Carrie Brownstein (yeah, that Carrie Brownstein) interviews one of the striking Colbert Report writers today on her blog Monitor Mix.

I went to the WGAE rally at Washington Square park Tuesday after teaching. It was MCed by Aasif Mandvi from the Daily Show and the bald guy from Sex and the City and featured speeches by Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, Gilbert Godfried, Colin Quinn (ugh), and, uh, John Edwards, who was pretty good, although Anthony Edwards was on stage later and the whole thing felt kind of surreal. I've never felt like a starfucker for going to a union rally before, but at one point i was standing about ten feet away from Tina Fey, and Edie Falco and Joe Pantoliano were on stage, and Gilbert Godfried was making jokes like "there are more Jews here than in Schindler's List." By far the best speaker, i think, was Ed Ott, the head of the NYC CLC, who called attention to the other strikes taking place now - the stagehands but also the Aramark food service workers of Local 100 in the financial district. Mike Fishman from 32BJ was also pretty good. As was Danny Glover, wearing his Unite-HERE T-shirt, presumably from when he got arrested in Toronto.

I'm uneasy with the way that some folks involved with the strike are joking about outsourcing - i.e., they'll give all our jobs to the chinese ha ha ha. It smacks of racism and ignores very real issues involved in capital flight and global rearrangements of the international division of labor. Maandvi's joke, the gist of which was that he'd benefit either way (victory/contract or loss/all the work goes to india) was absurd enough to be mildly amsuing, and in some ways parodies what less careful observers have been saying about the indispensability of the creative labor force, Richard Florida style, but i think in general this is the kind of discourse - much like the lawyers claim in court that all our charges should be dropped because we were "outstanding citizens (i.e., privileged white folks, mostly) that makes forging broader solidarities even harder.