Because it’s the end of the summer, I’m returning to my ancestral homeland to eat fried clams, read a book a day, give myself what is bound to be a truly hilarious-looking sunburn, and steel myself to talk you through the enormous amount of truly terrible television that will be coming your way in September. I’ll miss you all badly, but I promise not to abandon you. A crackerjack squad of guest-bloggers will be taking my place. They are:

-Zack Beauchamp is a Reporter/Blogger here at ThinkProgress. He previously contributed to Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/Daily Beast, and enjoys philosophy and All Things Whedon.

-Alan Pyke graduated Oberlin College in 2008 (to his eternal sheepishness), hopped around the country as an organizer for 18 months, then settled in D.C. to write about politics. When he’s not doing that, he’s thinking about hiphop, The Clash, spanish movies, Jimmy McNulty, or nursing odd pet theories (the preeminence of dumbed-down drug rap is analogous to hair bands’ brief, shiny takeover of rock music). He reviews movies and concerts for Brightest Young Things, and occasionally reviews rap/R&B records for RapGenius. Follow him on Twitter @PykeA.

-Mychal Denzel Smith is a writer and social commentator, whose work has been seen on The Atlantic, The Nation, The Guardian, Ebony, The Root, and theGrio. He covers a range of topics, including but not limited to: politics, social justice, pop culture, hip-hop, mental health, feminism, and black male identity. Follow him on Twitter @mychalsmith.

-s.e. smith is a writer, agitator, and commentator based in Northern California, with a journalistic focus on social issues, particularly gender, prison reform, disability rights, environmental justice, queerness, class, and the intersections thereof, with a special interest in rural subjects. International publication credits include work for theSydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and AlterNet, among many other news outlets and magazines. Assisted by cats Loki and Leila, smith lives in Fort Bragg, California. Follow s.e. on Twitter @sesmithwrites.

-Jessica Wakeman writes about pop culture, politics and feminism for TheFrisky.com. She has also written for Bitch Magazine, Radar, the New York Daily News, the New York Times Book Review, and BlackBookMag.com. Jess lives in Queens, New York, and is a 2005 graduate of NYU. Contact her at Jessica.Wakeman@Gmail.com and follow her on Twitter @JessicaWakeman.

As always, be excellent to them and each other in my absence. I’ll be back on September 11.

GLAAD’s Network Responsibility Index is one of the most fascinating and comprehensive looks at the on-screen diversity of American television, examining not just gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters, but racial and gender diversity as well. And the version of its report released today says a lot not just about which networks are doing well at integrating LGBT characters into their programming, but about generation gaps between viewers and which kind of gay people are most integrated into the American imagination.

On broadcast television, there’s a striking gap between the network aimed at the youngest viewers and the one that targets the oldest. The CW consistently leads its rivals in programming that includes gay characters—in the 2011-2012 television season, 29 percent of its program hours included gay characters or gay people, bolstered substantially by its reality programming. 62 percent of those impressions were of LGBT people of color. During the same period, CBS only had gay people or characters in 8 percent of its original programming. The CW, of course, is so dangerously at the bottom of the ratings that it’s at risk of actual extinction, while CBS leads the ratings by a significant margin. The attitudes of young viewers should drive LGBT-inclusive programming, but their actual consumption behaviors mean they’re creating a less strong market than their rising consumption power would indicate.

It’s also important to note that, while more LGBT characters and people are appearing on television, their numbers are still small enough that a single character or program can significantly shift a network’s performance. Reality programming is the major driver of LGBT representation on NBC and ABC. CBS has so few LGBT characters that Kalinda Sharma, the bisexual investigator on The Good Wife, ends up accounting for almost one third of the hours of representation of non-straight people on the network, and that show provided 48 percent of those hours overall. Diana Berrigan, the FBI agent on White Collar, made the USA Network the leader in representations of black LGBT people and lesbians all on her own. White gay men remain the most popular kind of LGBT people on television.

These small numbers mean both that the cancellation of a single program can significantly decrease a network’s representation of LGBT characters. But it also means that a few chances can make a network get better quickly. FX, a network that’s been defined by its explorations of heterosexual masculinity, for example, went from 19 percent of its programming hours including LGBT characters to 34 percent on the strength of Archer and American Horror Story. That’s a blessing and a curse. Progress is fragile. But it’s also relatively easy to accomplish.

And this year’s NRI has an interesting finding about the impact of popular culture on public opinion from its Pulse of Equality survey, which is conducted by Harris Internactive. “Among the 19% who reported that their feelings toward gay and lesbian people have become more favorable over the past 5 years, 34% cited ‘seeing gay or lesbian characters on television’ as a contributing factor,” the report says. That doesn’t mean television works for everyone, of course: Ann Romney’s love for Modern Family hasn’t exactly made her any more amenable to marriage equality. But if popular culture makes 6.5 percent of Americans think more favorably about LGBT people over a five-year period, that’s a significant contribution, and one that’s worth fighting for.

