Tell Old Pharaoh to Let My Channels Go!

As a follow up to a recent post, All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality, it turns out that Fox and Time Warner came to terms, and us Time Warner customers do not have to be deprived of The Simpsons, Fringe, 24, or myriad sports events.  But at what cost?  Well, here's what the New York Times reported in a January 3rd article by Brian Stelter, Next Up on Cable TV, Higher Bill for Consumers:

On New Year’s Day, the News Corporation, the media empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch, wrangled new payments from Time Warner Cable, including subscriber fees for the Fox Broadcasting network, which is free for viewers with over-the-air antennas.

The high-stakes deal reflected the scramble by media companies to reduce their dependence on advertising.

Something else also happened that day: Time Warner Cable put another rate increase into effect.

Well, then, here we go again!  I know that cable television is Pay TV, but does it have to be Pain TV?  And maybe it wouldn't hurt so much if it was only happening this once, but here's what Stelter goes on to write:

It will not be the last time. Along with Fox, other broadcasters say they deserve a share of the cable and satellite bills that roughly 100 million American households pay each month. At the same time, the cable-only channels that have lured viewers away from broadcast, with shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Closer,” are lining up for further fee increases.

Viewers usually do not notice until the price goes up, but their pay TV bills are a battleground for media companies. “Content providers are testing the limits — hoping to raise the bar as high as possible,” said Steve Ridge, the president of the media strategy group for the consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates.

So, it's a game of chicken.  If enough viewers object, rebel, and opt out, things will change.  In the meantime, it's Pain TV, not in any real sense of the word, but in that viewers will have to make what may be, to them, painful choices.  In my previous post, I stated that, based on their behavior in other arenas, I suspected that Fox was more to blame than Time Warner.  Selter at first seems to suggest that it's neither media conglomerate, but rather the internet, but then goes on to paint broadcasters as the demanding ones:

These battles are playing out just as the television industry is coping with the wrenching changes brought on by new competition from the Internet.

Broadcasters have long envied the fact that their cable channel competitors are paid two ways, through advertising and subscriber fees. So now, the television networks are fighting for every penny they can.

Several years ago, CBS started asking for fees, and the News Corporation followed in negotiations last month, demanding a dollar for each subscriber every month from Time Warner Cable. The average digital cable customer already pays nearly $75 a month, the research firm Centris found last year.

The companies will not reveal what compromise they reached, but that figure will most likely become a benchmark for future deals. Disney is expected to ask for sizable fees for its ABC stations in negotiations this year.

In a twist, Comcast, the country’s largest cable provider, will soon own NBC Universal, if its acquisition is approved by the government, putting it in a position to pay out as well as collect fees for NBC.

Cable and satellite distributors are resisting the demands, but a “power shift,” as Mr. Ridge put it, is under way as broadband Internet becomes pervasive, putting a seemingly infinite variety of choices in front of consumers. Of course, broadband is not free, either, and it is often provided by the same companies that distribute television programming.

Isn't that a hoot!  These companies are involved in different ends of the business, but still have one side of the business fighting with the other over who gets how much of the consumer's dollars.  There is just enough competition to make for conflict and drama, and cause for raising rates, that is, just enough for Pain TV, but not enough competition for allow for true market forces to establish the actual value of the channels in question, and allow for competing to services to bring prices down.

Another set of usual suspects in the blame game would be advertisers, according to an Associated Press article by Dave Carpenter, also dated January 3rd, Cable TV standoffs threaten viewing costs, choices:

Until the 1990s, advertising and fees from local affiliates supported all four of the nation's main broadcast networks - ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.

But advertising income has plunged, and by 2008 cable-only producers took in almost 39 percent of TV ad revenue, which broadcasters used to have to themselves. So the networks are increasingly dependent on the license fees they began charging cable providers in 1994.

Fox didn't get all it wanted, but Chase Carey, chief operating officer at News Corp., said Friday the agreement "recognizes the value of our programming."

 Back at the Times, Selter goes on to note the unusual public quality of the dispute between Fox and Time Warner:

The News Corporation fight was unusual because it played out in public, with Time Warner Cable arguing that it wanted to hold the line on further fee increases. That looks impossible, however, as newly powerful cable channels seek to cash in.

They argue that they deserve more money for having invested millions in their original programming. Cable executives say privately that the demands, and resulting fights, are increasing in frequency. And every time they clash, there is a chance that viewers will miss out.

But let us be clear here, the public conflict generated panic, and pain, then relief, so as to make us feel grateful and accept the rate increases.  If the conflict had remained private, there would just be rate hikes with no apparent reason.

Of course, it's one thing to lose a major network like Fox, quite another to dump niche channels with relatively small audiences:

The sports network Versus, owned by Comcast, has been off of DirecTV’s satellite service for three months in a fee battle. More prominently, the Food Network and HGTV disappeared from Cablevision’s lineups in New York and New Jersey on Friday after talks broke down with the owner of the channels, Scripps Networks.

And Carpenter adds

Time Warner continued to carry Food Network and Great American Country as its talks with Scripps went on.

