Lily Salter's Blog, page 209

Comcast’s decision to rewrite its net neutrality stance had some strange timing

(Credit: Getty/Cindy Ord)

A day after the FCC voted to overturn the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules, many telecom corporations, including Cox Communications and AT&T, have made public statements to clarify that the wildly unpopular rule changes won’t affect consumers. (Whether or not one believes them is another matter entirely.)

Others, such as mega-corporation Comcast — which spent millions lobbying to end net neutrality — is flip-flopping all over the place.

A new report on BoingBoing details the way in which Comcast’s posted statements about net neutrality have shifted around since April 2017. The article references the Internet Archive, which takes snapshots of web pages at different historical moments, to reveal Comcast’s shifting position. It reveals a corporation that is at once conniving, politically shrewd,  and savvy with their public relations.

First, Comcast said that they were “committed to an open Internet,” in a statement that was on their website for years, up until April 27, 2017. From their archived statement from then:

Comcast won’t block access to lawful content.

Comcast won’t throttle back the speed at which content comes to you.

Comcast doesn’t prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes.

Comcast’s Internet Essentials will make the Internet more accessible to low income families.

Comcast will inspire innovation, promote learning, create access to jobs.

On April 27, one day after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced the vote to eliminate net neutrality rules, Comcast rewrote the above bullet points to now read:

We do not block, slow down or discriminate against lawful content.

We believe in full transparency in our customer policies.

We are for sustainable and legally enforceable net neutrality protections for our customers.

In hindsight, these posts raise the question as to whether conversations may have occurred between the FCC Chairman and Comcast execs long before the vote. If anything, it validates speculation that some internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast are in favor of the rollback and will take advantage of it, despite claims that they are supportive of an “open Internet.”

Aside from the aforementioned press releases, what else do other ISPs have to say specifically about the rollback? The Verge reached out to 10 ISPs to understand their views on three core pillars of net neutrality: no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization. “Not all of them answered, and the answers we did get are complicated,” they said. AT&T reportedly doesn’t support blocking or throttling websites. Verizon’s stance seems to be a little wishy-washy, as is T-Mobile’s.

 

Facebook reacts to alarming studies about social media use

Mark Zuckerberg (Credit: Getty/David Ramos)

Facebook announced new features on Friday in reaction to a number of studies that suggest social media usage is linked to a higher depression and loneliness rates — studies which have speculated that social media may relate to growing suicide rates among teens.

The new two new features, called “Snooze” and “Take a Break,” both give users more control over whose feeds users see pop up in their feeds. According to Facebook, they believe these features will “help support people’s well-being.” “Snooze” gives Facebook users the option to hide a person, page or group for 30 days, without having to unfriend or unfollow them permanently. “Take a Break” is geared towards users going through breakups. The feature gives the user more control over what an ex-partner can see, and when they see their ex on Facebook. This feature was inspired by research that, according to Facebook, suggests “offline and online contact, including seeing an ex-partner’s activities, can make emotional recovery more difficult.”

Jean Twenge, a psychologist who studies social media behavior, wrote an article in The Atlantic in September that sparked a larger conversation about the downfalls of the rise in social media, and specifically how it’s harming iGen, the name for the cohort born between 1995 and 2012, many of whom are now teens. As she explained, “social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation.” Teenagers who visit social media sites, she says, on a daily basis to see what their friends are up to are more likely to agree with statements like “I often feel left out of things,” and “I feel lonely.” Incongruously, Facebook just last week released a feature specifically targeting children under the age of 13.

In Facebook’s announcement, the author nodded to Twenge’s research, but said many of the studies that have been published have been biased, and have failed to acknowledge the benefits of social media.

“It’s not the whole story,” the statements says, pointing to research by Sociologist Claude Fischer which argues that claim about the negative effects “ignore the benefits.” Facebook also cites research from Sociologist Keith Hampton, from 2014, which says technology actually isn’t driving people apart, it’s driving more people to spend time in public.

“According to the research, it really comes down to how you use the technology. For example, on social media, you can passively scroll through posts, much like watching TV, or actively interact with friends — messaging and commenting on each other’s posts,” Facebook says. “Just like in person, interacting with people you care about can be beneficial, while simply watching others from the sidelines may make you feel worse.”

There are many health benefits to socializing that can’t happen while socializing through a social media platform. In 2010, a meta-analysis of 148 studies on social connection and health problems concluded that “the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption.” In other words, a state of isolation and loneliness can have detrimental health effects.

Facebook is right to note that social ties contribute to a better life, and that is part of the company’s mission, but the concern extends beyond than that. The concern is how the Internet as a whole, is keeping today’s humans, specifically teens, from connecting in real life. In-person interactions release oxytocin, and studies have shown that social interactions, in real life, can mitigate depression symptoms.

There is clearly a difference between digital social interactions though, and in-person social interactions, and it appears as if Facebook is missing the point: multiple studies suggest that social media keeps people, particularly teens, from socializing in real life.

Red Cross tells truckers to draw blood as nurses load trucks

(Credit: Shutterstock)

 A press release about a labor dispute at the American Red Cross (ARC) is challenging perceptions of the venerable institution and how it conducts its mobile unit blood drives.

