. Long before I joined the WGA, I was aware of the Guild’s efforts to undo some of this damage by working to restore the names of blacklisted writers to many films of that era — and that work was one of the reasons I was proud to join the WGA. The day I joined, I felt I was in an organization that would fight against using a list to try to destroy careers—it never entered my mind that the Guild would someday create such a list itself. Today I’m just disgusted, amazed and ashamed that the WGA would stoop to such a tactic, betraying its own history and insulting the whole of the membership by suggesting they’d be willing to participate in this new “blacklist”. – Mike France

With apologies to Robert Bolt and T.E. Lawrence…So long as the WGA pits writer against writer, so long will they be a little union, a silly union – petty, barbarous, and cruel, as we are. – John Turman

I hope other, braver writers make wonderful points about that repugnant letter. For my own part, I’m worried that if I put my name, I’ll be in line for the next round of petty, pointless retaliation. – Anonymous

I was astonished to receive today Verrone’s directive to blacklist and ostracize those on his “enemies list”, to isolate them and bring them material harm. Going fi-core is not just their privilege but their right. Who is this Guild to sit in judgement of these people? Who among this list went fi-core out of financial hardship, having lost faith in Guild leadership and direction (and they were not alone, far from it) and who had children to feed? Who did not? Who knows for sure one way or the other? Verrone has turned this Guild into an organization of arrogant bullies. The attempt to intimidate and punish is sadly reminiscent of lists from another decade, of which we are all ashamed. And so I am ashamed of this action; I am ashamed of what this Guild has now come to represent: an organization that no longer protects its own, even if they disagree or stay, but is capable of eating and disowning its own. Like it or not, respect these fi-core writers’ decisions or not, they remain dues-paying members. Their inability to participate in any other way is isolation and punishment enough. Before today, I was not embarrassed to be a member of this Guild, which has good intentions, ambitions and purposes at its core. I disagree with much, even strongly, but embarrassment? Not yet. But I am embarrassed today. To those writers on that list, whatever their reasons, I apologize. And as for Verrone, he may like to claim — ad nauseum — on our behalf that we are all in this together. From today, he is wrong. In this, at least, count me out. This I want no part of. – Peter Landesman

I have served on a number of Guild committees, produced numerous events for the members (including three successful Writers Salons) and proudly supported my union throughout the strike – pencils down, no doubt. But this action crossed so many lines, I cannot continue to give my time to an administration with so little regard for its members. This morning, I resigned from all my committee activity. The decision was not between leaving those committees or not leaving, but between going financial core in protest or simply resigning all volunteer work until we have new leadership. It is not just this letter, it is everything it has represented about way this union has handled its business in the past year, from the call I got from my strike captain who knew I hadn’t mailed in my strike authorization vote yet (and for all I know, knew how I voted), to the wholesale distribution of members’ private contact info to other members throughout the strike, to the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” zeitgeist that was the very attitude that destroyed the reputation of our great nation worldwide. Just as I am not abandoning my country, but rather working from within the system to fix it, I will not abandon my union. It is a given that my resigning from two committees will not hurt Patric Verrone. If a hundred of me resign, it might; if a thousand, even better. A statement has to be made. This is not the union so many sacrificed so much to build. – Valerie Alexander

I wholeheartedly disagree with the choice of naming names of members going Fi-Core, and particularly take issue with the tone of Patric’s letter. I don’t understand how this is good for the WGA and while the WGA might possibly defend against the named assured lawsuits in a court of law, the court of moral authority will find all of us who make up the WGA guilty. If this was some kind of obtuse scare tactic to help SAG threaten their own members, it was not worth the price. Please cancel all my future issues of “Written By” that hail all the blacklisted writers of days gone by. The irony is too painful. – Michael Brandt