And cable company Mediacom Communications Corp. will keep carrying Fox and CBS signals from Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc. stations in markets such as Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in a temporary deal that extends to next Friday.

Telephone messages left for Sinclair and Mediacom on Saturday were not immediately returned.

Well, actually, channels disappear from cable line-ups all the time, only mostly we don't notice it, or we don't do anything about it.  Whether we care or not, the bottom line is that we don't have any say in the matter.  And why don't we?  Why shouldn't we?

Once again, what we need is the cable equivalent of net neutrality, Cable Neutrality!

Speaking of bottom lines, or getting close to the dismal depths of financial matters, here's what Selter reveals:

The Food Network costs distributors 8 cents a viewer on average now; Scripps wants a roughly 300 percent raise, according to people briefed on the negotiations. That might seem drastic, but 30 other channels, some with lower ratings, already earn that much. “We were really, really undervalued,” said Brooke Johnson, the president of the Food Network.

For ardent fans of “Iron Chef America,” the Food Network is undoubtedly worth 25 cents a month. But that logic, applied to dozens of channels, can become pretty expensive for viewers. For example, the owners of Oprah Winfrey’s cable channel, set to begin one year from now, are hoping that her star power will be worth 50 cents for each subscriber a month. The channel it is replacing, Discovery Health, gets only 12 cents now.

Consumers already pay dimes or quarters for most cable channels each month, whether they watch them or not. ESPN earns the most by far, $4.10 on average, and is forecast to receive more than $5 a month by 2012, according to the research firm SNL Kagan. Fox Sports Network gets $2.37 on average.

The next-highest paid channel, TNT, gets 96 cents. The Disney Channel, NFL Network, Fox News, USA and ESPN2 each get more than 50 cents. For every channel, the price per month is expected to rise each year.

“We hear from consumers that they are paying too much and getting too little for it. And there seems to be no end to the rate hikes in sight,” Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network, said.

Even as consumers recover from the recession, there is little evidence that people are canceling cable en masse, although some know that calling up their local provider and threatening to cancel can quickly earn them a big discount.

Time Warner Cable is not alone in raising rates; higher prices go into effect for DirecTV and AT&T’s customers next month.

How about some real pay to play for once?  Here's what Selter says:

In Washington, where proposals for “à la carte” cable pricing were popular in recent years, some lawmakers and regulators now look to the Web as a more attractive, market-driven solution. Viewers will increasingly be able to bypass pay TV service and watch whatever they like online.

Distributors are trying to put a system into effect that will offer some TV shows online to existing subscribers only.

Time Warner Cable asserts that the power ultimately rests with the consumer. “They’re the ones who are going to resist these price increases that the programmers are trying to push,” said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for the company. “One need look no further than the music industry for an example of what happens when consumers feel taken advantage of by an entire industry.”

So what does that mean?  That we need a Napster for television programming?  Okay, you pay for Heroes, I'll pay for 24, and we'll trade?

This all was set in motion by changes in the regulation of the broadcast industry that occurred some 15 years ago, as Carpenter explains:

The standoffs refocused attention on the law that let broadcasters start charging fees cable and satellite operators for their programs.

Advocacy groups and some politicians oppose the 1994 law because it lets both cable operators and content producers pass along to consumers the cost of programs they could watch for free when broadcast dominated the television market.

"I think there needs to be some sort of government oversight over the cable industry," Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco consumer advocacy group, said Saturday. "There's a danger for consumers that the price is just going to keep rising with no end in sight."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in a statement that broadcasters and cable operators should be able to reach terms without "consumers being put in the cross hairs."

The prospect of lawmakers stepping in to take action ultimately may have persuaded Fox to settle, according to Time Warner Cable.

"Engagement by key policy makers ... focused on protecting consumers, was instrumental in preventing unnecessary consumer disruption," said company spokeswoman Maureen Huff.

Indeed, and to be honest, this was why I wanted Fox to disappear from Time Warner Cable, because especially with the Democrats in power, it would have justified and motivated more regulation of the broadcast industry, and telecommunications in general, an industry that has been almost entirely deregulated, and disastrously so, since Reagan's presidency.

It is time for policy makers to step in and fix this mess.  Hell, bring Al Gore back into play, to work on the internet that he invented, repair the information infrastructure, or at least smooth out some of the bumps on the road, and fill in those potholes on the information superhighway! 

The answer is quite simple and apparent, really.  Let cable companies, and other wired and wireless services, charge a fair price as a common carrier, like telephone companies, with cable neutrality and net neutrality, that is, equal access to everything that's out there, and let consumers pay a fair price for whatever they want to watch, access, and download from broadcasters and other distributors.

Can we have no pain and a little gain for once?  Or is a touch of rationality too much to ask for?

Frank Zingrone In Memorium

I was saddened to learn recently that Frank Zingrone passed away on December 13th.

I learned of Frank's death from his son, Mike, who wrote the following in an email message to me:

I know that Frank was proud to be associated with the Media Ecology Association and greatly enjoyed his engagements at Fordham, so I thought it was important to inform you of his passing.