One of the interesting side effects of the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this year was the question of whether the legislation would damage the alignment between the tech community the Democratic Party. But as the Republican convention winds down, the GOP isn’t exactly making a major pitch either to Hollywood or to tech donors.

““The Republican Party platform language strikes a very smart balance: it emphasizes the importance of us doing more as a nation to protect our intellectual property from online theft while underscoring the critical importance of protecting internet freedom,” Motion Picture Association of American chairman Chris Dodd said in response to the Republican platform.

But there isn’t that much detail there. The platform talks about intellectual property mostly as a trade issue between nation states rather than as a matter of consumer behavior abetted by the kind of entities the content industries have identified as major malefactors. In the party’s section on China, IP comes up as part of a larger package of issues: “Our serious trade disputes, especially China’s failure to enforce inter- national standards for the protection of intellectual property and copyrights, as well as its manipulation of its currency, call for a firm response from a new Republican Administration.” And in more general terms, the platform promises that “Punitive measures will be imposed on foreign firms that misappropriate American technology and intellectual property.”

On tech, the Republican platform doesn’t really differ from the Democratic promise in 2008 to “implement a national broadband strategy (especially in rural areas, and our reservations and territories) that enables every American household, school, library, and hospital to connect to a world-class communications infrastructure”—it just blames Democrats for making “no progress toward the goal of universal coverage—after spending $7.2 billion more. ” And it has a real contempt for net neutrality, describing it as “trying to micromanage telecom as if it were a railroad network,” in itself a revealing sentiment.

We’ve yet to see what the Democratic platform will include, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some attempt to bridge Hollywood and the tech community and make up for the damage done by the SOPA debate. But these are party platforms, and this is a year when the broad strokes of the economy are going to predominate in favor of a segment of the economy that may be key to some donors’ hearts, but won’t swing a huge chunk of swing voters at the ballot box. It’s easy to forget this while we’re immersed in the internet, but we’re a long way from the point where a substantive conversation about cable, the internet, and the way we govern and access content is going to be a mandatory part of the political conversation.

The National Football League Players Association, a year removed from being locked out by NFL owners, is monitoring the NFL’s current lockout of the league’s officials for its ramifications on player safety, the union’s top official told ThinkProgress. And as officials attempt to end their dispute with the league before the start of the regular season next week, NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith said the union reserved the right to examine “every possible remedy” to ensure the safety of its players.

The use of replacement officials, Smith said, “flies in the face” of the players’ efforts to make the game safer during their own negotiations, which resulted in a lockout by NFL owners, before the 2011 season. “The issues that we, the players, pushed hard for in the collective bargaining agreement were structural, fundamental changes in the way football is played,” Smith said. “All that flies in the face of a unilateral decision to prevent the most experienced on-field first responders from being involved in an incredibly physically challenging activity.”

Nevertheless, the NFL is prepared to use replacement officials to start the season, according to a memo obtained by CBS reporter Mike Freeman that the league circulated to all 32 teams today. “[W]e will have replacement crews on the field when the regular season begins,” the memo reads. “The replacements have undergone extensive training and evaluation, and have shown steady improvement during the preseason.” That improvement hasn’t been evident — the officials have been openly questioned by players and have struggled with routine duties like marking off yardages and correctly identifying teams.

The lack of experience of the replacements is of major concern to the players. NFL officials combined have nearly 1,500 years of professional experience, Smith said, while the replacements pale in comparison. NFL officials are required to have at least 10 years of experience, including five at the top collegiate or other professional levels, a requirement many of the replacements don’t meet. “Should we really be content with caretakers whose experience is on the high school and Lingerie Football League level?” Smith asked.

The biggest issue for the NFLPA, which, under Smith’s leadership, has openly supported hotel workers and other workers involved in labor disputes, is ensuring that its players operate in a safe working environment. There is a “real obligation of every employer in this country to provide employees with as safe a working environment as possible,” Smith said. “To me it’s impossible for the National Football League to say they are doing that if they choose to remove the most experienced referees from the field.”

Asked for specifics on what action the union may take if the league doesn’t settle its dispute with the professional officials, Smith declined to answer, saying only that the NFLPA was “looking at every possible remedy.”

