Of course, it’s all just a PR smokescreen. When you read the details of SAG’s agitprop, it soon becomes obvious that Allen is going for the misleading headline and not the reality of the situation; he claims there are plenty of employment venues through which actors could find work, including new media, videogames and other such claptrap.

What Allen skillfully avoids mentioning is how many actors (and, as a result, other entertainment industry pros) would suddenly be without work because they rely on big studio movies or broadcast entertainment to make their living.

Still less than a year after the end of the Hollywood writer’s strike, and in the midst of one of the worst economies since the 1970s, SAG is still insisting on better terms than any of the other unions secured before the economy turned south.

That’s just unrealistic, especially in a season in which ratings are in the dumps following the last industry-stopping strike, and are not indicating any type of bounce-back in viewer interest is in the offing; baseball learned the hard way that two strikes too close together can kill US interest in just about anything. It would be wise for SAG to consider this before taking the strike authorization vote, before the industrial clamps are secured on the entertainment biz as we know it and people turn increasingly to alternate forms of entertainment.