Mike also gave me the URL for Frank's obituary in the Toronto Star:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?n=frank-d-zingrone&pid=137312485 

And here is an excerpt from the obit:

ZINGRONE, Dr. Frank D., Ph.D. - Born August 16, 1933, died Sunday, December 13, 2009 peacefully at home after a long illness. The beloved patriarch of the Zingrone family, Frank was a professor emeritus and co-founder of the Communications Department at York University, also having taught at M.I.T. (Boston). As an educator and author, Frank was a comprehensivist in media, culture and technology, as well as 20th century literature, and found great joy and fulfillment in working with his numerous colleagues and students over a long, respected career. Beloved husband of 51 years to Delia. Loving father of Francesca (Stephen Katz), Michael (Trish Bettencourt), Robert, Paul (Gina Zacher) and Joseph (Tara Tovell). Cherished grandfather of Samantha, Rachel, Jack, Adam and Dylan. Dear brother of Mary Lou and Sylvia. He will be fondly remembered by the many whose lives he touched.

There is also a Guest Book online that can be viewed and signed:  

http://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.aspx?bookid=10746145487077&cid=fullhttp://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.aspx?bookid=10746145487077&cid=full

Frank was one of our leading McLuhan scholars, and a great media ecologist.  I was pleased to first meet him at the McLuhan Symposium we held at Fordham University in 1998, and to include his contribution in the Legacy of McLuhan anthology I co-edited with Ed Wachtel.  It was also a privilege to be able to include his book, The Media Symplex, in the Hampton Press Media Ecology book series.  

Zingrone's editorial work on The Essential McLuhan was an important contribution to the media ecology literature, as was his work on the Who Was Marshall McLuhan anthology.  Frank was also a poet, having published two books of poetry, and I wish I had known that side of him better.

But most important of all was his presence, at the symposium, at numerous MEA events over the years, and on other occasions.  He was good company, and a good friend, in addition to being a great speaker, artist, and intellect.  Frank Zingrone will be very much missed, and I know that I am not alone in wanting to include a memorial session at the next MEA convention in June.

Frank Zingrone's homepage lists many of his accomplishments, and provides links to some of his online publications.  It remains an important resource for us all.

http://frankzingrone.com

Rest in peace, my friend.

History is Written by the Writers, Not the Winners

So, a comment of the Media Ecology Association listserv led me to write a post there that I thought I'd share with you here. The comment was, "After new year greetings, we must remember that the history is told by the winners, but not the real history, the manipulated , the false truth." And this was my response:

This is one of those memes that gets repeated uncritically over and over again. And it's an insult to history's "losers" to characterize them as incapable of writing their own histories. After the fall of Troy, the natives of Asia Minor maintained their own oral traditions about the Greek invasion that paralleled those of the Greek colonies, and may even have informed the Homeric epics (and certainly Virgil's Aeneid). Jewish history, beginning with the Bible, is mostly a history of survival, not conquest.

Harold Innis's essay, "Minerva's Owl," in The Bias of Communication, serves as a welcome corrective. It opens with the quotation, “Minerva’s owl begins its flight only in the gathering dusk . . .” and then goes on to say:

Hegel wrote in reference to the crystallization of culture achieved in major classical writings in the period that saw the decline and fall of Grecian civilization. The richness of that culture, its uniqueness, and its influence on the history of the West suggest that the flight began not only for the dusk of Grecian civilization but also for the civilization of the West. (p.3)

A little later he returns to this theme and suggests:

With a weakening of protection of organized force, scholars put forth greater efforts and in a sense the flowering of the culture comes before its collapse. Minerva’s owl begins its flight in the gathering dusk not only from classical Greece but in turn from Alexandria, from Rome, from Constantinople, from the republican cities of Italy, from France, from Holland, and from Germany. (p. 5)

Vulgar Marxists insist that history is written by the winners because they see the superstructure as determined by the base, and therefore culture is determined by the powerful alone. Neo-Marxists, along the lines of Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, grant that the superstructure has some autonomy. If only winners write history, how could Karl Marx have written his own history of class conflict?

Media ecologists understand what should be painfully obvious to all:

WRITERS write history.

Winners may have better resources to engage in literacy education than losers, or to pay literates to write their history for them. And literates may enjoy certain advantages that tend to make them "winners" relative to their nonliterate peers. But writers and winners are not the same category, and should not be mistaken for one another.

And yes, written history is not the "real history" in the sense that it is not the same as the events that actually occurred. As Korzybski would remind us, written history is a map, not a territory. In fact, it is a map of a territory that has gone out of existence, so that, in the absence of time travel, there is no way to ever test its accuracy to the same extent that we can test maps of geographic territories.

But we still can determine that some historical maps are better than others, in that they better conform to the available evidence. Both winners and losers have reasons to distort the available evidence. Elizabeth Eisenstein has shown how Gutenberg's printing revolution made historical evidence and written histories widely available, spurring scholars on to cross check and engage in further research.

By the 19th century we have a historical revolution and historical consciousness the like of which had never before existed. And if the maps still had many inaccuracies, they continued to be improved over time. What makes the difference is adherence to higher standards of scholarly integrity, a commitment to reality testing that includes examination and re-examination of the available evidence, cross-checking among different scholars, evaluation of competing explanations, etc.

