The inboxes of Standup America have been clogged with breathless emails referencing an incident in which a comedian received a check at the end of his work week… which subsequently bounced. Bulletins packed with fiery rhetoric and clamorous calls to action continue to circulate.

There’s a whole lot more to the story than just a rubber check, of course, but we don’t feel it necessary to go into the gory details of what transpired when the recipient of the bouncy bank note tried to collect.

But we’ll nutshell it: A comic worked at a club for a week and was paid with a check. The check doesn’t cash (and shortly thereafter the club goes under) and the comedian’s efforts to collect his wages are met with resistance, subterfuge and, at times, outright hostility. The wronged comic recounts, in excruciating detail, the chain of events in a lengthy MySpace blog posting.

We sympathize. We’ve been there. We’ve done that. And, in a case or two, we were met with the resistance, the subterfuge and perhaps some mild hostility.

Some comedians have taken the incident to mean that the business is falling apart. Some have also interpreted the incident as evidence that the comedy business is overrun with sleazy operators. Petty, underhanded. unscrupulous owners, managers and bookers outnumber the good guys, goes the narrative. The general tone seems to be that we’re all just a Sunday away from ruin. Some emails implore us to storm the gates and start the revolution now.

But, like we’ve said, we’ve been there– we’ve had five checks turn out to be “bad.” Five. In 23 years. Five checks, and in all but one case, we eventually got our money– after delays lasting from a week to maybe two weeks.

So, that leaves one check in 23 years that wasn’t righted. (It is worth noting that in the case of the bad check, the issuer covered the bounced check… with another check that subsequently bounced!)

We can recount, in startling detail, the circumstances surrounding every incidence of hinky paper. Which might be an indication of just how rare it is.

So, it might well be that all this wailing and hand-wringing is somewhat out of proportion.

Perhaps it was the way in which the incident was brought to the public’s attention (via the lengthy MySpace blog post and the strident and sprawling email blast campaign) that has magnified the injustice. But the melodrama that has ensued is precisely what has given us pause.

In the past, we’ve been scheduled to appear at this club or that, and we’ve heard rumblings beforehand that the fiscal health of the club is… shaky. Or on one occasion or another, we’ve stumbled upon information about questionable business practices at a venue that we’ve already been through. In such cases, we act in the following manner: In the former situation, we try to ascertain if the health of the club is so dire that it might result in delayed payment or worse, non-payment. Based upon that information, we then decide whether or not it is worth our time and effort to follow through with the date. And we determine if there is enough time to re-book it in a healthier venue. Is it easy to ascertain the information? Not always. Is it easy to subsequently evaluate the situation and make a decision? Certainly not.

If it’s the latter scenario, we try to find out who is coming up on that venue’s schedule and we make an effort to contact any of those performers that we know personally and apprise them of the situation so that they might make an informed decision.

Of course, there’s also the other standby piece of advice: Never walk with a check. Easier said than done. We amend that to say: Never walk with a check unless you know and trust the issuer of the check and/or you’re fairly confident of the soundness of the venue. And, if at all possible, try to clarify the method of payment prior to agreeing to the engagement.

Did someone say hindsight is 20/20? On this we can agree. It’s easy for us to pompously pontificate on what should have been done or on what might have been done wrong. But that is not our aim. And we certainly aren’t spinning out this advice to let the perpetrators off the hook.

But we’re somewhat put off by the insistence that we (all of us, every comic man, woman and child of us) take up the fight and risk life and limb (or at the very least, future bookings) in order to right the wrong and bring the perpetrators to justice.

We have no quarrel with spinning out the tale, with bringing the details to light, with naming names and letting folks decide when and how to deal with the bad guys. This method, virtually impossible in the pre-WWW era, might yield results, might force potential bad actors to think twice before attempting anything that might be the slightest bit dishonest.

Indeed, we’ve often lamented the reluctance of the Pre-Bust Comedian to share information– bad and good– with his fellows. We’ve cited that reluctance as one of the things that accelerated the bust, that contributed unnecessarily (and tragically) to the isolation that most comics felt in 1992 and 1993 and in the few years that followed.

But, we are somewhat wary when we’re asked to grab a torch and show up on the monster’s doorstep.

We’d prefer to see the victim in this case pursue any and all legal recourse and get back to us all on how it turned out. We’d also prefer to see other comics add to the advice that we’ve pompously put forth in the above paragraphs. And we’d prefer to see comedians share information more freely so that folks can act proactively, in a pre-emptive manner, instead of retroactively. Would it not be preferable for comedians to act, en masse and intelligently, in such a way as to make the passing of questionable checks so much more difficult? Isn’t that much better than seeking to enlist your fellow comics in the destruction of a major comedy chain?

And we’re skeptical of the claims that this incident indicates some sort of systemic problem throughout the entire industry. Or that such practices are unique to comedy or to the entertainment industry. Ask a restaurant supplier if he’s ever been stiffed. Ask a florist if bounced checks are part of the business. We would wager that more than one minister has been paid with a bounced check for performing a wedding ceremony. Does this make it right? Tolerable? Certainly not. Our point is that we should deal with these things calmly and intelligently and act proactively.