They're writing on the sly

IN honor of the two-month-long writers strike, I have decided to give the dozen or so scribes I normally work with to produce my stories the day off. I am writing this review without writers.

Except, wait a second, I am a writer. Hmmmm.

This is the same conundrum faced, or posed, depending on how you look at it, by the return of late-night hosts Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Leno, O'Brien and Stewart have made points of publicly supporting the strike, in which they participated for two months, and yet there they all are, crossing picket lines and writing for television and, presumably, getting paid for it. (Colbert, a guild member, argued deadpan that he has long been anti-labor and anti-union, so his reappearance, along with Stewart's, on Comedy Central on Monday was totally consistent.)

The Writers Guild of America, meanwhile, continues to offer mixed messages about the situation. When Leno first announced he would return, guild leaders said they supported the comedian, who had walked the picket line in early days, handing out doughnuts. Then, when it became clear Leno had actually written his opening monologue -- he made several references on air to doing so -- the guild took a step back, acknowledging that this was a breach of strike rules; WGA, West, President Patric Verrone said he would talk to Leno and pursue the matter.

Um, OK, but there Leno was on Monday, monologue firmly in place. The absence of his writers is, however, beginning to show -- Chia Pet jokes, Jay? Is this 1987?

Obviously, the WGA doesn't have its own police force, so it can't exactly haul Leno off to strike jail. Monday night, Stewart made sure the audience knew that he had tried to reach an agreement with the WGA similar to the one David Letterman made but that it was rejected. (Because, in fact, his production company doesn't own his show, but never mind, it's funnier to say, as he did, that it's because he's short and Jewish.)

While Stewart and Colbert didn't cop to writing their stuff, clearly they were not improvising -- it's hard to argue you are working without a script when you have film clips and visual aids cued up. Both hosts made direct references to this contradiction. At the end of his show, Stewart "checked in" with Colbert only to catch him sporting a hilarious, Hasidic-like beard and shredding documents. "Is that a script, Stephen?" Stewart asked in mock severity. "No, no," said Colbert. "Don't you see my strike beard? But I am very alarmed by how prepared you were, and I will be making a call."