Oral tradition bends history to the requirements of oral performance and mnemonics. Writing frees history from those requirements and suggests new criteria of logical coherence. Printing facilitates comparison and evaluation of written historical narratives, as well as preservation of primary sources, and gives us the most accurate maps of past events that we have ever had.

The electronic media make it possible for us to preserve more historical evidence than ever before, which means that our maps of the recent past can be more detailed than any previous. But they also are biased against coherent narratives, instead giving us discontinuous historical "moments" and images and consumer products, i.e., nostalgia. And the electronic media also breed suspicion about the accuracy of history in general due to their nonlinear bias. And this is what leads to simplistic statements like, "History is written by the winners."

More Archeology of Tomorrow

Last month, I brought you Beatles Anarcheology here on Blog Time Passing, and now this, in the spirit of future archeology, directed this time at social networking and social media, and specifically Friendster.  I never got  involved with the site myself, by the time I got into this whole social media scene it was already on the way down, MySpace was the place to be, Facebook was up and coming, and Twitter was hardly a twinkle in anyone's eye. 

Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization

Apart from the satire on the ephemeral nature of social media, I do like the way they portray the academic, and the broadcast journalists.

All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality

So, I was disappointed last night, after all of the buildup in our local New York and northern New Jersey cable market, and several major ones across the US (including LA, Dallas, Detroit, Tampa, Orlando, etc.),  that Fox 5, our local affiliate, didn't just go black, Sopranos-series-finale-style, at the stroke of midnight, as the ball dropped on Times Square.  The spots were flying back and forth, all hot and heavy, these past few days, with Time-Warner telling us to stand up to Fox and keep cable costs down, with a number to call, and Fox telling us not to lose all their great programing, and giving them their own number to call (what the hell calling these numbers would accomplish is beyond me), and even the satellite services getting in on the act, saying that, since we might lose Fox, this would be a great time to switch from cable.

Not only were we supposed to lose the local Fox Network station's programming, but also Fox's cable stations, including FX, but not including Fox News which makes its deals with cable providers separately.  As tempting as it may be to come out with a snide comment about Fox News being the one channel we could do without, let me admit that I actually do watch Fox News at least as much as I watch CNN and MSNBC.  In part this is because they truly present news in a more lively, attractive, and yes entertaining package (I hope my old mentor, Neil Postman, looking down from his heavenly perch, will forgive me for saying this).  


In part, though, Fox News is unintentionally humorous in that their conservative political bias is so obvious, it just makes me laugh.  Now again, let me admit that I do not engage in a blanket rejection of conservatism.  I consider myself independent with liberal leanings, and much sympathy for the old conservative Democratic orientation of John F. Kennedy and Henry "Scoop" Jackson, and yes, the much maligned, unfairly, Joe Lieberman.  I also can appreciate the intellectual conservative commentary of individuals like the late William F. Buckley, Jr., and George Will.  And I respect conservative politicians like John McCain, as opposed to the mean-spirited conservatism of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, the teabagging protesters, and the folks at Fox News, for the most part (not Geraldo Rivera, though).

But I digress, although there's some relevance to my digression.  Without knowing any of the details about the conflict between Time Warner Cable and Fox, my immediate assessment was that Fox was at fault.  Not only does Fox lose credibility for their blatant politicization of journalism, but I have seen how MySpace has gone downhill since their takeover of the social networking site, adding an obnoxious amount of advertising in an attempt to increase profits, cutting down on customer service, and ignoring the needs and feedback of the site's users in their additions and revisions to MySpace.  Simply put, they have been squandering one of the net's great resources.  As for News Corp. (Fox's parent company) owner, Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, his reputation for aggressive business practices is well known.


On the other side, my feelings about Time Warner are essentially neutral.  The old Time-Life company was a paradigm of Protestant propriety, with a keen sense of journalistic integrity. And good old Warner Brothers was one of the great old Jewish Hollywood movie  studios.  Their wedding involved quite the clash of cultures, with the Warner side winning out in the end.


So, reading up on the dispute, my understanding is that outfits like Fox get some 25¢ per subscriber from cable companies, and now Fox wants Time Warner to pay them $1 per subscriber.  That's only a, hmmm, 400% increase (or is it 300%, suffice it to say it's a lot)!  Fox says it's because of declining ad revenues, and no doubt that is the case and maybe some increase is justified.  But you know that's just going to get passed on to us, the consumers.  And Time Warner Cable reasonably argues that if they give in to Fox, all of the other channels are going to want big increases as well!


So, cry me a river, Fox, but I can live without you.  I'll miss Fringe, it's entertaining, but not a necessity.  As for 24, I'll get the episodes online, okay?


In the meantime, Cablevision, another local cable company, has dropped Scripps Networks, which means Food Network and HGTV, over a similar kind of dispute.  Since food programs, and home and gardening shows, are not high up on my list of preferred television viewing, I wouldn't mind if they disappeared from Time Warner Cable (not that they are). 


