Author Archives: HBKoplowitz

Have a Kosher Christmas

© 2007 by H.B. Koplowitz

Since first writing this Christmas story in 2007, I have re-posted it several times. But this year is probably the last because it has become woefully outdated. With recent events in Israel and Gaza, the idea that placing menorahs in holiday displays could symbolize inclusion has run its course. Either the menorahs will disappear or crescent stars will be added, as well they should be. As my outdated story notes, things change.

Sitting in the food court at the Target Center in West Hollywood, playing “Where’s Waldo?” with the holiday display. But it wasn’t hard to find the menorah, because the only other decorations were a quintet of festive wreathes and a single broadleaf tree strung with lights. When we asked a security guard where the Christmas tree was, he referred us to another shopping center. The transformation is complete, I thought. How did it come to pass that instead of putting Christ back into Christmas, they put in Jews?

Even as a Jewish atheist, I have mixed emotions about the menorahs, or more precisely, Hanukiahs, that have become ubiquitous in what used to be called Christmas decorations in public places. Like the letter “K” with a circle around it on certain products in the grocery store, the candelabra has become like a seal of approval that a Christmas decoration is kosher — if not blessed by a rabbi, politically (and legally) correct.

Although it’s not, unless you believe a menorah also represents Muslims, Buddhists and secularists. And Christians, because even if the mall had a Christmas tree, it’s no more a symbol of Christianity than Santa Claus. While crosses and creches are verboten, menorahs are the only overtly religious symbols seen at many public holiday displays that at their core commemorate one of the most significant events in the history of Christianity. “Merry Christmas” has been displaced by the generic “happy holidays,” and it’s become inappropriate to sing “Silent Night” at a public school madrigal, yet de rigueur to toss in “The Dreidle Song,” hardly a fair trade-off. Let’s face it, the Jews have stolen Christmas.

Not that we meant to. I imagine that every time a Christian sees a menorah in a holiday display, the first thing they think is “what’s that?” and then, “oh yeah, it’s a Jewish thing, they must have complained.” It’s as if the religious right, beset by atheists challenging religious displays on public property, decided to use the time-honored tactic of blaming the Jews. Like admitting a token black or female to an all-white men’s club, maybe they figured putting menorahs in Christmas decorations and taking out crosses would placate their critics while motivating their followers — and everyone else not Jewish and not represented in the holiday displays — to hold a good old-fashioned pogrom.

Fundamentalists and right-wing talk show hosts aren’t the only ones to notice that as Christian symbols disappear, those of other faiths and cultures are being added, especially those of “the other white religion.” But why should the Jews take all the heat? How about replacing the star on top of the Christmas tree with a crescent and star and let Muslims be “included” as well.

To get away from menorahs, a few nights later we took a ride through upscale Hancock Park to look at yard and home decorations, which were beautiful as usual. Hancock Park is hardly representative of Los Angeles, just as Los Angeles is hardly representative of America. But after cruising around for awhile, we realized that amongst the reindeer, Santas and Mrs. Clauses, the Christmas trees, snowflakes, gingerbread houses and elegantly lighted trees and shrubs, not only were there no menorahs, but no J.C.s. No crosses, no mangers, no stars of Bethlehem, nothing of a remotely religious nature.

Weird. It’s as if some Christians in America have become like Marranos — Spanish Jews who pretended to be Christians during the Inquisition to avoid torture. Perhaps feeling under siege by secularists, they have become crypto-Christians. But if there’s one time of the year Christians should be unabashedly proud of their religion, you’d think it would be Christmas, which celebrates the birth of the baby Jesus and all the warm and fuzzy Bible stores that go with it, as opposed to Easter, another neat Christian holiday, except for those prickly questions about who did what to whom.

Even as a Jewish atheist, it saddens me to see changes in the traditional American Christmas of my childhood. Say what you will about the Crusades, Inquisition and horny priests, Christians have the best holidays. So much so that my Jewish parents felt that denying my brother and me Christmas was tantamount to child abuse. Despite the religious overtones, as children we had Christmas trees at home, sang Christmas carols at school, sat on Santa’s lap at the mall, opened presents Christmas morning and had Christmas dinner with relatives.

About the time my brother and I figured out Santa Claus wasn’t real, our parents gently told us Jews don’t think Jesus is either, and we began to observe Hanukkah for a few years, although we still exchanged presents on Christmas Eve and visited family on Christmas Day. Because Hanukkah pales in comparison to Christmas. “The Dreidle Song” and most other Hanukkah songs suck, and the holiday drags on for eight days and jumps around from year to year because of the anachronistic Jewish lunar calendar. Except for the lighting of the candles, chanting of prayers and giving of gifts, there aren’t many rituals and traditions associated with the holiday.

Rather than celebrating the coming of a messiah, Hanukkah commemorates an ill-conceived revolt by a band of zealots whose reoccupation of the temple in Jerusalem ultimately resulted in Jewish banishment from the Holy Land for two-thousand years. The miracle of Christmas is the salvation of humankind. The miracle of the Festival of Lights is that when the zealots seized control of the temple, there was only enough olive oil to keep the eternal light lit for one day, but instead it burned for eight. Big whoop.

And while Hanukkah is a week, Christmas is a season, filled not just with Christmas decorations, Christmas trees, Christmas parades, Christmas sales, Christmas movies, Christmas carols, Christmas cards, Christmas parties and Christmas masses, but Christmas cheer and Christmas spirit — peace, charity, faith and family.

While the menorah in the holiday display on government property is about freedom of religion, the menorah on commercial property is about freedom of markets. Capitalists are de-Christianizing Christmas and turning it into what Richard Branson dubbed Chrismahanukwanzakah to spread its commercial appeal to China and developing nations where the religion is less popular and sometimes downright unpopular. Which is also why the menorah in the holiday display is mostly an American phenomenon.

Holidays are always evolving and turnabout is fair play. Big business is merely taking its cues from one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time, which is the spread of early Christianity. Capitalists are doing to Christians what Christians did to pagans when they turned their customs and traditions into “Christ Mass.” By blending Christmas with other cultures, capitalists convert others to their faith, which is commerce, and elevate their messiah, which is Mammon.