I can’t help but wonder: Why doesn’t the list include the names of everyone who went fi-core before leadership announced the strike was over? They no more shared in our adversity than those listed. But I guess leadership has no problem with them sharing in the victory of our new deal. True, a couple of them are high-profile, award-winning writer-directors-producers, but I can’t imagine that has anything to do with it. And if the list is intended to identify “strikebreakers”—those who went fi-core during the period we were ostensibly on strike against the AMPTP Companies in order to cross picket lines and work struck jobs—then why does it include the name of someone who works under the CBS Newswriters contract? Since the Guild was never on strike against the CBS News Division, how could anyone who works for them, fi-core or not, have crossed picket lines as a “strikebreaker”? Given Verrone and Winship’s own rationale for publicly identifying and disseminating the list, there’s no question that the selection of individuals on the list was arbitrary and discriminatory. Of course, the one thing all these people have in common is this: they dared to dissent with current leadership’s strategy for negotiating contracts, in the most effective way possible. And now they are being dragged around the public square, to be spat at and cursed by other writers, at leadership’s urging. Retaliation for the actions those members took during the 2007-2008 negotiation? Or warning to the rest of us in preparation for the strike of 2011? – Ted Elliott

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Perspective requires time. Has enough time passed since the end of the strike for a reasonably sober view of it all? Probably. There’s no doubt that more time still will be required to draw the most purposeful conclusions, but here’s an early attempt on my part.

If nothing else, it will give us all something to scoff out down the road if I turn out to be completely wrong.

The obvious question is “Did it work?” That’s a decent amalgam of “Did we win?” and “Was it worth it?”

Next week, I’ll take on the issue of the strike itself as a tactic, as well as the ramifications of our labor action. This week, let’s just start by looking at the deal itself.

There are those who think this deal is very good (John Wells), and there are those who think it’s the end of days (Justine Bateman of SAG and Harlan Ellison of the WGA). I imagine most people fall somewhere in the middle (because that’s how most people fall on most things, including our own leadership), but it’s fairly obvious that the majority of WGA members either leaned towards Wells’ viewpoint or felt that the deal was good enough to put the picket signs down and go back to work.

Let’s go through the terms.

Sales and Rental Residuals

The deal works well here. It’s not as good of a deal on New Media as we got in 2001, when Wells and McLean somehow managed to pull the 1.2% for internet rentals out of a hat without striking. That rate, which is the gold standard for residuals, is really the only significant rate right now if you’re a theatrical writer. A lot of people, including me, were convinced that internet rentals were a non-business, and the majority of the residual load would end up in internet sales.

Wrongo. Turns out the companies are rather jittery about selling movies outright on the web, because they’re freaked (justifiably) about piracy. They prefer to rent them via, say, iTunes. The Wells/McLean 1.2% on rentals is going to be lining our pockets for some time, so I salute them.

On the other hand, the sales rate resulting from Verrone/Young isn’t bad at all. Sure, it’s not the 1.2%, but after a reasonable amount of units are sold at the DVD rate, our percentage bumps up to roughly double the DVD rate.

Not bad at all. In fact, I’d call that very good. If this entire negotiation was predicated on the notion that DVDs would one day disappear, to be forever replaced by digital distribution, then quintupling the rental figure and nearly doubling the sales figure has to be viewed as strong progress.

There’s been a bit of hay made over the fact that our deal is now in terms of the total company gross, as opposed to the hated “producer’s gross.” That is, instead of saying we get 1.8% of 20% of 100% on initial internet sales, our deal now says that we get .36% of 100% on initial internet sales. Somehow, this is supposed to position us better and um, make us feel better, or……something.

Being a fan of math as I am, I could care less. They could have said we’re getting 180% of 2% of 100% or .036% of 1,000%. Who gives a damn? What’s the check gonna be? That’s all that matters.

Residuals for Streaming Media

This was the big one. How much would the companies pay writers when they reran television programming on the internet? The fear at the core of this issue was very real and very justified. There is a sense that internet reruns will someday replace network reruns entirely. It was critical to get this one right.

Did we?

I’ll go with a “yes, for now.”

Here’s how it works. When a network airs an episode of a show, they get 17 free days in which to run it on the internet without paying residuals (24 days if the show is in its first season). A lot of people hate this provision, and there’s certainly nothing nice to say about it. However, there is at least one mitigating factor. The 17 (or 24) days must be either immediately after the show’s run on the network or be running during it. That’s a clue as to how the companies may be planning on using this window. It’s likely that some of those free days will be used in advance of the initial airing of the episode, particularly for new shows. In other words, a week before an episode’s airing, the network may run a portion (or all) of the episode on the internet to generate some buzz or interest.

Once we get past the initial hump of the free window, the money kicks in. Sort of. Again, it’s not great, but it’s okay. The problem for the unions was one of calculation basis. When a company licenses its show for internet distribution, what does it get back?