Now, as it turns out, the screen didn't go black at midnight, and Fox is still on Time Warner Cable this first day of the new year.  And as I said, I'm disappointed.  Not only because it would have been a novel and dramatic development, a kind of apocalyptic development in the otherwise trivial world of television, if you like, but also because it would call attention to a sector of communications badly in need of reform.


You see, the Federal Communications Commission has regulatory authority over the airwaves, but has little if any power over cable (can you say public/community access?), which is wired, not wireless.  Cable mostly has to deal with local governments that control the laying of cables above ground and below the streets.  This tends to result in local monopolies for cable companies, albeit with localities being divided up among cable companies in some instances.


You see, the cable companies are allowed to function as virtual monopolies, local monopolies, and that should require some responsibility to the public.  But they're also allowed to function as private companies with little obligation to the public.  While there is some competition coming from satellite TV and fiber optic networks via telephone companies, these too function as cable companies by other means, without requirements to serve the public interest.


So, things need to change, we need a more sensible system that serves the public and works within a (relatively) free market economy.  I see two possible solutions.


One would be to allow competition everywhere, just as we did with the telephone companies.  Give me a choice between Time Warner, Cablevision, and any other cable company that wants to operate in this area.  Competition would assure that the prices charged to cable consumers are indeed fair.  And if Time Warner doesn't carry Fox, and that really matters to me, then I can switch to a company that carries Fox and (presumably) pays more.  This is the obvious solution, but not the best, because it might result in my having to choose between one company that carries Fox, say, and another that carries Disney/ABC, and there would be no way to get both.


Which brings me to the second, better option, to make cable companies into common carriers, like internet providers and telephone companies.   Let them take their cut, but let us purchase what we want, either by subscribing to the channel, or paying for a specific program (on demand-style).  Right now I get hundreds of channels I never watch!  Who needs them!  Or let the cable company or program provider offer packages, if they want.  But it's time to move to a new model for the distribution of television content, and time to extend the concept of net neutrality to cable (and other) television systems.


Call it cable neutrality, if you like.


And now, fade to black.

A Blessing to End the Year

Over the last couple of posts, I made reference to the ancient Jewish priestly blessing, and how Bob Dylan's song, "Forever Young," is based on it.  This began with the fact that I used the lyrics to that song as a reading at last Friday's Sabbath service, when I served as lay leader at Congregation Adas Emuno, in Leonia.  So, to close out this series, topic, and year, here is a live cover version from one of my all-time favorite female vocalists, Joan Baez:

If anyone has a right to sing Dylan's songs, it's Joan!  Or Bruce, Springsteen, that is, at least singing along with Bob:

And while we're at it, how about Neil Young singing the song, backed by the Grateful Dead?

And now this, Dylan on the old David Letterman show:

And now this?  A Pepsi commercial with Dylan and rapper Will-i-am:

And while we're on the subject of advertising, here's an ad for Dylan's first children's book, entitled, you guessed it, Forever Young:

And let's not forget about auld Johnny Cash:

And how about the new wave version from The Pretenders, playing during the credits for Free Willy 2 of all things:

And then there's a powerful version from Patti LaBelle:

And let's close the year out with old Bob, himself, live at Budokan:

And may God bless and keep you always, and shine His light on you in 2010!  Happy New Year!

Ode on a Geekian Turn

So, in my previous post I mentioned how the subject of the Vulcan salute came up in a comment someone left me on a poem I posted on my MySpace poetry blog.  I responded to that comment, and that became the basis of my last post here.  And you're probably wondering what was the poem that elicited such a comment.  Or maybe you weren't wondering.  Probably not, but, well, here it is anyway:

Ode on a Geekian Turn

If Luke Skywalker had not blown up the Death Star
Then the Rebels would have been crushed
The Empire would have reigned supreme
Yoda would have gone to his grave as the last Jedi
And Darth Vader would never have been redeemed
The Emperor's iron fist would have stifled the exploration of galaxies far, far away
So that a long, long time later
No life would have migrated to planet Earth
No human beings would have been present to build cities and civilizations
There would be no scientific discoveries or new inventions
No rockets to outer space
No walking on the moon
And centuries from now
There would be no warp drive or transporters
No Starship Enterprise
No Captain Kirk
No Mr. Spock the half-human, half-Vulcan hybrid
No United Federation of Planets
No one to stand against the Klingons, Romulans, the Dominion, and the Borg.
Thank goodness the Force was with us then
Is it with us now?

The Vulcan Salute

So, in the previous post where I talked about being the lay leader for Sabbath services at Congregation Adas Emuno this past Friday (A Christmas Shabbat), I mentioned how Bob Dylan's lyrics to the song "Forever Young" is based on the priestly benediction, and the subject of that blessing  came up recently in an entirely different context that I thought I'd bring up here.  

It was after I posted a poem on my MySpace blog, a humorous one with a science fiction theme, that one of the comments I received mentioned the Vulcan salute (a form of nonverbal communication, of the kinesic variety, subcategory of emblems, for those familar with the subject).   Here's a classic image of Mr. Spock, from the original Star Trek television series, delivering the gesture:

You may be interested, and quite possibly surprised to learn that the Vulcan Salute has its own wikipedia entry too! It's true! You don't have to consult Wikipedia, though, as the story is pretty well known that Leonard Nimoy (the actor who plays Mr. Spock, of course), originated the gesture based on his experiences as a child, being taken to Orthodox Jewish prayer services.   This is what I explained in my response to the comment.

