Supposedly, CBS is going to war on Charlie Sheen by trying to take all his money so he can't support his family. Weren't they paying him about $2 million for each episode of Two and a Half Men? Talk about ungrateful. If he should be angry at any institution for taking his money that should be the IRS. Without a good tax accountant, Charlie Sheen could be losing as much as half of each paycheck to taxes. I'm no mathematician, but half of roughly $2 million is still a lot of money. Is Charlie blowing the rest of his money on coke and porn stars?
Besides, there's a way out for stars who don't save their "Back to the Future money": do DirecTV commercials like Christopher Lloyd. I can picture it just now: "With DirecTV, a sober, soulless sex hound like me can watch reruns of my hit TV show anytime I want anywhere: in my at-home rehab, in the car on my way to court to fight for joint custody of my children, etc."
Oh, and what about residuals? Maybe a normal person—with a normal brain that can't process the rock star from Mars that is Charlie Sheen—would live just fine with Charlie's residual checks.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Jay Leno: the millionaire's comedian
So Jay Leno for the most part tries to cultivate this image of himself as an average kind of guy. But in his monologue last night on the Tonight Show he showed his true colors as a rich man who has forgotten his humble roots with one unfunny joke that soured me on the rest of the monologue:
Commenting on Obama's remarks to the private sector encouraging them to hire more people, Leno joked "Because only Government hires more people than it needs." If it hadn't been for that joke, I think I might have actually laughed at his later joke about TSA workers unionizing (something about getting patted down at the airport by one TSA worker while a bunch of other TSA workers just stand around watching). I didn't watch "Headlines," I tuned out at the commercial break.
I don't know if Jay Leno is playing dumb about a little concept known as "overwork and underpay" (or, as it's known to the middle class, "overworked and underpaid") or if he's genuinely ignorant about it. But in case he really doesn't know about it, here's how it goes: say your company actually needs 10 men to properly carry out a periodically occurring assignment. What you do is you lay off 5 of those men but you pay the remaining 5 (get ready for this, because it'll knock your socks off) you pay them exactly the same as when they had those other 5 colleagues. If they complain that they can't do the job like this, remind them that you have plenty of willing workers to replace them, if need be show them a couple of boxes just filled with résumés. Maybe Government really is hiring more people than it needs. But with the private sector not hiring as many people as it needs, Government just can't pick up the slack. And then debt collectors wonder why people have fallen behind on their payments. Gee, you don't have a job, and your family members and your friends don't either? Gee, I wonder how that could have happened? We'll take your house and car anyway.
Maybe I would've laughed at the TSA joke on another night. But if I did laugh at a joke about TSA workers unionizing, it would mean that I have forgotten two very important details: one, that TSA workers are federal employees doing their jobs, and two, that without unions, the rich feel free to walk all over the working man without any remorse whatsoever.
And another thing: if Jay Leno had been in Conan O'Brien's shoes, getting laid off from NBC, do you think he would have made any effort to help the laborers also laid off?
Commenting on Obama's remarks to the private sector encouraging them to hire more people, Leno joked "Because only Government hires more people than it needs." If it hadn't been for that joke, I think I might have actually laughed at his later joke about TSA workers unionizing (something about getting patted down at the airport by one TSA worker while a bunch of other TSA workers just stand around watching). I didn't watch "Headlines," I tuned out at the commercial break.
I don't know if Jay Leno is playing dumb about a little concept known as "overwork and underpay" (or, as it's known to the middle class, "overworked and underpaid") or if he's genuinely ignorant about it. But in case he really doesn't know about it, here's how it goes: say your company actually needs 10 men to properly carry out a periodically occurring assignment. What you do is you lay off 5 of those men but you pay the remaining 5 (get ready for this, because it'll knock your socks off) you pay them exactly the same as when they had those other 5 colleagues. If they complain that they can't do the job like this, remind them that you have plenty of willing workers to replace them, if need be show them a couple of boxes just filled with résumés. Maybe Government really is hiring more people than it needs. But with the private sector not hiring as many people as it needs, Government just can't pick up the slack. And then debt collectors wonder why people have fallen behind on their payments. Gee, you don't have a job, and your family members and your friends don't either? Gee, I wonder how that could have happened? We'll take your house and car anyway.
Maybe I would've laughed at the TSA joke on another night. But if I did laugh at a joke about TSA workers unionizing, it would mean that I have forgotten two very important details: one, that TSA workers are federal employees doing their jobs, and two, that without unions, the rich feel free to walk all over the working man without any remorse whatsoever.
And another thing: if Jay Leno had been in Conan O'Brien's shoes, getting laid off from NBC, do you think he would have made any effort to help the laborers also laid off?
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