Issued in early November by Council 32 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the announcement states:

In recent months, the Red Cross-Badger Hawkeye Region began to require nursing staff to load and drive trucks and truck drivers/loaders to draw donors’ blood. Those who refuse risk the loss of their jobs.

AFSCME also notes that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has “found sufficient grounds” to hear the union’s unfair labor practice complaint on behalf of members subject to the combined and seemingly disparate job duties.

ARC, the complaint asserts, unilaterally imposed the work scheme while “failing and refusing to bargain collectively and in good faith,” which is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

AFSCME District Representative Neil Rainford says a ruling on the complaint covering members in Wisconsin and northeast Iowa could impact thousands of workers under a sweeping 2015 “national addendum” between ARC and eight major unions with dozens of local affiliates. Some unions have had regional contracts in place for years.

AFSCME was and is willing to bargain over new classifications with the right protections, Rainford says, but is pushing back as ARC pushes forward with a plan that’s “bad for donors and bad for staff.”

ARC’s job posting for the hybrid Driver/Phlebotomist position has no requirements beyond a high school diploma, people skills and the ability to drive legally and move heavy objects. Rainford says the position pays less than what current nursing staff earn — even as it morphs two jobs into one.

Longtime ARC supporter Ruth Brill tells In These Times she is appalled. Since 1971, Brill says, she has given 20 gallons of blood and served for six years on ARC’s regional blood services board of directors.

“I’ve seen changes from having a doctor at every drive and then nurses, and then it went to phlebotomists, and now it’s going to truck drivers with little training,” Brill says. “This is disrespectful to donors. We shouldn’t have to ask or even know to ask for an experienced person. They should all be qualified.”

For all the exasperation Brill feels, workers interviewed for this article are even more impacted. All are skilled, with as many as 30 years on the job. Unless they prevail at the NLRB or recast themselves in ARC’s mold, they face obsolescence like so many widgets waiting to be replaced by newer, cheaper units. They worry about the risks to themselves and the public.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the workers quoted here are identified by pseudonyms. AFSCME Council 32 backs up their central claims and allegations, and an AFSCME representative has verified their observations.

Nursing staff to do truck work  

Casey, Chris and Rory work out of different ARC bases in the region and are members of the predominately female AFSCME Local 1205. They are among the nurses and phlebotomists whose regular duties include direct donor contact and care.

They meet and greet, ask dozens of questions and perform mini physicals to assess donors’ health. They locate, puncture and draw blood from a suitable vein and extract the needle in a way that prevents dangerous spills.

They use computers that track vital information and run machines that collect life-saving blood. They minister to nervous first-timers and administer any aftercare that’s needed in case, for example, a donor faints.

They do all that and more. They draw the line at loading and driving trucks.

Depending on the size of the blood drive, hundreds to thousands of pounds of equipment and supplies must be moved. “I don’t know how they’d do it,” Casey says of co-workers at her location. “Some of the people here weigh maybe 120 pounds—little, tiny gals. I’m 165, and I couldn’t do it. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Long-term staff, some in their 50s, have resisted, but pressure from management is mounting. “Some people say they are being bullied,” Casey adds. “Nobody wants to lose their jobs, but we’re trying to stick up for our rights.”

At Chris’s base, no senior staffer has had to do truck work yet, but the word is out that change is coming. Management hasn’t had much luck in retaining new hires for the hybrid positions. “They’ve hired roughly 10 people,” Chris says, “and only have four left.”

Dispatched to blood drives at schools, arenas and other venues throughout the region, Local 1205 members already put in long days. They often arrive early in the morning, work 8-12 hour shifts, and then return home late at night only to start all over again the next day.

Hours are irregular and can include work on weekends and holidays. Adding driver and loader duties could extend work another two to three hours.

“You can’t focus if you’re too tired,” Chris says. “You’ve got to follow procedures, and, if not, it can really mess up things. It’s happened!”

Chris brands the double-duty experiment with new hires as “trial and error that wasted so much time and money” and has some long-term staff saying they’ll have to leave too.

“We work too hard to have to deal with donors and put on a good face, and we are not going to accept having to do all these other things that are not making anything better,” says Chris. “It’s just making everything worse.”

At a third location, Rory recounts similar problems — not the least of which is the training ARC gives new hires for the hybrid jobs. With staff cutbacks in the education department and implementation of a virtual classroom, Rory says cross-trained workers are “not equipped with skills or knowledge” for the job — and “it shows.”

Rory is fiercely protective of the truck drivers, who are mostly men and mostly members of AFSCME Local 1558. Classified as Mobile Unit Assistants (M.U.A.s), they do the sorting, moving, driving, lifting and other tasks that enable the nursing staff to provide donor services that have been covered by a union contract for 30 years.

“I love our M.U.A.’s,” Rory says, worried about what will happen to the drivers. “They are being punished for work management took from them and gave to us.”

Truckers to draw blood 

Drew, Sean and Morgan know well the rigors of skilled M.U.A. work. It’s hard and physical and requires working outdoors in all kinds of weather.

In sweltering heat, torrential rains or frigid temps with “black ice” roads, M.U.A.’s, like postal workers, are not deterred from their “appointed rounds” — and they drive long distances while carrying expensive cargo, precious blood and human beings.