Then again, at most retail outlets, the Christmas spirit still prevails, even if they call it the holiday spirit. And maybe the menorah in the holiday display symbolizes more than tokenism and more than capitalism. Maybe it’s also a reflection of America’s growing recognition, if not complete acceptance, that we have become, indeed, have always been, a multicultural society. In that sense the menorah symbolizes ideals that are as American as they are Christian or Jewish — tolerance, diversity and inclusion. So maybe a kosher Christmas ain’t so bad after all.

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Mideast Rant

In this 6,500-word excerpt from my book, “Blackspanic College,” a memoir about my years teaching journalism at a predominantly Black and Hispanic community college in South Central Los Angeles, I attempt to explain the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in terms of racial tensions in America. To set the scene, it was the Spring 2002 semester, the next semester after I’d been accused by one of my students of being a racist, and who had branded me “Fungus Amongus.” I changed the names of the students and the college (Los Angeles Southwest College), to protect the innocent and spare the guilty from cheap shots, as well as to avoid meddlesome lawsuits. (In this blog post, some of the punctuation got omitted during the copy and paste process. Sorry about that.)

Chapter 11: Final project

I felt sorry for Jake, but free from my caretaker role, I considered other options for the class. To get students involved in the school newspaper, I thought about having them put out another “good news” edition, which could be considered a public relations project, and in addition, I’d be teaching students basic research and writing skills they could use in other classes.

After calling roll I told them about Jake having a relapse and how I’d be teaching the rest of the semester. By this point we had bonded enough so no one seemed particularly perturbed. But when I pitched the idea of publishing a newspaper, the students rebelled. Especially upset was Desiree. Young, thin and intense in a buzz cut and narrow tinted glasses, she said she couldn’t find anything about putting out a newspaper in the class syllabus. When Elicia, the student I’d hoped to make editor of the newspaper, said she was in Ikechukwu’s Mass Communications class, and he had also decided to produce a newspaper, which she was already editing, I relented, sort of.

Instead, as a public relations exercise, I assigned the students stories on campus services and facilities for a student handbook or “Survival Guide for Southland College.” Desiree was still upset, but when I asked why, my paranoia that she didn’t want the campus racist publishing newspapers turned out to be unfounded. She had thought public relations was a speech class and she wouldn’t have to write anything.

I divvied up assignments and had them read brochures, interview teachers and write stories on campus programs. Very informative and profoundly boring. After grading their rough drafts, I decided to chuck the handbook and get back to a more conventional curriculum. Then I got a more audacious idea. It started with me oversleeping. I called the English chair and made up a story about car trouble, and as I lingered in bed, half asleep, with an extra few days to prepare a class plan, I cast about for a topic that might capture the students’ interest more than a student handbook.

It was April 2002, and what was capturing my interest was the second Palestinian intifada. Sparked by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walking out on peace talks at Camp David, or then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon taking a walk at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, take your pick, Palestinians were rioting, lobbing missiles and blowing themselves up in Israeli buses, discos and malls, killing scores of civilians.

It was called the second intifada because of the first intifada, which was a massive Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993. The first intifada included strikes, boycotts and other forms of civil disobedience, but its most memorable feature was defenseless Palestinian youths throwing stones sometimes using slingshots, like David vs. Goliath at heavily equipped Israeli Defense Forces, who responded with tear gas, clubs and rubber bullets.

Stone-throwing youths were back for the second intifada, but its most prominent feature was the horrifying onslaught of suicide bombers. When Sharon, a hard-liner, was subsequently elected Israel’s prime minister, he responded by reoccupying the West Bank and putting Palestinian cities under curfews and martial law.

I wondered what Southland students thought about the Middle East, and why minorities and immigrants in this country weren’t strapping explosives onto themselves to kill white people. I figured blacks and Hispanics would sympathize with the Palestinians as oppressed peoples and view the Israelis as “the man.” What coping mechanisms did they use to deal with the daily indignities and overall oppressiveness of white America that the Palestinians seemed to lack in the Holy Land?

Bam. And then it hit me. What could be more in the public interest than a public relations campaign to bring peace to the Middle East? And what better group of public relations practitioners to design such a campaign than those who have had to cope with oppression in their own lives?

Needless to say, taking the class in that direction was risky. Before the students could do their P.R. campaign, I would need to give them some background on the history of the people, cultures, religions, governments and factions in the Middle East, which would be taking the class far afield from learning how to write a resume. And if Fungus Amongus appeared to be proselytizing for the Zionist cause, that would not be good. There was also the risk of offending a student while trying to draw analogies between different cultures. Worst of all, there was the distinct possibility that the Middle East would hold even less interest for the students than a handbook of campus services and facilities.

I tested the waters by assigning a case study from the textbook about international public relations BMW holding a photojournalism contest in the Middle East to promote the car company’s image in countries like Saudi Arabia. I had the students do market research by having them use an encyclopedia to answer basic demographic questions about the countries in the region. Then I broke them into groups to create P.R. projects.

I was encouraged when one group suggested the best P.R. would be for BMW to build a factory in the Middle East that would create jobs so more people could afford to buy BMWs. I was still nervous about committing to a class project on such a prickly subject, but had become obsessed with the idea and was spending all my time boning up on Middle East history, so in the end I decided to go for it.

At the start of the next class I told the students it would be an exciting day for their final project they were going to bring peace to the Middle East. Like the class exercise to create a public relations campaign for BMW, they would break into four work groups, only instead of a car company, they would be working for either the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority, and their target market would be either the Palestinian people or the Israeli people. And instead of selling cars, they would create a public relations campaign to get Jews and Arabs to trust each other.

I paused and there was an air of expectancy. At least I had their attention. Next I did my mea culpa. “As most of you probably know, I’m Jewish. Not a super religious Jew, not even a slightly religious Jew, but as comedian Chris Rock might say, Jew-ish. So consider me biased on the side of Israel, the so-called Jewish homeland. For example, I’m all for land for peace, only I think it ought to be Arab land for Israeli peace. I also believe the Palestinians should have their own country. It’s called Jordan, which is where most of them lived when Israel became a state.”

