COLBERT'S CRONY CASH
New York is giving the CBS network about $16 million in tax breaks and other political goodies in order to keep The Late Show at New York's Ed Sullivan Theatre when Stephen Colbert takes over.
One has to ask an important question: WHY?
And the answer: BECAUSE IT'S THERE!
One thing I've learned from growing up in a "have not" area is that governments love to look like they're doing something to create jobs. So they love giving breaks and sometimes cash payoffs to politically connected companies.
It's not their money, it's taken from the pockets of working taxpayers, so the politicians think: "Why not give it away, it makes it look like I'm doing something about unemployment."
The companies come in two varieties, either they need the money to do something, or they don't need the money. Now here's the twist in the tale: Both kinds of companies will take the money.
The ones that need it will take it to stave off bankruptcy until they get another bailout. The ones that don't need it will take it, because they like to make money, and will not turn down other people's money.
The thing is that Colbert himself should have asked CBS to pass on the deal, and here's why:
1. CBS is a massive corporation that makes massive amounts of money.
2. Colbert is a very wealthy man, having made $6 million a year on his Comedy Central show, and will probably eventually make even more on the main network.
3. New York, city and state, are having a tough time financially thanks to an exodus of industrial jobs, and are looking at not only the usual budget deficits, but a massive fiscal bomb in the form of unfunded pensions and benefits for public employees.
4. There are only two cities where you can viably run a nightly celebrity based talk show: New York and Los Angeles. Any other place and you'll have a hard time booking guests without paying out big money for travel/hotel expenses.
5. CBS probably has no intention to leave New York. They've invested heavily in the facilities they already have there, and it would probably cost them more money and hassle to move to Los Angeles.
6. I doubt Stephen Colbert has any interest in moving to Los Angeles.
7. Colbert has made his name as a political comedian, and, as a Late Show host, is required to make political jokes. Yet here he is taking taxpayer's money from politicians. The optics behind that are really, really bad. He's no longer the teller of the joke, he's the punchline.
So New York just gave away money they couldn't afford to a company that doesn't need it, so they wouldn't do something they probably weren't planning to do anyway.
That ain't right.
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COMIC BOOK COLOUR SCHEMES
They introduced the new Wonder Woman played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot at the San Diego Comic Con and here she is:
She looks the part, and since she has 2 years in the Israeli army she can probably take care of herself in a fight, but I have one quibble:
Colour
Where is it?
Seriously, everything is brown, brown, and brown.
Where is the gold, the blue, the red, and the white?
One of the reasons we were drawn to comics as kids is the fact that they were bright and colourful. And while I like doing gritty and realistic where appropriate, I don't think it's appropriate with Wonder Woman. She's magical and fantastical by nature and should *pop* on screen as an island of vivid hues amid the grit and grey tell us that.
I hope the plan is to have her adapt her traditional colour scheme during the course of the film.
We're not shooting the damn thing in black and white, so why not use colour to its fullest.
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