They load, unload and set up sensitive equipment, medical supplies, electrical cables, beds for donor care and whatever else is needed for the blood drive. Stairs, narrow doorways or lack of a loading dock require items to be hand carried. They package and store blood collected at the drive, do paperwork and sometimes have to lift a passed-out donor off the floor. It’s all in a day’s work.

As much as some nursing staff oppose working on trucks, some M.U.A.s oppose drawing blood. “We don’t want to be sticking needles in people’s arms,” Drew says.

A driver at Drew’s base, fearful of getting laid off, has already crossed over to the hybrid job. “He’s miserable,” Drew says. “He just doesn’t seem to be engaged in the work. He didn’t want to do it in the first place. I don’t think he’s real good at it, and he’s definitely exposing himself to more errors, but we’re so understaffed that management is more tolerant because they can’t find replacements.”

Drew says that only one in ten new hires stayed on after training, which itself has been lacking. “Ever since the consent decree got lifted, Red Cross has gutted the education department,” Drew explains. “It was mandated by the FDA before.”

From 1993 through 2015, ARC was under a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) consent decree that cracked down on violations of blood safety laws and regulations. In the middle of the AIDS epidemic, the FDA found that ARC’s practices had exposed the blood supply to threats of contamination. Among other requirements, ARC had to upgrade its quality assurance program and training for workers.

In 2001, the FDA pursued civil contempt charges against ARC for continued violations and warned of the “lifetime risk of serious disease or death” from “virally contaminated blood.” Media reported cases of infection and death from transfused blood in the U.S. as well as Canada where over 3,000 people have died.

ARC has incurred FDA fines and penalties of tens of millions of dollars. The Badger Hawkeye region was among those the FDA cited for a litany of violations, including “Inadequate Training and Staffing Levels.”

Drew and other workers worry that poor training, lack of experience and a big workload will lead to mistakes that compromise blood donors and recipients. “A pint of blood not drawn properly can kill people,” Drew says, “and in fact it has.”

ARC disputes that there’s anything wrong with its practices and says training is adequate.

In an email to In These Times, ARC external communications manager Laura McGuire says:  “Employees are provided safety training on how to perform this work without harm. The Red Cross is dedicated to making every effort to provide safe working conditions for all employees.”

McGuire says ARC “adheres to all required state and regulatory training” and that workers are required to complete “regulated phlebotomist training as well as driver training, among other trainings.”

Phlebotomy training “takes approximately eight to 10 weeks,” she says, and “Collections staff are not allowed to perform phlebotomy independently until they have demonstrated competency and received approval from their instructor. All Red Cross employees who perform phlebotomy receive an annual competency assessment.”

McGuire says ARC has “been bargaining in good faith for the past 18 months.” She says, “the top priority of the Red Cross is the safety of our blood donors, employees, volunteers and the patients in need of lifesaving blood products.”

Some workers see it differently. “The idea of combining blood work and truck work is something “I can’t wrap my mind around,” says Morgan. “It’s two totally different jobs. I can understand cross-training, but loading a truck with all that equipment and then doing needle sticks just blows my mind.”

The drivers’ “goofy hours,” heavy-duty labor and “super long days” are challenging enough without adding delicate medical procedures to the mix, Morgan says. “We have a well-oiled machine that knows every idiosyncrasy, works hard, and gets grimy and sweaty — and we’re supposed to do sticks too? I can’t fathom that.”

It’s not that drivers aren’t willing to take on more. They are. But Sean believes there was a plan in progress over the years as ARC peeled away clerical duties drivers performed at blood drives and assigned them to nursing staff.

“They wanted to eliminate M.U.A.’s,” Sean says. “They took responsibilities from us and now view us as a boat anchor.”

As workers tell it, the real drag on the operation is coming from decisions made far away at ARC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., without input from people like Sean and others on the frontlines. The result, they say, is a system that’s slower, glitchier and riskier — and at the root of the worst employee morale they’ve seen in their careers.

“We are willing and capable of so much more,” Sean says. “We’ve agreed to do more! But I wouldn’t be surprised if, two years from now, we come in and have someone meet us at the door, saying, ‘Give us your ID. You’re done.’”

9 revelations about Trump becoming unhinged

(Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

On Saturday, the New York Times offered a lengthy look at Donald Trump’s presidency from the inside with an article informed by “60 [presidential] advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.” The piece is a portrait of a president who has made almost no strides toward being a competent statesman and instead continues to do things his way, in the hope he can reinvent his role on his own ill-defined terms. The Trump presidency has largely been defined by the president’s highly visible insecurities and outsized ego. “Despite all his bluster, [Trump] views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously.” Also, the guy seems able to tear himself away from his television only long enough to take in a few rounds of golf.

Here are nine of the craziest revelations from the Times article.

1. He watches a ton of television, but lies about it.

As soon as he wakes around 5:30am each morning, Trump turns on cable news and channel-hops throughout the day. Fox News shows like “Fox & Friends,” along with programs hosted by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro, which offer unfailingly fawning coverage, give the president “comfort and messaging ideas.” Trump reportedly “hate watches” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNN, particularly Don Lemon, in order to get “fired up.”

Those close to the president told the Times they “estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted.” (According to staffers, “[n]o one touches the remote control except Mr. Trump and the technical support staff — at least that’s the rule.”)