Stone silence.

“Palestinians,” I said, “have more in common with other Arabs than with European Jews, so it only makes sense to me, anyway that when the Arabs lost wars against Israel in 1948 and 1967, that other Arab countries should have taken in their Palestinian brothers and sisters and let them assimilate and become citizens, just like America has taken in refugees from all over the world. Instead, more than a million Palestinians still live in some 60 U.N.-run refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank. And except in Jordan, they are denied citizenship in other Arab countries.”

I said no matter how much the Arabs say they care about the Palestinians, they’ve never considered any other way to improve their quality of life except to destroy the Jewish homeland and replace it with a Palestinian homeland. “It’s kind of like during the early stages of the civil rights movement,” I said. “Whites said they wanted to help blacks they just didn’t want them moving into their neighborhoods.”

Uneasy laughter.

“Like I said, I’m not the most objective source of information on the Middle East,” I cautioned again. “So instead of pretending to be objective, I’m going to try to tell both sides of the story as best I can, and you can decide for yourself what to believe. I’m not trying to get you to pick a side, but to look for things Israelis and Palestinians have in common, things that can be used in a public relations campaign to get them to trust each other.”

I then tried to explain the difference between Palestine and Israel by saying Palestine is the name of a region in the Middle East that is also known as the Holy Land, while Israel is the name of a country in Palestine that was created by and for victims of anti-Semitism. “Not anti-Semitism like we think of it today,” I said. “When somebody tags a synagogue or vandalizes a Jewish cemetery, that’s just being obnoxious. I mean real anti-Semitism, like pogroms, which were periodic massacres of Jews in Czarist Russia, or the Holocaust, which was a systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany. Throughout history, no matter whether Jews tried to segregate themselves in small villages in Ukraine called shtetls, or assimilate into Berlin society, their lives were at risk. As a result, a movement known as Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, emerged among Jews who felt the only solution to their plight was to establish a homeland, or Jewish state, called Israel, so the next time some madman decided to wipe them out, they’d have someplace to go. Kind of like a wildlife refuge or protected area for an endangered species.”

Then I said Palestine is also the name of a proposed country for the victims of the victims of anti-Semitism. I said the old school Zionists who first sought to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine a century ago had a saying, “a land without a people for a people without a land,” but that was bull. Although there has never been a country called Palestine, Arabs had been living there for eons, and many of them were displaced during the creation of Israel.

“So one thing Israelis and Palestinians have in common is a sense of victimhood,” I said. “Jews were victims of the Holocaust, while Palestinians were victims of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe a mass exodus of more than 700,000 Arabs during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Some were massacred, some were terrorized and some fled in a panic, which some would call ethnic cleansing. But I must add that for similar reasons, a similar number of Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries to Israel in the years after the Nakba.”

Another thing Israelis and Palestinians have in common, I said, is that a lot of them have been refugees. Many of Israel’s refugees were middle-class European Jews who fled the Nazis, while a lot of the Palestinian refugees were middle-class Arabs who fled from Zionists.

I said Jews everywhere have what is known as the “right of return” to Israel, even though most of them have never lived there, and that Palestinians also want the right to return to their homeland, where, again, most of them have never lived, but their parents or grandparents did.

“Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust, so it’s unfair that their land should have been used to create a Jewish state,” I said. “But it’s one thing to commit genocide, as the Nazis did, and quite another to take people’s land, oftentimes by buying it, as the Zionists did. Yet the Palestinians have decided that statehood is the only solution to their problems as well. I don’t see the necessity myself, but if they want it, I think Israel is willing to let them have their own country, if they’d just stop blowing things up.”

Short of annihilating one or both sides, two solutions have been suggested to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I said. Under the one-state solution, Israelis and Palestinians would become citizens of the same state; under the two-state solution, they would each have their own state next to each other. The problem is that the Palestinians have never been willing to accept a two-state solution, if one of the states is a Jewish homeland, while the Jews have never been willing to accept a single state, where they would be a minority again.

“Many in our country are also concerned that immigrants, especially from south of the border, will become the majority,” I said. “The difference is that most immigrants to this country don’t hate America. They come here to share in the American dream, not to destroy it. Until the Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, can accept a Jewish homeland, not just on paper but in their hearts, it seems suicidal for Israel to allow four million angry Arabs into their country.”

In 1947, the U.N. voted to “split the baby” and create two states, I said. The Jews accepted the compromise, but the Arabs rejected it and went to war with Israel, which won. So Israel became a country while Palestine did not. And since then, more wars between Israel and Arab states have resulted in Israel occupying more territory, while Jewish settlers have continued to encroach on land that could be used for a Palestinian state.

With a public domain CIA map I’d downloaded off the Internet, I showed them what a speck Israel is compared to the rest of the Middle East. The two dozen or so Arab/Islamic countries in the region cover 5 million square miles, which is one-and-a-half times the size of the continental United States. That’s more than 600 times the size of Israel, which, including the occupied territories, is about 10,000 square miles the size of New Jersey, or Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties combined. There are 325 million Arabs in the Middle East, compared to about 6.5 million Israelis, many of them descendants of European and Russian Jews who moved to Palestine over the past century, but also more than a million Palestinian Arabs who never left and became Israeli citizens.

Israel is but a speck on the map of the Middle East.

Using a second CIA map, I showed how the proposed Palestinian state included two disconnected areas known as the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank is 2,000 square miles of rocky and hilly terrain on the east side of Israel and west of the Jordan River, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other sites sacred to three religions. There are more than 2 million Palestinians and a few hundred thousand Israeli settlers in the West Bank, which used to be part of Jordan, and in biblical times was the heartland of the Hebrew kingdoms of Judah and Israel.

Proposed Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

Gaza, which used to be part of Egypt and in biblical times was occupied by the Philistines is a 140-square-mile strip along the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with 1.3 million Palestinians and (at the time) 7,000 Israeli settlers.

