Way to go, Innovative.

From today's Variety: Innovative cuts health benefits, by Michael Fleming, emphasis mine.

Talent agency Innovative Artists instituted a cost-cutting innovation that had 50 or more assistants and mailroom staff threatening to call in sick on Monday -- because they no longer have health benefits.

In a memo from agency president Scott Harris dated Friday, staffers were informed that their health benefits had been eliminated, retroactive to June 1. In the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Variety, Harris told the staff the decision was made "after much deliberation in the face of the ever-increasing costs of medical premiums." Staffers were told they could continue their coverage through Cobra.

Move does not affect senior or junior agents or administrative staff working under contracts. Several assistants on track to make agent also were excluded. Support staffers were reeling, and agents were unhappy because they risk losing assistants who will have to pay higher premiums to get coverage through Cobra, which is usually retained when a person is between jobs.

One Innovative employee who was affected by the maneuver told Daily Variety that as many as 70 employees lost their health insurance, some with families. They had no warning before the memo arrived. The timing of the move was particularly galling, the source said, because recipients learned they unknowingly had been without insurance for two weeks, and because the bomb was dropped while Harris was on vacation. Assistants who made low wages will be hard-pressed to afford coverage, and the expectation is that some will leave.

I have never even worked at Innovative, and I am appalled. Entertainment assistants and mailroom staff, especially those who work at agencies, are overworked and grossly underpaid as is. Now their medical benefits are being taken away, too? That is some nonsense.

Harris estimated via email that 50 were affected by the move, which he made after evaluating health care costs. "Most Innovative assistants are very young and do not have medical issues (and hence do not get much value from the coverage)," he wrote. Harris said the agency would institute a new pay structure for assistants that would allow them to make more money, which he felt was a higher priority for them.

Let me tell you, I'm "very young," and I get very much value from health insurance. And I'm not even on the molotov cocktail of prescription medications that I know for a fact many of my peers in the industry are on. Drugs are very expensive. So are doctors visits that aren't covered by insurance. Why didn't Harris give them benefits and a new pay structure? Because he wanted to save a few bucks, at the expense of his most expendable, least respected employees.

And Harris delivered his proclamations "via email?" while he was "on vacation"? Where was he?

Harris said he was in Germany to have medical treatment on a knee -- a procedure not covered under his own health plan.

It's nice that Harris can A} take time off from work, B) afford the cost of plane tickets to and accommodations in Germany, and C) find a doctor in a foreign country that can treat his medical afflictions. He better hope his newly-screwed assistant reeeally likes him. I couldn't imagine telling the person that runs my life, "I know I make you work long hours doing menial tasks at a job you are grossly overeducated and overqualified for. And I compensate you poorly for your efforts. So to reward you for all this, I'm eliminating your health insurance. Don't get sick. And don't have any sick kids."

Edit (6/18/2007 3:38pm): Speaking of Defamer, I totally beat them to re-reporting this: Benefit-Reducing Innovative Artists Faces Possible Uninsured Assistant Mutiny. Yeah, I only make an average of one post every other day, as compared to their 10+ posts a day. But I still think it's cool that I scooped them.

The End of April

What an entertaining week.

First, my personal business. I am no longer watching The Daily Show. (Yet I am still watching Entourage. Go figure.) No, it was not the John McCain "IED under the desk" interview earlier this week. Nor was it the "look at Senator Harry Reid squeezing Speaker Nancy Pelosi's breasts" PhotoShopped clip that Jon thought was hilarious. It was the Baghdad wall segment on Wednesday, where the show used Aasif Mandvi to assert that if you leave large slab of cement exposed long enough, it will get tagged by Latino heritage graffiti. What a crock.

I am so done with Jon Stewart's hypocrisy, his lecturing others about their intolerance, injustice and discrimination, while he seems unable to hire or invite anyone as a guest on the show who isn't a white male. And if he does encounter someone female or nonwhite--but never both--he goes out of his way to announce how hot they are, or only talk to them about racial issues. Or in the case of Mr. Mandvi, get one brown guy to tell the jokes about the other brown guys. Like Alberto Gonzales.

In happier news, I have found Designing Women again. It's back on Nick at Nite, every other day maybe, at 5:00 am. The other days Murphy Brown is on at 5:00 am. Apparently Nick at Nite has made a pact with Bill Cosby, Will Smith and the rest of the Black Crusaders, along with Roseanne, to play their hit shows ad nauseum. Now I love Fresh Prince as much as the next American. Although I do prefer the episodes before they got rid of Janet Hubert-Whitten. But must it be on all night every night?

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Onto the articles I found this week.

For the love of Stars Hollow, will someone please cancel 'Gilmore Girls'? by Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune. Hear hear! There there! The last episode, "It's Just Like Riding a Bike," was so hetero. Must everything in every character's life revolve around hooking up with a member of the opposite sex? Yes, Seasons 2 and 3 were rooted in the Rory-Dean-Jess love triangle. But there was so much more going on.

Now I actually have to sit and watch Sookie accept that her husband deceitfully impregnated her, and forgive him for it just because he wants her to. Um, no, David Rosenthal. In the real world, if Sookie didn't want to have another baby, she would have explored all of her options. Lane would have, too. Even in Stars Hollow, sex has consequences. And not everyone is ready for a baby. Or two. Or three. If your husband lies to you about getting a vasectomy, and you know that at one point in time he wanted "four in four" i.e. four kids in four years, and you are now pregnant with his unplanned child, you have a right to be angry at him, for as long as you want. If Jackson can't deal with that, he can leave. It's not like he is giving birth to this baby.