He also lies about his level of TV consumption. During a recent trip to Asia he insisted reports about his television obsession were based on “fake sources,” out of fears it would bolster “criticism that he is not taking the job seriously.”

2. He’s erratic, and his behavior is often determined by how his news coverage looks.

Trump basically starts tweeting from his iPhone shortly after waking and taking in cable news headlines, even dashing off messages “while propped on his pillow.” Staffers are careful to keep an eye on “Fox & Friends” live in the morning for a guide to the president’s headspace and a sense of how difficult the day will be.

“If someone on the show says something memorable and Mr. Trump does not immediately tweet about it, the president’s staff knows he may be saving Fox News for later viewing on his recorder and instead watching MSNBC or CNN live — meaning he is likely to be in a foul mood to start the day.”

But moodiness means that the president is unpredictable at every turn; cranky and volatile one moment and personable the next. “Several advisers said the president may curse them for a minor transgression…then make amiable small talk with the same person minutes later.”

3. He still doesn’t read and needs briefings tailored to his short attention span.

Trump has previously admitted that he doesn’t read because he imagines he has “a lot of common sense.” His disdain for knowledge has been a consistent marker of his approach to U.S. intelligence. Post-election, Trump defended his practice of skipping most daily briefings by noting he didn’t need “to be told the same thing in the same words every single day” since he is “like, a smart person.” He now gets verbal updates each day, with staffers noting he has “become more attentive during daily intelligence briefings thanks to pithy presentations by Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director.”

“He really loves verbal briefings,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the Times. “He is not one to consume volumes of books or briefings.”

4. He drinks up to 12 Diet Cokes a day.

According to a new book by erstwhile campaign Trump staffers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, “On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke.” (Another Trump staffer told Axios, “Big Macs were served on silver trays in his private jet.”) The Times reports that Trump puts away two six-packs of Diet Cokes every single day, which he guzzles while (what else?) channel surfing and spouting off to anyone within earshot.

“Watching cable, [Trump] shares thoughts with anyone in the room, even the household staff he summons via a button for lunch or one of the dozen Diet Cokes he consumes each day.”

5. For all his complaints about his news coverage, he absolutely hates not being talked about.  

According to insiders, Trump gets sad when he doesn’t see himself prominently featured among the day’s stories. Who would have thought a narcissist with the most fragile of egos would desperately need any kind of attention he can get.

To an extent that would stun outsiders, Mr. Trump, the most talked-about human on the planet, is still delighted when he sees his name in the headlines. And he is on a perpetual quest to see it there. One former top adviser said Mr. Trump grew uncomfortable after two or three days of peace and could not handle watching the news without seeing himself on it.

6. He persists in fabricating his own reality.

Nearly everyone in Trump’s orbit Times writers spoke with “raised questions about his capacity and willingness to differentiate bad information from something that is true.” That jibes with a recent report from the Washington Post that even behind closed doors, the president traffics in falsehoods and conspiracy theories, raising absurd questions about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, insisting he actually won the popular vote and suggesting 2005 Access Hollywood footage of him bragging about grabbing women’s pussies may not be real.

7. He thought being president would be like ruling a monarchy.

Trump had never held a role in the military or government before the election and was clearly uninterested in politics or policy. During the campaign season, he promised to defend nonexistent Articles of the Constitution, while as president, he revealed complete ignorance about Abraham Lincoln’s membership in the Republican Party of yore. After eight years of enduring racist taunts about every move he made, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama had to “spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do” because Donald Trump was so out of his depth coming into the job.

In April, Trump told Reuters that being president is “more work than in [his] previous life,” and that he’d thought leading the country “would be easier.” Which is dunderheaded for all the obvious reasons, but also because Trump essentially thought winning the U.S. presidential election was akin to becoming king, per the Times report.

Mr. Trump’s difficult adjustment to the presidency, people close to him say, is rooted in an unrealistic expectation of its powers, which he had assumed to be more akin to the popular image of imperial command than the sloppy reality of having to coexist with two other branches of government.

The story goes on to note that “Trump expected being president would [entail] . . .ruling by fiat, exacting tribute and cutting back-room deals.”

8. Nancy Pelosi offered this blatant and totally undisguised shade.

“[H]e was utterly unprepared for this. It would be like you or me going into a room and being asked to perform brain surgery. When you have a lack of knowledge as great as his, it can be bewildering.”

9. Despite the mere five years that separate them, Trump made fun of Bernie Sanders’ age.

While giving a White House tour to four Democratic legislators, Trump began speculating on who might run against him in 2020. He suggested Bernie Sanders would almost certainly run “even if he’s in a wheelchair,” and then mocked both the aged and disabled by “making a scrunched-up body of a man in a wheelchair.”

The secret behind the success of the new “Star Wars” films

Daisy Ridley as Rey in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm)

In the 40 years since the original “Star Wars” film premiered, the franchise has been a pop culture powerhouse.

“The Last Jedi” — the latest edition in the series — looks to continue the trend, with huge box office returns expected.

It also looks poised to join “The Force Awakens” (93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and “Rogue One” (85 percent) as “Star Wars” films that are both commercially and critically successful.

Not all “Star Wars” films have hit that sweet spot. It’s sometimes easy to forget the prequel trilogy — “The Phantom Menace” (1999), “Attack of the Clones” (2002) and “Revenge of the Sith” (2005) — wasn’t met with the same enthusiastic response from critics and fans, and hasn’t been looked upon kindly since.