I said everyone blames the Jews for the plight of the Palestinians, since obviously they took their land and continue to settle in the West Bank. But there are also other factors, including Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden, who want to turn back the clock to the Middle Ages, and pan-Arabists like Saddam Hussein, who prefer socialist dictatorships.

“Sadly, meddling by outside powers like Europe and the United States is another factor in the plight of the Palestinians,” I said. “Throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, and much of the rest of the world, Israel is seen as a nation of infidels who kicked a million people out of their homes as part of an imperialist plot by the West to take over the Middle East, steal its oil and replace its culture with McDonald’s and Baywatch.”

I said that whether or not I thought the Palestinians needed their own country, or where I thought it ought to be, I believed they deserved better lives, and that Israel and the international community should help them. “But so should the Arabs,” I added, “Instead, they’ve mostly used the Palestinians as pawns in a military and public relations campaign against Israel the more the Palestinians suffer, the worse Israel looks. The oil-rich Arab states haven’t allowed Palestinians to assimilate and become citizens of their countries, and they’ve contributed less money than America and Israel to the U.N. agencies that oversee the refugee camps and resettlement efforts.

“But I believe there’s still another reason for the plight of the Palestinians, and that is the Palestinians themselves,” I said. “Many Palestinians don’t want to assimilate. The Israelis have a saying: ‘Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ They have for decades turned down peace proposals and stirred up civil wars in the countries that did let them in, like Jordan and Lebanon, setting up guerrilla bases and provoking Israel to retaliate. Because at the core of the Palestinian national identity is the desire to return to their homeland. So instead of building new lives somewhere else, many Palestinians have chosen to remain refugees and endure incredible hardships until they can go back to where their ancestors lived.

“Not that I think Israel is perfect, or that the Palestinians haven’t gotten screwed. But despite its faults, I think Israel deserves to exist, mainly because of the Holocaust. Throughout history, Jews have been persecuted all over the world, but the Nazis took anti-Semitism to a whole new level. They systematically whacked six million Jews, while other countries, including the United States, wouldn’t take them in. As a result, after World War II, the U.N. voted to let the Jews have their own country.”

As I talked, I felt like most of the students were agreeing with me, which I wasn’t expecting. Whether they felt some kinship with the Jews because of Sunday school stories about slaves in Egypt, had a gang-infested neighborhood appreciation for what the Israelis were going through with the suicide bombers, or just hadn’t been exposed to the Palestinian side of the story, I perceived little sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Then again, all I had to go on was their grim-faced silence, because they weren’t asking questions, blurting out opinions or making wisecracks like they usually did. They were listening and they were judging how they felt about the Middle East, and, I began to realize, me.

I proceeded to launch into a fanciful history of the Middle East, from the biblical birth of Abraham in Ur to the births of Jesus in Bethlehem and Muhammad in Mecca, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabian Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Ottoman Turks, England and France, Hitler, Stalin, Zionists, Nasser, Arafat, superpowers and intifadas. The students were captivated by the narrative I was spinning, but after two days I was stalling out badly and losing focus on a P.R. campaign for peace in the Middle East. So I tried to simplify matters.

“Now that you have some background on the history of the Middle East, forget about religion and politics and just think of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a neighborhood zoning dispute,” I said on the third day. “Like in the 1950s, when Los Angeles decided to build a baseball stadium at Chavez Ravine, a Mexican-American community in East L.A. There was a lot of local opposition to the idea, and when some Chicanos wouldn’t sell their land, the city took it by eminent domain. And when some still wouldn’t move, the city forcibly evicted them and tore down their houses.

“In this scenario, the Palestinians who lost their land to Israel would be like the Hispanics who lived in Chavez Ravine, and the Jews would be like the city of Los Angeles. “Except instead of bringing the Brooklyn Dodgers to L.A., Zionists brought persecuted Jews to Palestine. Another difference is that instead of going away, the Palestinians are still trying to get their land back. It’s like the former residents of Chavez Ravine still squatting outside Dodger Stadium, 50 years later, demanding to return to their barrio in the outfield. You’d think at some point they’d say, ‘Hey, there’s a big stadium here. Maybe we should live somewhere else.’ But not the Palestinians.”

One of the Hispanic students, Jose, raised his hand. “That was wrong what they did to those people,” he said, referring to the Mexican Americans who used to live in Chavez Ravine. “It was illegal.”

“That’s right, Jose,” I said. “It was unfair to the people who lived in Chavez Ravine, and a lot of people are still pissed off about it. But you don’t see anyone trying to blow up Dodger Stadium, do you?”

Jose shrugged.

“For a two-state solution to work, those of you appealing to a Palestinian audience must convince them to recognize the existence of Dodger Stadium and stop trying to knock it down,” I said. “And those trying to sway an Israeli audience must convince them to stop expanding settlements on Palestinian territory to not erect a basketball arena next to the baseball stadium, where the Palestinians want to put up a soccer stadium.”

Then I turned up the heat. “Another way to think of the Middle East,” I said, “is to imagine the Hispanics of Chavez Ravine are Jews, and the blacks in South Central are Palestinians. When the city, which is Hitler, evicts the Jews from Chavez Ravine, they flee to South Central, where they speak a different language and have a different culture from the resident black community. Then, a Hispanic gang called the Zionists claims South Central as their own turf. In retaliation, a black gang called the PLO starts killing Jews, who kill more Palestinians, and next thing you know there’s riots and a full-fledged gang war. In this scenario, to promote a two-state solution, Hispanics would have to give back half their turf in South Central, while blacks would have to give up half their turf for a Jewish state.”

I paused. “Here’s another way to look at the situation,” I suggested. “Imagine that America is the Middle East, Hispanics are native Americans, and blacks are European Jews. The Palestinians are a tribe of Hispanics whose territory includes a small section of America called Brownland, which is Southern California from L.A. to the Mexican border. In 1492, Columbus discovers America, but there is no mass migration of white people or black slaves. Instead, European countries turn the Hispanic tribes of America into a couple dozen separate Hispanic states. Then, a bunch of European blacks fleeing poverty, racism and genocide move to Brownland and create their own state, called Blackland, with Southland College their Jerusalem, or capital. Blackland is the only state in America where blacks are a majority, and imagine there is no Africa, so Blackland is the only black homeland on the planet.