Anything? Something? Nothing? All three of the above are currently true, and the fact that the production company is often licensing the show to another division of the same parent company only confuses things further.

The compromise was to go with a fixed residual for the first three years following the initial broadcast airing, then go to a percentage of license. For an hour-long program, the first three years will net a total residual of $4,262. Following that, the residual switches to 2% of whatever the license fee is.

Thanks to Steven Schwartz from the WGA NegCom for correcting me here. The compromise is to go with a fixed residual for the first year following initial broadcast, and then it’s a 2% of true gross after that. That fixed residual, however, increases each year of the contract’s life, so if that first year occurs in the third year of the contract, the fixed rate is higher than it would be if the first year were in the second year of the contract.

Silly mistake on my part.

Now, you may have heard that we improved upon the DGA deal for the third year of our contract. We did not. We get exactly what they get, down to the penny. The difference is the language. They went with a fixed number, whereas we went with a percentage of distributor’s gross…except we impute the distributor’s gross in the third year to be a number that gets us to the same fixed result the DGA got.

Why the linguistic rigamarole here? Well, it appears that the WGA felt this would position them better for future negotiations. Seems like wishful thinking to me. The number is the number.

Much has been made about the difference between these residuals and the network rerun residual. The first network rerun of an hourlong, for instance, is worth $20,000 in residuals for the writer. So…how can we possibly look at this new rate for the internet as a good thing?

There are two things to consider when comparing this apple to this orange. First, many, if not most hour long programs do not get network reruns. The ones that do are typically the hits. Even those reruns, however, are in danger. The networks are keenly aware that the rerun business is dying. As DVRs proliferate and audiences grow more accustomed to simply time-shifting the first run of a program, it becomes less and less profitable to run the rerun.

As such, it’s unlikely that the $20,000 vs. $1300 argument is a sound one. Most writers aren’t getting that $20,000.

Secondly, what this formula sacrifices up front, it potentially makes up for in the back. As shows are rebroadcast into the ground, the amount they pay out dwindles. Under the internet formula, library shows become potentially more valuable for the writers. The amount doesn’t dwindle. Rather, we have a set 2% of the gross of the license fee.

If (and this is a big IF) the license fees can be verified and held to market standards (and we have some provisions for this), writers can and will come out ahead in the long run…IF…and here’s the other big IF…

…IF streaming on the internet becomes a legitimate business.

The difficult truth is that we were all collectively guessing on this one. We guessed that this would become a legitimate and big business. Let’s pray we were right.

Jurisdiction

This one was the sleeping giant of this past negotiation. Without a guarantee of jurisidiction over made-for-internet programming, our union would have been seriously crippled heading into the future. It’s not that broadcast will ever go away (and for the record, if networks switch their distribution from satellites and airwaves to some kind of IP-based system, that doesn’t count…”internet” means stuff you watch in a browser), and movies will continue to run in theaters, but there’s every reason to believe that made-for-internet will become a viable business for the companies at some point.

We needed to automatically cover that work. And now we do.

Reality, Animation, DVDs

Zippo, zilch and squat. As predicted.

Conclusion

On its face alone, this is a good deal, and I was happy to assign my proxy to Patric Verrone and help ratify it. It’s not a perfect deal (was anyone expecting one?), it’s not a tragic loss (at least, not in the context of our 60+ year history), and it will serve as an okay basis for the next negotiation.

But…

…was it worth the strike? Was the strike necessary? Was it well-run? Could we have gotten this without a strike? And did we really get it at all? Stay tuned for part two.

You might be surprised by some of my answers.

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Well, that was a nice break!  I hope absence has made the heart grow fonder.  I know I missed all of you.

Sort of.  Some of you.

Tell your friends.  Door’s open.  Wait staff is on alert.  The Artful Writer is back.

Naturally, my next post will be about the strike, the deal, the aftermath and the future.  But before we all throw ourselves into that mosh pit again, let’s take a moment to enjoy the new-car smell in here.

As you can see, I’ve made a few changes, mostly cosmetic (with the help of web designer extraordinaire Sekimori).  For two years, our fluid three-column newspapery old-fashioned parchment n’ quill look served us well, but once I switched to WordPress, additional reconsiderations started to percolate.