What made the prequel trilogy such a (relative) dud? Why are the more recent films being so much better received?

If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it

Research I helped conduct on what makes for a good extension (sequel or prequel) may provide some insight.

My colleagues and I tracked audience reactions to sequels and prequels over the course of nearly a hundred franchises, from “Psycho” to “X-Men.”

Our results show that the successful franchises make smaller, gradual updates — rather than sweeping changes — in each successive film. And it fits well with what we know about audience behavior: They seek a balance between the familiar and the new; while they aren’t looking for a carbon copy of the originals, they’re hoping to relive some of the most vivid, nostalgic moments from the first films.

With these findings in mind, let’s reexamine prequel series of “Star Wars.” When “The Phantom Menace,” the first of the prequels, was released in 1999, it had been 16 years since audiences had seen a new “Star Wars” film. (The original trilogy had just finished up a successful theatrical re-release.)

But fans hoping to relive the magic of the originals were in for a surprise.

The beloved trio of Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Harrison Ford (Han Solo) and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) gave way to new faces: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman. Instead of relying on real sets, miniatures and models to pull off the breathtaking special effects in the originals, director George Lucas opted mostly for computer-generated and digital effects. There were also changes to the rules of the “Star Wars” world. The Force was no longer being described as an all-encompassing life force that bound everyone together; it was now being explained as the result of special biological cells called “midichlorians.” (And I won’t even go into the widely loathed Jar Jar Binks.)

Out with the new, in with the old

In contrast the newest film, “The Last Jedi,” includes many of the original cast members. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher return to portray Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, respectively. And it features the popular “hero’s journey” plot device of the original films, in which an ordinary person’s life is unexpectedly upended, and he is thrust into the role of the hero.

We see this phenomenon in other film series and even product lines. Though the lead actor will occasionally change, the James Bond series never strays from its action-film formula. Apple has a similar approach when releasing new iPhones; before taking the leap to a radically new version, it will release an incremental “S” version of the previous model as a bridge.

That isn’t to say the new “Star Wars” films aren’t making any changes: There are more female protagonists, in addition to a host of new characters. But this isn’t exactly shattering fans’ expectations.

Our research also found that the deeper into a franchise you get, the more major changes audiences are willing to accept. The next “Star Wars” trilogy will expand the boundaries of the “Star Wars” world, exploring planets and featuring characters not yet seen on film.

With this move, the studio is willing to bet that audiences are finally ready to accept some major changes in the franchise – something they weren’t quite ready for yet when the prequels were released.

However, in order to ensure the Force remains strong over the franchise’s lifetime, these future films would be wise to continue including at least a handful of nods to the original trilogy.

Subimal Chatterjee, Professor of Marketing, Binghamton University, State University of New York

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Hanukkah’s true meaning? Jewish survival

In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 5, 2015, a nine-branched Jewish candelabrum, or Hanukkah Menorah, rests on a table in the main Jewish synagogue in Lisbon. Portugal enacted in March a law to grant citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews exiled during the Inquisition 500 years ago. Spain is about to adopt a similar law but its different requirements have brought criticism. (Credit: (AP Photo/Francisco Seco))

Beginning on the evening of Dec. 12, Jews will celebrate the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, perhaps the best-known and certainly the most visible Jewish holiday.

While critics sometimes identify Christmas as promoting the prevalence in America today of what one might refer to as Hanukkah kitsch, this assessment misses the social and theological significance of Hanukkah within Judaism itself.

Let’s consider the origin and development of Hanukkah over the past more than 2,000 years.

Early history

Though it is 2,200 years old, Hanukkah is one of Judaism’s newest holidays, an annual Jewish celebration that does not even appear in the Hebrew Bible.

The historical event that is the basis for Hanukkah is told, rather, in the post-biblical Books of the Maccabees, which appear in the Catholic biblical canon but are not even considered part of the Bible by Jews and most Protestant denominations.

Based on the Greco-Roman model of celebrating a military triumph, Hanukkah was instituted in 164 B.C. to celebrate the victory of the Maccabees, a ragtag army of Jews, against the much more powerful army of King Antiochus IV of Syria.

In 168 B.C., Antiochus outlawed Jewish practice and forced Jews to adopt pagan rituals and assimilate into Greek culture.

The Maccabees revolted against this persecution. They captured Jerusalem from Antiochus’s control, removed from the Jerusalem Temple symbols of pagan worship that Antiochus had introduced and restarted the sacrificial worship, ordained by God in the Hebrew Bible, that Antiochus had violated.

Hanukkah, meaning “dedication,” marked this military victory

with a celebration that lasted eight days and was modeled on the festival of Tabernacles (Sukkot) that had been banned by Antiochus.

How Hanukkah evolved

The military triumph, however, was short-lived. The Maccabees’ descendants — the Hasmonean dynasty — routinely violated their own Jewish law and tradition.

Even more significantly, the following centuries witnessed the devastation that would be caused when Jews tried again to accomplish what the Maccabees had done. By now, Rome controlled the land of Israel. In A.D. 68-70 and again in A.D. 133-135, the Jews mounted passionate revolts to rid their land of this foreign and oppressing power.