“Further, imagine Blackland is surrounded by Hispanic states that want to drive the blacks into the Pacific Ocean. They support the cause of a tribe of Hispanics called Palestinians, many of whose relatives were killed or fled during Blackland’s war for independence. Only instead of settling somewhere else, like Cleveland or Miami, they remain on reservations in other Native American states, where they form gangs of pachucos to reclaim their homeland.

“For the Israelis, allowing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be like taking Blackland and carving out a chunk of South Central L.A., including half of Southland College, and letting Hispanics have their own state. Brownland would also include Surf City. Only instead of laid-back beach communities in Orange County, it’s a seething slum of refugee camps crammed with vengeful descendants of Hispanics who had been driven out of Blackland. And like the West Bank, it’s full of gangs, with names like Hamas and Fatah.

“You get the picture,” I continued, “but I’m going to switch things up once more. Imagine that the Palestinians are both blacks and Hispanics, called Blackspanics, and the Jews are whites who have created a white supremacist state in Southern California called Whiteland. Blackspanics who live in Whiteland are allowed to become second-class citizens, where they work as domestics or farm laborers, but they live under Whiteland military occupation, with curfews, checkpoints, identity checks, racial profiling and other daily humiliations. Not to mention Whiteland security forces, who fire missiles at cars suspected of carrying Blackspanic freedom fighters, and bulldoze the homes of suicide bombers’ families. Even Blackspanics who believe in nonviolence resent the oppressive rule of the whites, and strikes, angry protests and riots are another aspect of their civil rights movement.

“Whites have offered Blackspanics reparations and a homeland in South Central, but not the right to return, which would put whites in the minority again. And lately, Blackspanic freedom fighters have been blowing up shopping malls, nightclubs, churches and buses all over Whiteland.

I paused, and silence filled the room. As I had laid out the scenarios, a few of the students had kind of rooted for Blackland or Brownland. But now they were mostly staring at their feet, uncomfortable with how gnarly race relations can be.

Finally, Desiree broke the ice. “Why can’t they all just get along?” she asked.

Paraphrasing Rodney King had become a cliche, but everyone welcomed the excuse to laugh, as did I.

“Actually, that’s a good question,” I said after the room quieted down. “In a more perfect world, Jews and Palestinians would blend into a single country with a secular government and multiethnic society call it Israelstine, Palisrael, or perhaps New Canaan. It’s politically incorrect to say it now, but Palestinians were once known as the Jews of the Arab world because they had similar reputations for brains and business. Together, Jews and Palestinians could make a combined state into an economic powerhouse and a beacon of democracy, tolerance and integration in the Middle East. But the level of hatred, fear and mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians has become so great that anyone who suggests they try living together is either laughed at or killed.

“It’s not exactly a public relations campaign, but what if Palestinians allowed Jewish settlers to live in their biblical homeland on the West Bank, as long as they became citizens of Palestine? Call it amnesty. And for every Israeli family that settled in the West Bank, Israel would allow a Palestinian family the right to return to Israel. In terms of building trust, a Palestine with Jews would be less threatening to Israel, just as an Israel with more Arabs would be less threatening to Palestine. And as the two states came to resemble each other demographically, who knows? If they could learn to live next to each other peacefully, down the road they might merge and unite their countries. Stranger things have happened look at South Africa.”

I moved on. “Confused yet? Well, it gets worse. You’ll notice I’ve barely mentioned religion, and there are many other issues complicating any two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“One is deciding where the borders should be. The Palestinians want all of Israel, but short of that, they want all of the West Bank and Gaza, which means relocating hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, many of whom are Jewish fundamentalists who believe God promised the land to them in the Bible.

“Another problem is that both sides want to make Jerusalem Southland College their capital. Throughout history, one of the most hotly contested scraps of real estate on the planet is a hill in Jerusalem, let’s make that the Rec Building, which Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary. It’s the biblical location of Solomon’s Temple and contains Judaism’s holiest shrine, the so-called Wailing Wall, which is literally beneath the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site.

“And then there’s the millions of descendants of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled in 1948 during Israel’s War for Independence. To protect its security and national character, Israel won’t let them come back. But the right of return is central to the Palestinian identity.”

Jose had another question. In his halting, shy English, he softly asked, “What makes Palestinians so different from other Arabs that they need their own country?”

Oh my God, I’ve turned them into stark raving Zionists, I thought to myself. “That’s another good question, Jose,” I said, playing for time. “Arab families had been living in Palestine for centuries. In fact, the original Jews and Palestinians may have all been Canaanites. They share a regional culture and sense of community, and have strong ties to the land. But Palestinians didn’t view themselves as a nation until the Jews began moving in a hundred years ago. If it weren’t for Jewish nationalism there might not be Palestinian nationalism today, just as if it weren’t for Nazi Germany, there might never have been an Israel.

“As for what makes Palestinians different, or what defines a distinct Palestinian culture, I hate to say this and I know it sounds totally biased, but whatever the accomplishments of individual Palestinians, the one thing they have become famous for, worldwide, is terrorism. From 1972, when they massacred the Israeli athletes they’d taken hostage at the Munich Olympics, until 9/11, over a span of nearly 30 years, the Palestinians were the undisputed world champs of terrorism. In fact, when the new kings of terrorism, Osama bin Laden and his crew, took down the World Trade Center, they were combining two techniques perfected by Palestinians skyjackings and suicide bombers. And those al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan were patterned after camps set up by Palestinians to train terrorists from Ireland to Japan how to make bombs, take hostages and kill people.

When no one spoke up for the Palestinians, I became concerned. The students had never been shy about expressing their opinions, even when I was on much firmer ground. So why weren’t they jumping in? Maybe they were just stunned that I was skating so close to the edge. So as long as I was there, I decided to do some pirouettes.

