Nearly half of the striking writers of the WGA on the West coast are unemployed:

Among the Writers Guild’s 12,000 members are television writer-producers like Shonda Rhimes, the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice,” who take home up to $5 million a year. On the other extreme are junior writers who — if they work at all — make $50,000 or less. About 48 percent of West Coast members are unemployed, according to guild statistics. (No such statistics exist for East Coast members.) The economic disparity within the Writers Guild complicates the union’s job as it seeks increases in residual payments for the use of movies and TV shows on DVDs and online, among other issues. Observers say the effectiveness of a strike turns on the union’s ability to keep the haves and have-nots tethered, even though both stand to gain — and lose — in very different ways from walking a picket line. “This is already a union where there are people who don’t have that much in common financially,” said Daniel H. Black, a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig, a firm with a large television practice. “If the strike goes more than a month, the guild is going to have a colossal mess in terms of members challenging leadership.”

Someone should call John Edwards and alert him of this “Two-Americas” violation.