The first of these revolts ended in the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple, the preeminent center of Jewish worship, which had stood for 600 years. As a result of the second revolt, the Jewish homeland was devastated and countless Jews were put to death.

War no longer seemed an effective solution to the Jews’ tribulations on the stage of history.

In response, a new ideology deemphasized the idea that Jews should or could change their destiny through military action. What was required, rabbis asserted, was not battle but perfect observance of God’s moral and ritual law. This would lead to God’s intervention in history to restore the Jewish people’s control over their own land and destiny.

In this context, rabbis rethought Hanukkah’s origins as the celebration of a military victory. Instead, they said, Hanukkah should be seen as commemorating a miracle that occurred during the Maccabees’ rededication of the temple: The story now told was how a jar of temple oil sufficient for only one day had sustained the temple’s eternal lamp for a full eight days, until additional ritually appropriate oil could be produced.

The earliest version of this story appears in the Talmud, in a document completed in the sixth century A.D. From that period on, rather than directly commemorating the Maccabees’ victory, Hanukkah celebrated God’s miracle.

This is symbolized by the kindling of an eight-branched candelabra (“Menorah” or “Hanukkiah”), with one candle lit on the holiday’s first night and an additional candle added each night until, on the final night of the festival, all eight branches are lit. The ninth candle in the Hanukkiah is used to light the others.

Throughout the medieval period, however, Hanukkah remained a minor Jewish festival.

What Hanukkah means today

How then to understand what happened to Hanukkah in the past hundred years, during which it has achieved prominence in Jewish life, both in America and around the world?

The point is that even as the holiday’s prior iterations reflected the distinctive needs of successive ages, so Jews today have reinterpreted Hanukkah in light of contemporary circumstances – a point that is detailed in religion scholar Dianne Ashton’s book, “Hanukkah in America.”

Ashton demonstrates while Hanukkah has evolved in tandem with the extravagance of the American Christmas season, there is much more to this story.

Hanukkah today responds to Jews’ desire to see their history as consequential, as reflecting the value of religious freedom that Jews share with all other Americans. Hanukkah, with its bright decorations, songs, and family- and community-focused celebrations, also fulfills American Jews’ need to reengage disaffected Jews and to keep Jewish children excited about Judaism.

Poignantly, telling a story of persecution and then redemption, Hanukkah today provides a historical paradigm that can help modern Jews think about the Holocaust and the emergence of Zionism.

In short, Hanukkah is as powerful a commemoration as it is today because it responds to a host of factors pertinent to contemporary Jewish history and life.

Over two millennia, Hanukkah has evolved to narrate the story of the Maccabees in ways that meet the distinctive needs of successive generations of Jews. Each generation tells the story as it needs to hear it, in response to the eternal values of Judaism but also as is appropriate to each period’s distinctive cultural forces, ideologies and experiences.

Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies, College of the Holy Cross

Too much Christmas music really can drive you bonkers, psychologist says

(Credit: Shutterstock/Salon)

We’ve hit that time of the year when Christmas music is everywhere. Nearly two weeks before Thanksgiving, more than a dozen radio stations had already started playing a constant rotation of holiday music. Walgreens and CVS employees experience a nonstop barrage of Christmas songs on repeat. In the UK, you can’t pass an hour without being assailed by the strains of Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody.” If it all begins to feel a bit maddening, you’re not imagining it.

Psychologist Linda Blair says that the endless loop of Christmas music can actually take a toll on our mental health. That’s true for a lot of us, but especially for those who work in environments where blaring Christmas music is the perpetual soundtrack to their workday.

“People working in the shops at Christmas have to learn how to tune out Christmas music, because if they don’t, it really does stop you from being able to focus on anything else,” Blair said in an interview with Sky News. “You’re simply spending all of your energy trying not to hear what you’re hearing.”

In fact, one quarter of retail workers in the US and UK say they feel “less festive” as a result of being forced to hear Christmas music all day long, according to a study by Spotify-owned Soundtrack Your Brand. One in six said all that Christmas music actually “dampens their emotional well-being.”

“Feeling less festive is a specific mental reaction to listening to Christmas music and rebelling against it, whereas the data showing it can have a negative effect on worker wellbeing must be treated with much more caution,” Soundtrack Your Brand founder Ola Sars told the New York Post. “In what can be a highly stressful job at this time of year, it’s important to consider whether a store’s soundtrack is actually increasing stress among its staff.”

There’s a direct and fairly predictable correlation between enjoyment of music and the frequency with which it’s heard. Music researchers have found that even if you like a song, your contentmentment with it peaks at a certain point. Too much play yields diminishing returns and a tendency to like the song less and less. The pattern fits the shape of an upside-down U.

The holiday season seems to kick off earlier each year, with Christmas music becoming pervasive in some stores even before Halloween. According to a study by the Tampa Bay Times, Best Buy outlets flipped to a nonstop Christmas shopping soundtrack on October 22. Sears/Kmart, H&M and Walmart started with the festive music in early to mid-November. Footlocker, Dunkin Donuts and Nordstrom all had the decency to wait until Thanksgiving before assailing shoppers with constant Christmas songs.