“I don’t mean to stereotype Palestinians few are actually terrorists. But over several generations, what has been called a culture of death has taken hold of Palestinian society. From the streets to the mosques and schools, their music, art, literature, mass media and pop culture glorify martyrs and murderers. And it’s not just a religious thing. Not all Palestinians are Muslims, and even fewer are Islamic fundamentalists. Some are Christians. They are motivated less by religion than by hopelessness and dispair. And for Palestinians not to support their sons, daughters, friends and neighbors who have thrown rocks in the intifada, or made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom by becoming suicide bombers, would be like us not supporting our troops in Afghanistan.

“There’s different explanations for why the Palestinians have embraced a culture of death,” I said. “And Palestinians would say well, first of all, they’d say I was full of crap but secondly, they’d say the oppressive Israeli occupation is what has turned them into terrorists. They’d also say that since they don’t have tanks, fighter jets and American weaponry like Israel does, they fight with the most effective weapons they can find. Or as a Palestinian student once said to me, ‘If you can’t hit above the belt then you hit below the belt.’

“But the main reason Palestinians have used terrorism” I concluded, “is because it works. The fact is, few Americans ever heard of the Palestinians until they started hijacking airplanes, taking Olympic athletes hostage, blowing themselves up and staging riots that go on not for days or even weeks but for years. It may not have won them their homeland, but it’s been one heck of an effective public awareness campaign.

“Hopefully, you can come up with more peaceful strategies in your P.R. plans,” I segued. “Those of you trying to convince an Israeli audience must get them to believe the Palestinians don’t just want to drive them into the sea, and that they deserve their own homeland. Those of you appealing to a Palestinian audience must convince them that the Jews deserve a homeland, and that making peace with Israel is better than perpetual violence. You need to give them something to live for instead of to die for.”

I paused, but still there were no questions, so I took the final plunge. “Rather than a battle of good and evil, think of the history of the Middle East as one big gang war,” I said. “Instead of Jews and Arabs, think Crips and Surenos. And instead of religion and nationalism, think drugs and prostitution. And bling. Except over there it’s called oil.”

I said that whether it’s the Jews and the Palestinians fighting over the Holy Land, or during the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union fighting over the planet, gangs appear, grow, fight, affiliate, die out or merge with other gangs. They have their own rituals and languages and their primary fight is over land turf sometimes against each other and sometimes against a common enemy. And whether they are street, religious or nationalist gangs, they give people, especially oppressed people, a sense of belonging, unity, protection and pride.

I said that before Israel became a state, some Zionists formed terrorist gangs that fought the British as well as the Arabs one was even known as the Stern Gang. I noted that some of those gang members later became heads of Israel, including its prime minister, Ariel Sharon, just as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was a terrorist as well as a political leader who spoke at the U.N. holding an olive branch and a gun. “Martin Luther King’s nonviolence is credited with advancing civil rights, but if it weren’t for the scary wing of the civil rights movement the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and urban riots in Detroit, Newark, and Watts, whites might not have given a damn about MLK,” I opined.

I added that white America, with its history of slavery and Indian genocide, is no different slave-owning George Washington conducted a guerrilla war against the British and became our first president. Then I threw in one more twist.

“There’s another war going on, but it’s not among the gangs of the Middle East, and it’s not among races, religions or nations. It’s what Muslims call the greatest jihad the struggle within each person to resist temptation and do the right thing. Should you join a gang or find another way to deal with the situation? Follow leaders who want you to die for their cause, or become one of those boring everyday people who just want to go to school, get a job, find love, raise a family and enjoy life?

“Depending on the circumstances, the decision to join a gang, or which gang to join, isn’t always a choice,” I added, wading ever deeper into the murky analogy. “And getting the Palestinians and the Israelis to stop killing each other is kind of like trying to convince teenagers that joining a gang isn’t cool, when obviously gangs are cool or gangsta rap wouldn’t be so popular.”

Heads nodded.

“Anyway, to fix the gang problem in the Middle East, everyone the U.N., America, Europe, some Arab countries, even Israel and supposedly the Palestinians have agreed in principle on a so-called framework for peace that calls for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. In my biased opinion, it’s a bad idea. But your job as P.R. practitioners isn’t to make the policy, but to make the policy work to get the Israelis and Palestinians to trust each other enough to stop the violence and accept each other’s country.”

Needless to say, it was an impossible assignment, but the students’ came up with some intriguing ideas. The group working for the Israeli government trying to convince Palestinians to trust them recycled the factory idea, having Israel build a factory that employed Palestinians. Gloria, one of the older students, made the presentation, and said increasing the standard of living for Palestinians was the best way to get them interested in something other than revolution.

In critiquing their proposal, I pointed out that Israelis have already done that that from the beginning, Jews employed Palestinians to build factories, hospitals, schools, roads and sewers that improved the quality of life for everyone, including the Arabs. But Palestinians resented the Jews taking over and still do today. The group modified their proposal to have the Israelis finance a factory run by Palestinians, but I said that would turn the Jews into money lenders, which the Palestinians might also resent. So they changed their proposal again, to have Jews and Palestinians both own the company and have them work alongside each other in the board room and on the factory floor.

“If they’re both so good at business, they should be able to make a go of it,” Gloria concluded.

The group working for the Israeli government to convince Jews to trust Palestinians suggested a multiethnic cultural festival of art, music, food and dance, like International Day on campus. I said Palestinian poster art of martyrs to the cause and protest songs about killing Zionists might not go over so well, but their presenter, Alejandro, said expressing feelings through art was better than using guns and bombs, and that both sides might discover what they have in common through their music and poetry.

The group working for the Palestinian Authority and trying to convince Palestinians to trust Israelis came up with a modified version of the “cops vs. crooks” softball games that have been tried in some communities, where teams of police and gang members play each other to promote better relations. Their suggestion was a soccer match between Israeli security forces and Palestinian teenagers active in the intifada. I noted that soccer games can get pretty rowdy, and that any kind of sports competition might remind Israelis of when Palestinians killed their Olympic athletes. The group huddled and came back with another idea put Palestinians and Israelis on the same Olympic team.