I went on to note that the hand gesture is used when giving the priestly blessing--May the Lord bless you and keep you: May the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you: May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace (traditional translation, from Numbers 6:24).  It is attributed to Aaron, brother of Moses, whose descendants, the House of Aaron, became the Priests of ancient Israel and the Temple in Jerusalem.

Here's a traditional image depicting the priestly blessing:

The gesture is actually difficult for some individuals to make, while others can do it easily, so it represents something of a genetic marker, perhaps one that was common for descendants of Aaron.  I went on, in my reply, to note that the Hebrew word for Priest is Cohen, so everyone with that last name (or a variation thereof) is considered a Priest, and can give the blessing in Orthodox tradition.  That includes Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet, songwriter, and singer who is very popular in MySpace poetry circles, and indeed, very popular in general.  Cohen is no doubt familiar with the gesture, and may even have delivered it himself.

 Well, he's almost making the gesture in this picture, but not exactly, I know.  But I did think it interesting to juxtapose the two Leonards:

Separated at birth?  Genetic markers?  Who's to say?  All that I can say is, Live long and prosper!  That's what Vulcans say when they make with the Vulcan salute, to which the response is, Peace and long life!  Or simply, Shalom!

Addendum.  Thanks to my anonymous commenter for pointing out the following blog post that also discussed Leonard Cohen and the priestly blessing:  The Legacy Of Leonard Cohen's Tel Aviv Priestly Blessing Plus A New Video Of The Event.  It's a good one, so go take a look.   It's about Cohen delivering the benediction at a recent concert in Israel, and here's a photo:

 And better yet, here's a video clip of Cohen delivering the blessing after sharing a message of peace!

Amen!

A Christmas Shabbat

So, what do you do on Christmas if you're Jewish?  Enjoy the day off, go to the movies, go out for Chinese food, yes.  But what if Christmas falls on a Friday, like it did this year?  And what if yours truly was called upon to be a lay leader for Friday night Sabbath services at Congregation Adas Emuno once more?

Well, I did lead services, and in addition to the regular service in the tradition of Reform Judaism, I opened with the following:

Shabbat Shalom!

While so many of our fellow citizens, so many people all around the world, have been worshipping and having a merry old time this past day, we return this evening for our simple, modest weekly celebration of the Sabbath.  We return, as we have so many times before, as our ancestors have done so many years, centuries, and millennia before.  For ours is an amazing story of survival over four thousand years.  But it is also an amazing story of storytellers, telling stories that have captured the imagination of the world.  Stories about how God created the world in six days, about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, about Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons, Moses and the Exodus, Joshua and Jericho, Samson and Delilah, David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, Daniel in the lions' den.  And we also are the storytellers that gave the world the story about the birth and death of Joshua of Nazareth, who the Romans called Jesus.

We come from a great tradition of storytellers that also include Karl Marx and his stories about workers rising up against oppression, Sigmund Freud and his stories about drives and repressions, and Albert Einstein and his stories about riding on top of a beam of light.  The Jewish imagination has also given us so many novelists that we would be here all night if I were to name them all, and that is not to mention all of our storytellers making movies and television.

Our stories help us to understand our world, and our place in it.  They help us to bring order to chaos, and coherence to what often seems like the randomness of existence.  Stories may be true or false, but stories can also contain different kinds of truths.  Some give us scientific truths, some give us historic truths, and some metaphorical truths.  As Reform Jews, we understand the traditional stories told by our people in light of the stories told by our scholars and scientists, and we recognize that, no matter what, our stories do contain valuable truths, moral and ethical truths have brought light to the entire world.

We then proceeded with the lighting of the Sabbath candles, and from there to the rest of the service.  Later, during the sermon part of the service, I explained that this week's Torah portion, Vayigash, was the same parsha that my son read when he was Bar Mitzvah, and while we wouldn't be actually reading from the Torah, I called him up to read an excerpt from his Bar Mitzvah speech about Vayigash;

The name of my Torah portion is Vayigash, which means "And he approached." 

The portion begins with Judah, the eldest son of Jacob.  And it was Judah who approached the prime minister of Egypt, and said:  "Please, my lord, let your servant appeal to my lord, and do not be impatient with your servant, you who are the equal of Pharaoh."  Judah and his brothers had come to Egypt to procure food in a time of famine.  But a silver cup belonging to the Prime Minister was found in the grain sack of Jacob's youngest son, Benjamin.  As punishment, the Prime Minister said that Benjamin would have to remain with him as a slave.  Judah approached the Prime Minister, and said that his father Jacob would die of sorrow if he lost another son, like he lost Joseph many years ago.  Then, Judah offered himself as a slave in the place of Benjamin.  Hearing this, the Prime Minister burst into tears and revealed the fact that he was Joseph, the brother that they had sold into slavery.  Joseph then invited his brothers and their father Jacob to live in the land of Egypt as the guests of Pharaoh. Finally, God spoke to Jacob in a vision at night, and said to him, "I am God, the God of your father.  Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation.  I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you back; and Joseph's hand shall close your eyes."  And so, Jacob went down to Egypt with his entire household of 70 persons.  My Torah portion ends with Joseph saving the people of Egypt by coming up with a plan for them to trade property for food during the time of famine.