Fifty-six percent of American shoppers said they actually enjoy being trailed through store aisles by a Christmas playlist, though nearly a quarter said they don’t want to hear holiday songs before December 1. And while Christmas music can be soul-crushing for store employees who can’t escape it, the sounds can be good for business: a 2003 study found that the right balance of Christmas-oriented smells and sounds makes shoppers feel good about their surroundings. Capitalism, do your thing.

Expect more Christmas music than ever this year, as more artists churn out holiday songs, which inevitably sell. And radio stations will keep the Christmas songs playing until December 26.

“It’s become like our Super Bowl,” Jim Loftus, CEO of 101.1 FM in Philadelphia told the OC Register. “Our audience almost doubles.”

“Christmas music is like the gingerbread latte,” Kenny King, program director at WASH-FM told the outlet.“It’s here for a limited time only, and it’s extremely popular.”

Morgan Spurlock’s unconvincing confession

Morgan Spurlock (Credit: Getty/Vittorio Zunino Celotto)

Along with the truly nauseating details of so many recent high profile revelations of sexual harassment and abuse (I’m still reeling from Matt Lauer’s Bond villain door lock) one of the biggest surprises of this watershed moment is discovering how truly awful guys like Morgan Spurlock are at apologizing.

Perhaps seeking a measure of control over a story that by now sounds strikingly familiar, the documentary filmmaker revealed on Twitter Wednesday evening that “I am part of the problem.” What followed was a lengthy mea culpa — and mixed reviews from his social media audience. Some saw Spurlock as “brave to come forward honestly” and praised his “unbelievable courage;” others pondered that “self-victimization is an abuse tactic” and noted the “performative” aspect of Spurlock’s confession and its poetic repetitiveness. I’m still trying to get my head around how someone who is a paid professional storyteller could be so outrageously bad at this. 

Spurlock now joins a long line of men that includes Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey, men who you’d think would know how to craft an apology that at least carries a whiff of comprehension about the nature of thing being apologized for. Couldn’t they, I don’t know, ask another human to give their statements a once over? Or are these guys still so driven by their own hubris, so insulated from real criticism, that they can’t entertain the possibility that their crap statements about their crap behavior are not applause-worthy? Let’s take a look at some examples of how what ought to have been Spurlock’s straightforward acknowledgment of contrition became instead a total garbage fire.

As I sit around watching hero after hero, man after man,

Right out of the gate, in your very first words, dude, you lost me. Visualize having the empathy to consider that maybe the men you consider “heroes” have for a very long time been part of whisper network of known predators. You may be late to party, but immediately identifying actual sexual offenders as “heroes” is an inauspicious start.

 fall at the realization of their past indiscretions,

They didn’t fall at the “realization” of “indiscretions.” They were “exposed” as “serial abusers,” who are in several cases accused of “criminal sexual assault.” Fixed that for you.

I don’t sit by and wonder “who will be next?” I wonder, “when will they come for me?”

Because it’s important here to start portraying the men and women who’ve come forward about their experiences of abuse and harassment as a pitchfork mob.

When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of rape. Not outright. There were no charges or investigations, but she wrote about the instance in a short story writing class and called me by name.

What follows next is an odd story of the he said-she said aftermath of what Spurlock describes as a drunken encounter. While it’s not possible to discern whether Spurlock’s is an accurate version of events, it does seem safe to question why he’s bringing it up. Could his motives for insisting that:

I tried to comfort her. To make her feel better. I thought I was doing ok, I believed she was feeling better. She believed she was raped

include the classic, undermining suggestion that a woman’s claim of assault is really just a big misunderstanding, just a hookup that went wrong? He continues by moving into his work years.

I would call my female assistant “hot pants” or “sex pants” when I was yelling to her from the other side of the office. Something I thought was funny at the time, but then realized I had completely demeaned and belittled her to a place of non-existence. So, when she decided to quit, she came to me and said if I didn’t pay her a settlement, she would tell everyone.

Translation: I thought I was being funny, she then basically blackmailed me.

And then there’s the infidelity. I have been unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend I have ever had. Over the years, I would look each of them in the eye and proclaim my love and then have sex with other people behind their backs.

Yeah, no one cares. No. One. Cares. In much the same that Kevin Spacey unsuccessfully tried to deflect an accusation of predatory behavior to underage males by coming out as gay, admitting you cheat on your partners has exactly nothing to do with harassment. Consensual adult private behavior — even behavior that is selfish and dishonest — is nobody’s business but yours and your family’s. Trying to smoosh your consenting and allegedly non-consenting actions together into one litany of bad choices is just manipulative. And more troublingly, it suggests you don’t grasp the distinction.

But why? What caused me to act this way?

Here Spurlock launches into an examination of possible motives for his actions, including sexual abuse, his father’s abandonment, alcohol and depression. No sentient person would wish those experiences on any other human being, and Spurlock deserves as much healing and compassion as any abuse survivor. Yet the amount of time he devotes to his own suffering and to assigning outside explanations for his own behavior are pretty telling — and very familiar to anyone who’s ever watched someone go from apologizing to rationalizing at whiplash speed. 

I am part of the problem. We all are.

Are we?

But I am also part of the solution.

Are you?

By recognizing and openly admitting what I’ve done to further this terrible situation, I hope to empower the change within myself. We should all find the courage to admit we’re at fault.

How very self congratulatory of you!