“Nice work if you can get it,” I said.

The most intriguing concept came from the group representing the Palestinian Authority trying to convince Jews to trust them. They suggested a blood drive to provide Palestinian blood for Israeli victims of suicide bombers, and Jewish blood for Palestinian victims of Israeli security forces. “We all bleed the same color” was their slogan.

I gave them all A’s.

Cyber Thanksgiving 11/27/1997

Wampanoag Chief Massasoit visits the Pilgrims. — The Atlantic (Bettman / Getty)

Before it became fashionable to bash holidays like Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, I looked for some dissonant Turkey Day narratives online. There are more today than there used to be.

Cyber Thanksgiving 11/27/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

For most Americans, Thanksgiving means turkey, football, family, God and country, and children acting out skits dressed as Pilgrims and Indians. I don’t mean to sneeze in anyone’s candied yams, but for Native Americans, Thanksgiving is kind of like Woodstock, i.e., the last time they experienced three days of peace and love with whitey. Not that Squanto, that Uncle Tom of the Wampanoags, doesn’t get a featured role in those grade school skits. But here’s several Turkey Day Web sites that separate Thanksgiving facts from fiction.

What better place to start an online Thanksgiving pilgrimage than “America’s Homepage!! Plymouth, MA.” Co-produced by the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, the site is heavy on travel, lodging and visitor information, but also has a link to America’s oldest public museum in continuous operation, the Pilgrim Hall Museum owned and operated by the Pilgrim Society.

There’s also information on the history and people of the area. For example, an article on the Wampanoag tribes by Jacqui Hayes of Plymouth South High School notes that the Wampanoags protected the English settlers from more hostile tribes and taught them to plant corn and other crops, and in return the Europeans gave them deadly diseases.

Although their language and culture were nearly obliterated, the 700 or so surviving Wampanoags began to revive their tribal customs during the 1960s and ’70s, and on Thanksgiving Day 1970 about 200 tribe members gathered at Plymouth to protest the European conquest. A “Day of Mourning” protest has been held every Thanksgiving since.

Perhaps the most comprehensive — if somewhat Eurocentric — Web site on Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims is “Caleb Johnson’s Mayflower Web Pages” <members.aol.com/calebj/mayflower.html>. Johnson is a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and claims to be related to half the passengers on the boat, including Miles Standish and John Alden. Currently an Intranet coordinator for a company in Vancouver, Wash., he has been researching the history of the Mayflower for the past six years and been a consultant on Thanksgiving-related news stories and documentaries by The New York Times, BBC, CBS and Disney among others.

A self-taught genealogist, his site includes family trees, biographies and texts of early Plymouth writings, 17th century Pilgrim letters, and other contemporary documents. There are sections about the girls and women who traveled on the Mayflower, the clothing worn by Pilgrims, the history of the Mayflower ship and the Thanksgiving holiday.

A section on “Common Mayflower Myths” says that the original Pilgrims were not Puritans but “Separatists,” did not wear big buckles, were not mostly old men (their average age was 32), and did not celebrate Thanksgiving as an annual event. Johnson also asserts that it’s a myth that the Pilgrims stole land from the Indians and mistreated them, because the Indians were wiped out by smallpox in 1614. So there.

For a Native American perspective on Thanksgiving, there’s “Thanksgiving Information,” a report by the Fourth World Documentation Project, which is part of The Center For World Indigenous Studies. In an introduction written by Native American school teacher Chuck Larsen of Tacoma, Wash., he notes that each Thanksgiving he faces the dilemma of how to be honest with his students without passing on historical distortions, then proceeds to examine a few myths of his own.

Mayflower replica at Plymouth Bay.

For example, he says the Puritans were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the King and the Church of England, but “political revolutionaries who not only intended to overthrow the government of England, but who actually did so in 1649.” Nor were the Wampanoag Indians invited to the first Thanksgiving “in a demonstration of Christian charity and interracial brotherhood,” but to negotiate a treaty securing lands for the Pilgrims.

To show how the Pilgrims felt about Squanto and the other Indians who helped them through that first winter, Larsen quotes from a 1623 Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth by Mather the Elder. In it, he thanks God for the smallpox that wiped out most of the Wampanoags and for destroying “chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth.”

As for Squanto, the Indian hero of the Thanksgiving story, Larsen says he had a “very real love for a British explorer named John Weymouth, who had become a second father to him.” Take that any way you’d like.

But the school teacher concludes that although what is taught about Thanksgiving is a mixture of history and myth, “the theme of Thanksgiving has truth and integrity far above and beyond what we and our forebearers have made of it.” And of that first Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, Larsen says, “the friendship was guarded and not always sincere, and the peace was very soon abused. But for three days in New England’s history, peace and friendship were there.”

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

BMI’s MusicBot the RoboCop of Cyberspace 10/30/1997

For my 12th column I did more entertainment-related pickups, meaning I picked them up from press releases or other news outlets. I led with a local Southern California story about a snake that ate a Chihuahua. As usual, I missed the real story, which was that BMI’s MusicBot was an early effort by the music industry to regulate the use of copyrighted music on the internet, and that Kinky Friedman’s reissues were on N2K’s Music Boulevard website, which was among the first to offer piracy-protected music for download.

BMI’s MusicBot the RoboCop of Cyberspace 10/30/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

The owner of a Chihuahua-eating snake is appealing for donations over the Internet to bring his pet Colombian red-tailed boa back to his home in the San Fernando Valley.

In August, Alisss slithered away from Angus Johnson’s West Hills home and ate Flossie Torgerson’s dog, a long-haired Chihuahua named Babette, as Torgerson watched in horror. And took photos. She sued Johnson for damages and they appeared on the new The People’s Court TV show, where the judge, former New York Mayor Ed Koch, ruled in favor of Torgerson.

Meanwhile, Johnson has been fighting a separate battle with authorities to regain custody of the snake. After devouring Babette, Alisss was taken to the West Valley Animal Control shelter in Chatsworth. When the city refused to issue Johnson a wild animal permit so he could get his snake back, he claimed discrimination and threatened to sue.

