Dismal Job Prospects for White Male Writers

I'm a race abolitionist. I think we should completely dispense with the categories of "black" and "white" and describe people in other, less destructive, terms. The only exception is that we should retain and enforce civil rights laws because some people enthusiastically categorize people in terms of "race," discriminating against some races and preferring others. I set forth my position in this acticle, ""Race" is Like Astrology."

I hope that someday, all of us will get back on track with the purpose of the original civil rights movement (rather than the absurd and destructive "anti-racism" movement) and that, someday, "race" will be the least useful or interesting thing we can say about people.

That said, "white" males are actively being discriminated against, especially against Millennials and beyond (Millenials were born between 1981-1996), especially in the creative fields, including writing. This oftentimes overt discrimination is well-documented by Jacob Savage in his article at Compact, "The Lost Generation." . Here's an excerpt:

In 2021, new hires at Condé Nast were just 25 percent male and 49 percent white; at the California Times, parent company of The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune, they were just 39 percent male and 31 percent white. That year ProPublica hired 66 percent women and 58 percent people of color; at NPR, 78 percent of new hires were people of color.

“For a typical job we’d get a couple hundred applications, probably at least 80 from white guys,” the hiring editor recalled. “It was a given that we weren’t gonna hire the best person… It was jarring how we would talk about excluding white guys.” The pipeline hadn’t changed much—white men were still nearly half the applicants—but they were now filling closer to 10 percent of open positions.

Suddenly, in Andrew’s newsroom, everything was driven by identity. There were endless diversity trainings, a racial “climate” assessment—at one point, reporters were told they had to catalog, in minute detail, the identity characteristics of all their sources. Andrew had been instrumental in forming the union at his company, and objected when negotiations shifted from severance pay and parental leave to demands for racial quotas. “They wanted to do like ... emergency hires of black people,” he said.

When he questioned these new priorities, the response was swift. “On a Zoom call, women would clap back at something I was saying and other women would snap their fingers in the [chat] window,” he recalled. “It was this whole subcultural language being introduced wholesale.” ...

It’s striking how casual it all was. “Chicago Fire—the UL [upper level] can be [anyone], but we need diverse SWs [staff writers].” As in other industries, upper-level positions—writers with experience and credits—could still be filled by white men. But the entry-level jobs, the staff writer and co-producer positions that Matt and thousands of other aspiring writers were competing for, were reserved for others.

This is an excerpt from a much longer excellent article. I highly recommend reading the entire thing.

I would hope that these dire statistics don't dissuade any "white" male from pursuing their dream, of course. But this is a tough time for all creative writers, given the growing threat of AI. Grok offers these statistics showing that although Hollywood scrips are still largely being written by organics, publishers are caving to the bots: v Publishers' AI Reliance (Web, Books, Articles)

  • Web publishing: >50% of new articles AI-generated in 2025 (up from 5% in 2020), displacing freelancers in copywriting/editing; focuses on news, how-to, reviews, and SEO content.

  • Books/articles: Emerging displacement; survey of 258 UK novelists shows 51% fear full replacement, 39% report income losses (85% expect more), with 59% of genre authors' work used to train AI without permission.

  • Broader impacts: Google's AI Overviews cut traffic 34%, leading to layoffs; >25% of Americans use AI for info over traditional sources; 97% of novelists oppose AI writing full novels, citing originality/ethics losses.

  • Trend: AI replaces commoditized content/jobs, potentially making publishers obsolete; 33% of authors use AI for non-creative tasks, but mass displacement in low-creativity areas is ongoing.

Hollywood's AI Reliance for Screenplays

  • AI use is limited and experimental, mainly assistive for brainstorming, analysis, and rote tasks; full scripts remain ~100% human-written (study of 3,800 US TV episodes 2020-2023 showed 1.9% AI probability, no increase post-ChatGPT).

  • Tools like Largo.ai triple green-lighting rates and make focus groups 10x faster/cheaper; 71% of screenwriters use AI for editing by late 2025, with 76% of studios incorporating it to cut post-production time by 35%.

  • Backlash includes WGA protests over job displacement and copyright; 53% of audiences uncomfortable with AI-touched content; future seen as collaborative, not replacement.

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About the Documentary: “The Assassin and Mrs. Paine”

I just finished watching the 2022 documentary, "The Assassin and Mrs. Paine," at the suggestion 0f Matt Orfalea.