My Torah portion has three important themes.  The first theme is taking care of family.  When Judah offers himself as a slave instead of his brother Benjamin, he says:  "For how can I go back to my father, unless the boy is with me?  Let me not be witness to the woe that would overtake my father."  Judah loves his father and his brother, and is willing to sacrifice himself to protect his family.  When Judah approached the Prime Minister, he was taking responsibility for his entire family.  And when Joseph brought his brothers and their father Jacob to Egypt, he too was taking care of his family.  As the Prime Minister of Egypt, Joseph took care of the Egyptian people and all those in need of food as if they were his family.  Taking care of family begins with your parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, but it also means caring for all the people of the world, just like Joseph.

The second theme of my Torah portion is justice.  Joseph hid the silver cup in Benjamin's grain sack to test his brothers.  They had sold him into slavery, and deserved to be punished.  As Prime Minister, Joseph could have taken his revenge.  But when Judah approached him and offered himself as a slave in the place of Benjamin, Joseph did not seek vengeance, he granted his brothers forgiveness.  He gave them justice, but he also gave them mercy.  And when the Egyptian people needed food, he gave them a way to buy food, he didn't make them beg for charity.  He gave them justice, but didn't sacrifice their dignity, which is a form of mercy.

The third theme of the portion is reconciliation.  Joseph forgave his brothers for wronging him, and their family was united again.  Similarly, in my Haftarah portion, a selection from the book of the prophet Ezekiel, he predicts that someday all of the Jewish people, and all of the people of the world, will become reconciled and live together in peace, and in justice, and as one family.

 Then, I read this week's Haftarah from Ezekiel (37:15-28):

15. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 16. "And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick and write upon it, 'For Judah and for the children of Israel his companions'; and take one stick and write upon it, 'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel, his companions.' 17. And bring them close, one to the other into one stick, and they shall be one in your hand. 18. And when the children of your people say to you, saying, 'Will you not tell us what these are to you?' 19. Say to them, So says the Lord God: Behold I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes of Israel his companions, and I will place them with him with the stick of Judah, and I will make them into one stick, and they shall become one in My hand. 20. And the sticks upon which you shall write shall be in your hand before their eyes. 21. And say to them, So says the Lord God: Behold I will take the children of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side, and I will bring them to their land. 22. And I will make them into one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be to them all as a king; and they shall no longer be two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore. 23. And they shall no longer defile themselves with their idols, with their detestable things, or with all their transgressions, and I will save them from all their habitations in which they have sinned, and I will purify them, and they shall be to Me as a people, and I will be to them as a God. 24. And My servant David shall be king over them, and one shepherd shall be for them all, and they shall walk in My ordinances and observe My statutes and perform them. 25. And they shall dwell on the land that I have given to My servant, to Jacob, wherein your forefathers lived; and they shall dwell upon it, they and their children and their children's children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever. 26. And I will form a covenant of peace for them, an everlasting covenant shall be with them; and I will establish them and I will multiply them, and I will place My Sanctuary in their midst forever. 27. And My dwelling place shall be over them, and I will be to them for a God, and they shall be to Me as a people. 28. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord, Who sanctifies Israel, when My Sanctuary is in their midst forever."

After reading these passages, I provided the following commentary:

The sticks represent the idea that the Jewish people are many different people united as one.  We were twelve tribes, we were two ancient kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, and today we are the Ashkenazi, the Sephardim, the Misrahim or Eastern Jews whose ancestors never went to Spain or Germany, and others who came from Greece, Italy, India, China, Yemen, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.  Even within the Ashkenazi, there are the German Jews, Polish Jews, Hungarian Jews, Lituanian Jews, Russian Jews, etc.  And we are also divided into Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, Chassidism, and other denominations.  And we are divided between those of us who are Israelis and those of us who are not.

But we recognize the essential unity of our people, bound together by a common tradition, a common faith, a common sense.  Sometimes we may be divided, but we emphasize our divisions at our own peril.  Leonard Cohen put it this way, "Anyone who say I'm not a Jew is not a Jew.  I'm very sorry but this is final."  And we would do well to recall the wonderful words of one of this country's Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Binding is theme of one of our defining moments, the binding of Isaac, which results in God establishing a binding covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the Jewish people, one that doesn't involve human sacrifice.  And that covenant is formalized at Mount Sinai when Moses receives the Law, which binds our people to justice. 

The word religion comes to us from the ancient Latin, and its root meaning has never been established, but it is commonly believed to come from the word for binding.  A congregation is a community that is bound together, and that binds itself to its conception of the sacred and the divine.  Another possible derivation of religion is to reread, a religion is organized around a sacred text, as we are around the Torah.