A deal to end the lockout doesn’t seem imminent, as the NFL has refused to go back to the negotiating table with the officials, according to Mike Arnold, the lead negotiator for the National Football League Referees’ Association (NFLRA). “Their view seems to be, ‘If this thing’s going to settle, it’s going to settle on our terms,’” Arnold told ThinkProgress. “We think it’s been pretty clear that their negotiating strategy from day one has been to lock us out. In March of 2010, we sent a letter asking to negotiate. They never responded. They said they’d get something together, then they never did. That was a sign that they were going to lock us out.”

The NFL is seeking changes to the compensation and pension plans its officials, who work as part-time employees, receive. But the offers from the NFLRA, including a proposal to grandfather in a 401(k) retirement program to replace the current pensions, have fallen flat. When it comes to compensation, the two sides don’t appear that far apart: Arnold said the union and league offers differ by $16.5 million over the 5-year collective bargaining agreement. That breaks down to roughly $100,000 per season — or a little more than $6,000 a game — for each of the league’s 32 teams. “We’re talking peanuts,” Arnold said, noting that since the last CBA was signed in 2006, NFL revenues have grown from $6.5 billion per year to $9.3 billion.

When I read Arnold’s numbers to Smith, he said, “If $100,000 per team is the only thing that’s keeping the best referees off the field and maintaining the gold standard in on-field health and safety, the National Football League should be ashamed of itself.”

The NFL, for its part, did not mention the compensatory differences in its memo to teams, instead focusing on the pension dispute and “operational differences” related to hiring and evaluation. The league did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s quite clear, from the memo and from the NFL’s actions to this point, that the league has embraced the tried-and-true corporate strategy of locking out its workers and then attempting to wait them out, hoping to settle on its own terms. The easiest way out now, it seems, is for officials to abandon their fight, but Arnold made it sound as if the NFLRA is prepared to continue waiting for the NFL to negotiate. “They locked us out. We’ve been serious, made major concessions, and have been willing to negotiate. But all they’ve told us is to take it or leave it,” Arnold said. “It takes two sides to negotiate. We’re prepared, we’re ready to go.”

As for the players set to take the field with replacement referees next week, the future remains unclear.

It says a lot about how the Republican convention is going that the biggest buzz isn’t over any one speech, but over the possible identity of a mystery speaker slated for Thursday night. The rumors seem to be coalescing around actor Clint Eastwood. And if he takes the stage in Tampa tonight, Eastwood’s appearance will reveal more about the current state of the Republican party than about Eastwood or the man he’s there to endorse.

Eastwood endorsed Romney at an Idaho fundraiser in early August, citing the claim, later proven false, that Olympians’ medals would be taxed (their cash prizes are taxed as income), and saying “He’s going to restore a decent tax system that we need badly so that there is a fairness and people are not pitted against one another of whose paying taxes and who isn’t.”

Taxes and regulations have long been touchstone issues for Eastwood. When he ran of Carmel-By-The-Sea in 1986, his campaign was in part inspired by his fights with the town over building permits, and he was backed by small business owners irritated by the city’s regulations intended to make sure Carmel wasn’t overrun by tourists. In statewide California politics, Eastwood backed term limits. And during President Regan’s 1985 budget fight, United Press International reported that “Sen. William Armstrong, R-Colo., presented Reagan with a blue sweatshirt inscribed with the phrase ”Make My Day,” which Reagan borrowed from actor Clint Eastwood to dramatize his intention to veto any tax increases.”

But it’s not as if the actor’s politics are a perfect fit for a Romney administration. In an interview with GQ last fall, Eastwood cited the importance of issues like global warming and described his political evolution and support for equal marriage rights:

I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War. And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, Let’s spend a little more time leaving everybody alone. These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of.

He’s never been particularly pro-life either, saying in the eighties that the extreme rhetoric that contributed to clinic bombings made him nervous (and for extremists in the Republican Party today, when actress Sondra Locke sued Eastwood for palimony in 1989, she accused him of encouraging to have two abortions and a tubal ligation). Eastwood endorsed John McCain in 2008 on the grounds that his experience in Vietnam would better equip him to handle the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though he celebrated the breakthrough that Obama’s election represented even as he expressed skepticism of the younger man’s experience. Eastwood’s always been clear that he doesn’t fit comfortably into one party, though the one he seems most inclined to accomodate himself to is the GOP.

But if Eastwood takes the stage at the RNC tonight, he’ll be behaving exactly the way conservatives wish movie stars would behave: putting the self-interest created by his wealth over his opinions on social issues. Some day, there will be a reckoning between the wing of the Republican party that espouse limiting government’s influence in business and the one that wants to increase federal limitations on Americans’ sexual and reproductive lives. But as long as the people who believe in the former and oppose the latter aren’t willing to prioritize the freedom of women and gay people along with their freedom from taxes, that day will be pushed off a little further.