Side Note: Writing, Corporate Bad Guys, and Worldview

This comes up often enough in discussing Leverage, I thought it was worth saying again, for the record.

I'm a giant capitalist. I went into a highly competitive, speculative free market (stand-up); been self-employed since, well, ever; slept in my car to build my business, went without health care because I couldn't afford it, yada yada. I work in an industry that's basically wildcatting, where one bad week in the marketplace can sink your $30 million dollar TV show and all the jobs and investments associated with it. I am not one of these "the corporation is a sociopath" people. Hell, I am a corporation. I think, technically, I'm two.

I like universal health care not for any moral reason but because it encourages job mobility, enterpreneurship, takes the burden off our manufacturing industries, and leads to cheaper health care costs. I like to spend money on education because it makes our workers competitive in the international market. I want cap and trade because reliable humans tell me that the long-term costs of climate shift will be worse than doing nothing. I want solar power so people with thousand-year-old grudges in countries half a world away stop yanking us around. I want to cut defense spending so we can move it to border control and humint resources. I favor separation of church and state because, like Thomas Jefferson, I don't want people of faith to have other faiths shoved on them by the power of the government.

I'm a goddam 1972 Republican.

But, some people have a knee-jerk reaction and assume I'm generally anti-corporate or anti-rich people, and so the show is written that way. For this I have three responses, in ascending order of crankiness:

a.) Sometimes we can't help but generalize. But hey, we're not the ones who created so many bad news items in one industry that viewers can't help but subconsciously assume we're indicting every corporation involved. We didn't invent rescission.

b.) The fact that you're having an emotionally defensive response for a corporation, or corporate culture in general, but not for the parallel personal example of say Criminal Minds or Law & Order: Super Rape Squad means that the century-long campaign of multinational billionaires to convince you they are both invaluable and oppressed has worked. Congratulations, you've been mind-hacked.

c.) Sorry we made you feel unsafe. That maybe, just maybe, some -- not all, but some -- of the people who you've been taught to trust are not very nice. The world's unsafe, sookie-baby. Grow up.

There, it's been a while since I pissed anybody off. That should do it.