For us, the two fit together quite well.  We are bound to one another by our texts, our laws, our prayers, our history.  We are bound together by our stories.  As members of the Jewish community, we are bound like the pages of a book, bound together in our ancient and every evolving covenant with God.

Binding is about unity, and the theme of oneness is central to our services, the oneness of God, the oneness of His creation, the oneness of our community, and the oneness of humanity.

We then returned to the service, and before the closing hymn, I read the lyrics to Bod Dylan's song, "Forever Young," which is based on the traditional priestly benediction from Deuteronomy:

May God bless and keep you always,

May your wishes all come true,

May you always do for others

And let others do for you.

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung,

And may you stay forever young.



May you grow up to be righteous,

May you grow up to be true,

May you always know the truth

And see the lights surrounding you.

May you always be courageous,

Stand upright and be strong,

And may you stay forever young.



May your hands always be busy,

May your feet always be swift,

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift.

May your heart always be joyful,

May your song always be sung,
And may you stay forever young.

And with that we closed out the service and proceeded to the Oneg, having a very merry little Shabbat indeed!

Yes Virginia, The Medium is Still the Message

So, I recently commented on a blog post that one of the folks I'm connected to on Twitter was tweeting about.  My Twitter friend is John Greg Ball, and the author of the blog post is Seth Goldstein, who is identified as "the co-founder and CEO of SocialMedia Networks," for what that's worth.  

The post he put up is entitled, The Medium Is No Longer The Message, . . . You Are, and you can click on that title to go read it if you care to.  Just from reading the title, if you know anything about me, you probably know that I'd take issue with this post.

The main argument is that the advent of social media represents a profound change in the nature of media.  And here is what he specifically says about Marshall McLuhan's famous quote, the medium is the message:

Social media’s ascent has led to an Internet experience based less on pages and more on people.  As a corollary to this (and counter to Marshall McLuhan’s thesis), the medium is no longer just the message.  The permanence of words and images and their meaning in context has long been promoted as a foundation of media theory.  In an increasingly real-time environment, however, content gives way to identity, and traditional contextual analysis gives way to dynamic social interactions.

The medium is the message . . .  is the member.  This is why there can be no discussion of social media without a simultaneous discussion of identity, and why the growth of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are one and the same with the growth of identity systems online.  There are a number of technology and business trends that are converging around this thesis.

 So, now, here is the comment I left by way of response:

If you had just written about your own ideas about social media, I would have no argument with you. The problem is that you talk about McLuhan, and the fact is that everything that you’ve said here has been said by McLuhan a long time ago, and in connection to “the medium is the message.” By not actually reading what he and others in the media ecology intellectual tradition (like Lewis Mumford, who McLuhan drew on extensively), you and others wind up reinventing the wheel, over and over again. That’s okay, but a basic rule of thumb I would suggest to you is that you should do your homework and know what you’re talking about before making statements about it. The fact that you present a superficial sense of what McLuhan was saying, and derive it from a wikipedia article is revealing. It is very much an argument about the limits of social media, and the continuing need to read books and study subjects in depth. The fact that your multiple tweets about this blog post brought me here perhaps is indication of the down side of social media, although my response also illustrates its error correcting potential. Hmmm, maybe I’ll do my own blog post about it…

 And so I have.  I should add that John asked me what I thought of the post aside from the bit about McLuhan, and I added that rather than saying that social media replace traditional media, I'd say that they add to, alter, and ultimately encompass them, and that social media are the next stage in the evolution of the electronic media, bringing them closer to their true potential.

And so I say to you, believe it my friends, know it to be true in your hearts, yes Virginia, the medium still is the message, it always was the message, and it will always be the message.

Electronic Menorah

That's something we always thought was tacky when I was growing up, electric Menorahs, for example:

That's something that would be put up by an institution, a school, or in an apartment building lobby, along with the ubiquitous Christmas tree with its electric lights.  After all, it doesn't make sense to have something burning when there's no one to watch over it.  But for individuals and families to rely on an electric Menorah, that's like, oy!


Real Menorahs burn, like, with fire.  Mostly we use candles, but to be really traditional, you can use little bowls of oil, because that's what it originally was about, the burning of purified, sanctified olive oil in a lamp in the Temple, meant to symbolize the light present at Mount Sinai at the time the Torah was given.  


The Chanukah Menorah is a special kind of Menorah, by the way, also known as a Chanukiah.  Regular  Menorahs only have six lights rather than eight (the center light is just a "helper" used to light the others), six lights corresponding to the six points of the Star (or Shield) of David (aka the Seal of Solomon).  The Chanukah Menorah has eight lights to symbolize and commemorate the "miracle" of Chanukah, that after retaking our Temple in Jerusalem from the Syrian-Greek conquerors, there was only oil enough for one day, but somehow it lasted for the eight days needed to get a new supply.  Not the biggest miracle in the world, but after all, Chanukah is just a minor holiday.


And all of this is besides the point, except as a launching pad for me to introduce you to this cool video that brings an electronic, science fiction theme to Chanukah.  So let me present to you, Honika Electronica:











So, I wonder if this guy is related to Mel Brooks at all?