I’m finally ready to listen.

We’ll see.

It’s really not so hard to say, “I did bad things and I am very sorry.” It’s not hard to come up with a concrete action plan beyond “listening.” Who are you going to listen to, specifically? Name a single individual or organization. What are you going to do, precisely, to change the culture in your work environment? You’ve obviously had time to think about this over the past several weeks, but did you think in a way that wasn’t about protecting your own career and brand? How can you make this a story that’s not — just like nearly every single other man who’s been in this spot lately — about your newfound journey of discovery, but is instead about actually doing something constructive for women?

Spurlock has been relatively quiet on Twitter since his Wednesday announcement. But shortly after, he retweeted three replies. Two of them were from women. Both, apparently approvingly, used the word “courage.”

The Lost Action Hero: “Jean-Claude Van Johnson”

Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Jean-Claude Van Johnson" (Credit: Amazon Studios)

The typical movie fan probably hasn’t spent much time thinking about Jean-Claude Van Damme over the last two decades. Considering the omnipresence of his contemporaries in the ‘80s and ‘90 action blockbuster world — Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, even Dolph Lundgren — the fact that Van Damme faded into near-irrelevance is, like his new Amazon series “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” tragic and a little weird.

An entire generation of filmgoers grew up in the career gap occurring between the era when star of “Time Cop” and “Double Impact” was one of most famous men in the world, and his re-emergence in that 2013 Volvo online ad. You’ve seen it, right? In it, he serenely holds his athletic move between a pair of trucks moving in reverse on a highway as an Enya song lilts in the background. The audacity of the scene resulted in the ad going viral, and within days it had racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube.

If the Muscles from Brussels had concocted a colorful sequence proving that he could still do his signature split after all these years, that would have been something. But the Belgian martial artist is still a superstar at heart, even if his bankability in Hollywood has plummeted in recent years.

Debuting Friday to Prime members, “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” capitalizes these truths while building a lock-tight case as to why we should appreciate Van Damme more than we probably do, starting with the idea that projects his very existence hinging on the star’s willingness to poke fun at himself and own his flaws.  Other action icons cling to their image as unbeatable musclemen who are still kicking ass well into their dotage; “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” opens with Van Damme’s fictionalized self smugly attempting to perform the move that made him famous, failing, and getting wailed in the face.

“Jean-Claude Van Johnson” depicts a fictional version of Van Damme, a rumpled, retired actor mired in ennui despite being surrounded by luxury. Coconut water runs out of every tap in his architectural wonder of a home, and his kitchen cabinet are stuffed to the gills with Pop Tarts.

Alas, the one thing money and faded celebrity cannot buy is true love, something he believed to have found with his former colleague and on-set stylist Vanessa (Kat Foster). So in an attempt to win her back, he emerges from retirement to make his onscreen comeback in an action reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”

Ridiculous, yes. But that movie, like the rest of Van Damme’s career, is but a cover for his real job as a black-ops agent handled by the very cool and elegant Jane (Phylicia Rashad, clearly having a great time playing a hard-ass), the “M” to Van Damme’s comedic super spy. Unlike Bond, the hero is not immune to the ravages of time or sedentary life, or the pitfalls of ego.

Vanity is one of the many affectations Van Damme and series creator Dave Callaham skewers throughout their nimble and intentionally wacky six-episode comedy. Another is the illogical bombast of the action genre itself, a style of filmmaking that emphasized pyrotechnic overkill in Van Damme’s heyday as well as unrealistic choreography that ensured the hero would emerge from his confrontations with his reputation as an unbeatable killing machine intact.

The true action fan laughs off plot-holes and improbable feats that ignore the laws of physics and common sense, and Callaham winks at that throughout “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” by incorporating a few memorably ludicrous devices from Van Damme’s past hits into the story. A recurring debate throughout the season involves whether Van Damme’s “Time Cop” is better or more plausible than “Looper,” the more recent hit starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.  Callaham and director Peter Atencio (“Keanu”) take this odd contest, the stuff of late night dorm room blathering, to daft extremes.

As an element of a story that includes a supervillain straight out of Austin Powers, your standard world-conquest plot, and a sidekick with a dark past (Moises Arias), it makes sense in context. As a send-up of a genre whose popularity relies on its fans’ willingness to turn off their inner critic and enjoy the fight scenes, these weird flourishes get a pass. But none of this would work if not for Van Damme’s willingness to commit completely to the lunacy of this enterprise.

Callaham wrote the screenplay for “The Expendables,” a franchise created as an homage to those modern classics and the meaty men who starred in them. His affection for this style of blockbuster is obvious in the outlandish conceit of “Jean-Claude Van Johnson.” Even greater is his clear affection for the actor himself, in his wholeness. And in celebrating who Van Damme was at the peak of his career and who he is after his long fall from grace, about which the actor has been brutally honest, Callaham and Van Damme grant this series a balance of absurdity and gentle earnestness, even allowing it to end on a warm existential note.

It is a strange and wonderful show indeed that can satirize a genre (including staging a few fight scenes using actors who aren’t particularly good at fighting but are loved by the camera) and lampoon its star and his work without betraying the fans of either. But if “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” achieves nothing else, at least it reminds us why Van Damme used to be such a huge star in the first place while making us appreciate that this time, maybe he really is back.