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Paparazzi on Camera, by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on CollegeHumor, via Pajiba.


Even those Mr. G-L is not on camera, I still squee when I hear his voice. He's so cute! I hope he isn't a racist puppy-kicker. He probably smokes, though. Boo.

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U.S. gender pay gap emerges early, study finds, by Ellen Wulfhorst, Reuters.

A dramatic pay gap emerges between women and men in America the year after they graduate from college and widens over the ensuing decade, according to research released on Monday.

One year out of college, women working full time earn 80 percent of what men earn, according to the study by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, based in Washington D.C.

Ten years later, women earn 69 percent as much as men earn, it said.

Even as the study accounted for such factors as the number of hours worked, occupations or parenthood, the gap persisted, researchers said.

"If a woman and a man make the same choices, will they receive the same pay?" the study asked. "The answer is no.

Well then.

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Oregon Governor Starts Week on Food Stamps, by Julia Silverman, ABC News, via Yahoo! News.

Accompanied by reporters and food stamp recipient Christina Sigman-Davenport, Kulongoski headed straight for a display of organic bananas, only to have Sigman-Davenport steer him toward the cheaper non-organic variety.

The governor pined wistfully for canned Progresso soups, but at $1.53 apiece, they would have blown the [$21 budget]. He settled instead for three packages of Cup O'Noodles for 33 cents apiece. Kulongoski also gave up his usual Adams natural, no-stir peanut butter for a generic store brand, but drew the line at saving money by buying peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.

"I don't much like the looks of that," said Kulongoski, 66, staring at the concoction.

I don't like the looks of that either. Ew. But I wouldn't pass up some food stamps. There are times I'd like some meat and potatoes. Vegetables, too.

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on the record, by pigeon, at Taking Steps, via one of the newest Sites I Like, Feministe.

...i didn’t expect the duke case to shake me so much. i feel like i hear about, talk about, read about, think about rape every day. i like to think i’ve built up some callous at this point, a tough, thick covering to take the edge off...

...now you hear the news, following “three boys innocent” with “she was never raped” and liar and whore. and no one seems to notice that the accused men’s innocence has nothing to do with whether or not she was raped, only that they didn’t do it. she called 911 for a reason, she went to the hospital afterwards, the examination supported her claims of sexual assault. we have no reason to think those results were wrong, no new information to contest it. perhaps she picked the wrong guys from the line-up, but that has little to do with what actually happened to her...

I could quote, quote, quote, but y'all should read the whole thing for yourselves.

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Recycling While Brown, by amardeep, Sepia Mutiny.

The Indian-American poet Kazim Ali teaches at Shippensburg University, which is a little west of Harrisburg, PA (and not too far from where I myself teach).

On his website, he recently described how his “suspicious” behavior led to his entire campus being shut down. The behavior in question? Recycling. He was doing nothing other than dropping off a stack of printouts of poems to be recycled when someone from the campus ROTC called the police...

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Lastly, in Hollywood news that's too vapid for the room, both from the LA Times, via Defamer:

Power plays -- for a food court table, by Nicole LaPorte.

Century City is under attack. In a "300"-like assault, two silk-shirted waves of flashy Hollywood agents have infiltrated the Westside's most famous — and famously nondescript — office-park neighborhood, hitherto best known for a mall (the Westfield) and a hotel (the Century Plaza).

The invaders consist of two rival armies. The Creative Artists Agency minions were the first to land, having moved into their gargantuan new headquarters at 2000 Avenue of the Stars in January. Then, on Feb. 20, International Creative Management staked its claim to the territory, moving into three floors of the MGM Tower...

...But that's small change compared with the tactical maneuvers required for eating lunch. Imagine, if you will, Armani-uniformed agents standing in line with soccer moms at the Westfield mall's food court or balancing plastic trays loaded up with beer-battered chicken or Fuddruckers fries. "With all the suits and sunglasses, it feels like "The Matrix: The Food Court," joked manager-producer J.C. Spink ("A History of Violence").

And with such brazenly public dining come perils. "You can't really talk business because you've got CAA right there. And they've got us," said an ICM agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity (silence is the agency policy when dealing with the press). "I've heard people at CAA having their conversations — you can hear everything."

And,

Revenge of the Hollywood desk slaves, by Nick Confalone.

FOR FOUR weeks in April of 2006, I was an Internet celebrity. In one industry, in one city, I was a star. The blogs went crazy. Defamer was all over me. National Public Radio wanted an interview — but I turned them down. My site got more than a million hits in 24 hours.

It all started one morning the previous December, the same week the Hollywood Reporter listed the 100 most powerful women in Hollywood — the trade's equivalent of a swimsuit issue...

...Over the phone that morning, I gossiped about the list of 100 Powerful Women, women I'd never seen before. I didn't need to see them. The list said that looks don't matter, only power.

But because we have little or no actual power, the opposite must be true for assistants. If an agent gets a new assistant, the first thing my boss always wants to know is, "Is she hot?" I looked around our office and saw not a single unattractive assistant, and that's when it hit me: Don't the assistants deserve a list too?

I pulled out my credit card, registered a domain name, and Hottest Hollywood Assistants.com was born.

Happy reading!

Ooh, one more video. Sen. Mike Gravel at SC Debates 04/26/07, via YouTube. He's telling like it t-i-s.



Put your hand down, Joe Biden. When Senator Gravel said "top tier," he did not mean you.