By which we, of course, mean acting. Just a few short months after the Hollywood writers strike came bumbling to an end, the two big actor unions are squabbling over whether or not they should go on strike too. And in times as troubled as these a wise, near-biblical hero figure is needed to set everything back on course.

And, with thudding inevitability, that figure is George Clooney. George Clooney has written a letter to both the Screen Actors Guild (which wants to strike) and the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists (which doesn't) proclaiming his clear and ineffably correct opinion on who's right and who's wrong. Turns out he thinks that everyone's right. Nice going George, that could have got nasty.

Oh, for god's sake. All we want to do is watch a new season of 24 – is that too much to ask? Is that too difficult for you Hollywood bigshots to understand? We wanted to see Jack Bauer torturing as many brown people as possible within the space of a day because of an arbitrarily preposterous, rightwing, wildly xenophobic terrorist scare this January, but the writer's strike arsed that up. 

And now it looks as if the actors are going to go on strike as well, potentially scuppering another season. Damn you, actors! At this rate the next time we'll get to watch a new season of 24, three quarters of it will be about Jack Bauer having a lovely nap in front of the television with a blanket over his elderly legs. Damn you!

But, anyway, the actors might be going on strike because… oh, who cares why the actors might be going on strike? They're just actors, after all. But the potential of an actor strike has divided the acting community into those who definitely want to strike and those who probably want to strike. The whole industry's on the brink of a civil war! The Baldwins could be torn asunder! Will nobody think of the Baldwins?

However, one man has made it his duty to unite both SAG and AFTRA. He's a lion of man, a man who can't be hurt by freaky-looking male models or hard slabs of asphalt, a man who can get Danny DeVito hammered and live to tell the tale. That man, as if you needed to be told, is George Clooney.

George Clooney is Hollywood's golden boy. He can make any kind of movie you like – searing political thrillers, smug heist movies, horribly unpopular sports comedies – and so he's absolutely best placed to look down on the squabbling actor's unions and cast forth his opinion. Which he has, in the form of a letter.

So who does George Clooney think is right? The union that wants to strike hard now or the union that wants to negotiate because people are already pissed off that this last season of Lost was slightly shorter than usual? E! Online has the details:

"Both are, of course, right. AFTRA feels that a work stoppage would be devastating to its members and SAG believes that if they don't draw a line in the sand, the studios will repeat what they did with DVDs… I've been very lucky in my career, which has put me in the place that I don't need a union to check on my residuals, or my pension, or protect my 12-hour turnaround."

So George Clooney isn't going to take sides. That's fine, we guess – he's still got involved, and that's what's important. Let's just hope that George Clooney's letter makes a difference, because it's not as if the world is full of wannabe actors who'll take badly-paid non-union jobs just because they'll end up famous, is it?