I also recommend this well-crafted documentary. That said, every time I revisit the facts around Kennedy's assassination it feels like a kick in the stomach. The bits and pieces that we know do not add up to the official narrative. And, as mentioned in the film, why is the U.S. government still withholding thousands of records from the public, even though the release of all remaining documents should have been made public  in 2017 under a 1992 law? It's been more than 60 years since the murder of a U.S. President, yet one or more people still have significant political power, as well as the incentive and the ability, to keep this compelling information from the public. The official narrative has dozens of holes you could drive a truck through. This film carefully explores many of those holes, suggesting disturbing answers along the way.

My gut tells me that sweet old Ruth Paine knows a hell of a lot more than she's currently admitting. If so, however, why was she willing to sit and talk with the film-maker at length in 2022? Because she is still on the clock? Because it is her job to maintain the narrative (for the same reasons that thousands of records remain secret?). Or was she duped many years ago and needs to maintain the narrative for self-preservation?  Maybe many of us would prefer that the murder be committed by one madman rather than acknowledge that a coup of the U.S. government happened in plain daylight, given a enormous assist by the Warren Commission, one member being Allen Dulles, who Kennedy fired as CIA Director in 1961 following the failed Bay of Pigs  mission. As Philadelphia lawyer Vince Salandria, an fervent critic of the official narrative stated, You can’t close the circle without the Paines. There is no way they can be innocent. No way.”

At the end of the film, he added:

There is no mystery here. It’s all self-evident. It was a coup. It was designed to be a false mystery and the debate would be eternal and why it [killing JFK] was done – forgotten. To commit yourself to the truth here, you are changing your real identity from a citizen of a democracy to a subject of a military empire. A big step.

Here's one other mini-spoiler: One woman who was interviewed in the film said that right after Kennedy was assassinated, she called her sister, a fifth grade teacher in Texas. Her sister told her that immediately after the class learned that Kennedy was assassinated, the students cheered because they considered Kennedy to be a communist. I had never heard anything like this before.

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Worst movie of all time?

For many years, I was under the impression that the 1959 film, "Plan 9 from Outer Space," was the worst movie of all time.  It is very good at being bad: But I was just introduced to "Turkish Star Wars," a move with Spanish subtitles. I don't know anything about whether this movie ever hit the big screen anywhere, but it is quite entertaining for its many failures. It's difficult to think of any aspect of film-making that this movie doesn't fail at.  From Wikipedia:

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) is a 1982 Turkish science fantasy adventure film also known as Turkish Star Warsbecause of its notorious use of unauthorized footage from Star Wars and other movies worked into the film.

Upon its initial release, the film was panned by critics for its incoherent storyline, poor performances, and use of stock footage and music from other films.

Despite this (or possibly due to this), the film has gained a significant cult following over the years. Louis Proyect of Rec Arts Movie Reviews called the film "classic midnight movie fun."[2] Phil Hall of Film Threat gave the film a perfect 5 stars, calling it "jaw-droppingly insane ... a film that makes criticism moot."

Here is "Turkish Star Wars" in its entirety:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4441&v=arpH88Mx3z4

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Invisible war victims

Glenn Greenwald writes the following as part of his article on an upcoming film titled "Dirty Wars."

The most propagandistic aspect of the US War on Terror has been, and remains, that its victims are rendered invisible and voiceless. They are almost never named by newspapers. They and their surviving family members are virtually never heard from on television. The Bush and Obama DOJs have collaborated with federal judges to ensure that even those who everyone admits are completely innocent have no access to American courts and thus no means of having their stories heard or their rights vindicated. Radical secrecy theories and escalating attacks on whistleblowers push these victims further into the dark. It is the ultimate tactic of Othering: concealing their humanity, enabling their dehumanization, by simply relegating them to nonexistence.
The following excerpt is from the website of "Dirty Wars."
As [Investigative Reporter] Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix, and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens. Drawn into the stories and lives of the people he meets along the way, Scahill is forced to confront the painful consequences of a war spinning out of control, as well as his own role as a journalist.

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Creating a film in two days

The 48-Hour Film Project is a challenge to make a 4 to 7 minute film in only 48 hours, including writing the script, shooting the scenes and all editing the film, including the creation of a musical score. Very ambitious and intense. The competing teams each submit films which are viewed and graded by judges. In 2011, a friend of mine, Jon Abrahams, was part of the team that won not only the local competition, but the international competition, with a film called "In Captivity." His team's film was featured in this Youtube introduction to the 2012 competition. Also featured here is an interview of Jon. This looks like a blast--I'd love to try it someday.

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