This new design reflects some simple goals.  I wanted to refocus the site on the nuts and bolts of our craft and our business, and while the quill and parchment was a snarky way of saying “artful,” a lot of people weren’t quite getting it.  I think there was a sense that maybe Ted and I were partners in some Dickensian scribery, scratching away in ledgers about the affairs of the day while chewing bitterly on some crusty bread and stale cheese.

While I can’t discount the possibility that Ted will one day haunt me with chains and a scarf wrapped from jaw to skull, the new header is a bit truer, ya know?

The layout of the site has been significantly decluttered.  While I love fluid windows, the truth is that most blogs use fixed widths for a reason:  they’re neater.  Not gee-whiz neater, but aesthetically neater.  I find that fluid web sites are a bit like free-range chickens.  They’re free to roam, but they don’t want to.

I’ve cut way down on the amount of links I feature.  Nothing personal.  I just think blog rolls are useless.  I almost never follow links on blog rolls, so it stands to reason that I arrive at blogs the way I suspect most people do—through word of mouth or through aggregators (hence, the easy buttons at the end of this post which allow you to submit what I write to Digg, etc.).

The navbar is gone.  Many sites have useful navbars.  This wasn’t one of them.  My fault, really.  I thought it would prove popular, but I don’t think anyone ever bothered with it, and it was ugly to boot.

There’s a big honking post-it note inviting people to the Artful Forum.  Hard to miss now, I should think.

Most of the non-cosmetic changes will be invisible to you.  It’s a lot easier for me to compose posts now.  WordPress 2.5 just came out, and I’m impressed.  Finally, I have the ability to simply upload an image and start typing with text flowing around the image (and no code calling CSS required!).

Please take note of the simple “About” box to the right.  I used to link to my and Ted’s bios, but bios are boring, and no one really cares what town we live in or how many kids we have.  Also, I’ve tried to clarify just who the hell “The Artful Writer” is.

It ain’t me, okay?  And it ain’t Ted.  There is no one “Artful Writer.”

Now, to be fair, this is mostly my screwup.  I thought it would be obvious that a blog entitled “The Artful Writer” would be about the ideal of an artful writer, rather than the ideal of an arty writer that’s typically presented to us all.

Then people started accusing me of egotism.  Even worse, some people praised me for being “the artful writer.”

Ack!

I was naive to think this wouldn’t happen.  I remember listening to an interview with Barry Manilow when I was a kid (go ahead, draw your conclusions, I don’t care), and he was trying desperately to explain that “I Write The Songs” wasn’t about him, but rather an ode to the muse that did the real work.  So when he sang, “I am music, and I write the songs,” he wasn’t equating himself to music and then bragging about how he wrote songs that made the whole world sing.  He was singing as the character of “Music,” who naturally writes every song.

“Oh,” I thought.  ”Now I get it.”

And then I thought, “Oh.  Barry Manilow is an idiot for thinking people would get that.”

Now I’m the idiot.

Finally, a note about comments.

During the stormy days of the strike, I decided to shut comments down.  Things were getting ugly, to say the least.  In general, I like the concept of comments, but only in an ideal sense.  At its best, the comment section is a mature, thoughtful extension of whatever debate or issue I’m focusing on in the blog post.

At its worst, it’s a stupid, bleating pile of intellectual fraud populated by internet tough guys using a website to regulate their own emotional states.

We were landing somewhere in the middle there for a while, and that’s just not good enough.  I’m not interested in sponsoring bad conversations.  It reflects poorly on me, and I prefer if I’m solely responsible for the stuff that reflects poorly on me.

I am happy to say that I am reopening the comments section.

As before, you will need to register to comment.

I will be far more vigilant about unacceptable comments.  Simply put, be civil.

More simply put, don’t be a dick.

I insist upon a well-mannered discussion.  Yes, this is a stuffy restaurant.  Humor is welcome.  Strongly-held opinions are welcome.  Jerkery is not.  Life’s too short.  Nasty comments will disappear.  Comments complaining about how a comment disappeared will also disappear.

Okay, enough school-marming.  Go ahead and weigh in.  I hope you guys like the new design.  If you hate it, well…sorry.  :)  Good news?  I’ll probably change it again in a year or two.  We must all go kicking and screaming into the future.

It’s our lot.

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