Now the snake is in San Bernardino County, staying with a friend of Johnson’s. But the city won’t let him bring his snake home until he pays $70 for the permit, plus $150 in court costs and fines, and Johnson says he doesn’t have the money. His Web page seeks donations for the Free Alisss Defense Fund, although it is more like the Bring Alisss Home Fund, since the snake is no longer in a shelter.

Johnson is an aspiring hard rock musician. He has used Alisss, which is named after Alice Cooper, in his act. He says he rescued Alisss from an abusive owner eight years ago, and that the snake usually sleeps under his pillow.

The music cop, BMI, has unleashed a new Web robot that monitors music in cyberspace. “MusicBot” combs the Web, quantifying the use of music on different sites.

“BMI is working to make it easy to add the value of music to Web sites,” said BMI Senior Vice President of Licensing John Shaker. “At the same time, we want to make sure that music rights holders are encourage to let their music be performed online with the confidence that they will be properly compensated.

MusicBot is an automated tracking and database technology. It tracks the use of BMI-licensed music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing the work of 20 full-time employees for a fraction of the cost. Preliminary returns from MusicBot suggest that about 2 percent, or 26,000 of the 1.3 million sites on the Web, use audio files.

BMI distributes royalties to songwriters, composers, and music publishers for the performance and copying of their works. MusicBot is the latest BMI initiative to protect the rights of the more than 200,000 copyright holders it represents.

The organization has created three new licenses (Web site wide license, music area license and corporate image license) for Web sites to get the rights to music. The license applications can be downloaded at BMI’s Web site, which also has information on licensing music on radio, TV, cable, businesses and the Internet, and a huge Internet song title database searchable by song title or writer, with writer and publisher information on songs licensed by BMI.

Two classic CDs from irreverent musician, author and raconteur Kinky Friedman are for sale online exclusively at N2K’s Music Boulevard Web site. [In 1999, Music Boulevard was purchased by CDNow, which was acquired by Amazon in 2002]. The Internet release of Old Testaments and New Revelations and From One Good American to Another coincides with the release of Friedman’s latest mystery novel, Roadkill.

Old Testaments and New Revelations includes 21 songs spanning 20 years of road grit and flat beer. The set includes such classics as “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” recorded live in 1992 on the Don Imus radio show, and “The Ballad of Charles Whitman,” featuring the legendary Texas Jewboys.

In From One Good American to Another, Friedman explores his folk/country roots. The CD features Dr. John and members of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder revue as well as The Texas Jewboys, classics such as “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and “Hobo’s Lullaby,” and a moving rendition of “Old Shep.”

The Kinkster has parlayed his singing career into a new incarnation as a mystery writer and super sleuth of his own novels. Roadkill features himself as a country music singer/ace detective coming to the aid of friend and country music star Willie Nelson.

Know of a “Kinky” site? Send your questions, comments or suggestions to XXXX@earthlink.net.

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

Streaming Video 10/16/1997

Although I did an early review of streaming video, it must be said that I grossly underestimated the potential for the new technology.

Streaming Video 10/16/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

While typing these words into my computer, I’m watching astronauts aboard the Russian spacecraft Mir give a press conference. [Mir “deorbited” in 2001.] The image on my computer screen is tiny, blurred and jerky, and the sound fades in and out. Still, without being an Internet wiz, I’m able to see and hear a live feed from outer space on my modest home computer. What makes this possible is a new technology called “streaming” audio and video, and NASA TV is but one of the kewl ways pioneers have been using this new medium.

Streaming video has greatly improved over the past year, but it may never be more than a novelty [sic]. By its very nature, it will always look more like a small fuzzy slide show than TV, because streaming video is compressed video, [meaning the video data has been compressed to save bandwidth so it can be sent over wires, which means the quality of the video goes down]. But until they increase the data capacity on the information superhighway, and start making bigger and faster home computers, streaming video is the closest thing to moving pictures and live video that can be transmitted through cyberspace.

A nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles called Billboard Live used streaming video to “cybercast” floor shows over the Internet. [Billboard Live closed after a brief run, and Billboard magazine, which owned the nightclub, used the Web address to launch an interactive music site.]

The Billboard Live streaming video required the StreamWorks Player from Xing Technology. In May, StreamWorks presented “Cinemotion – Cannes ’97,” live audio and video from the Cannes Film Festival. Other sites that use StreamWorks to show video online include Capitol Records, HerbaLife live broadcasts from L.A., and the Central Baptist Church from Little Rock, Arkansas, which cybercasts Sunday Services.

The Web site of the American Film Institute offers entire one-reel silent movies and clips from student films. Conventional media like radio, TV and even newspapers and magazines provide streaming news, weather and sports, and studios and record companies use it to sell their movies and CDs. Other industries also use streaming video to promote products. And then there the porno industry, which uses it to deliver pay per view digital sex shows.

For streaming video you should have at least a 28.8 speed modem, and a computer with 16 megabytes of RAM and a 486/66 processor (Apple users should have a PowerPC). You also need an Internet service provider, and a Web browser like Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. One more thing you need is a streaming video player or plug-in, of which there are several competing brands. Most let you download their players for free from their Web site and have a “gallery” with links to streaming video sites.

To pick up the NASA channel you can use the RealPlayer from RealNetworks <www.real.com>, which became  the first Internet broadcaster with RealAudio in 1995.  Today, 90 percent of streaming audio is RealAudio, including 400 radio stations. In February, the company introduced a RealPlayer for both audio and video, and now there are more than 1,000 RealVideo sites, including CBS, ABC, MCA, Warner Bros., FOX, ESPN SportsZone, Atlantic Records, MSNBC, MGM, Geffen, Sony and Merrill Lynch.

To view the American Film Institute’s classic silent movies,  use the VDOLive Player from VDONet <www.vdo.net>. You can also use VDOLive to see streaming video from NASA, CBS News, PBS and MTV. Last month, VDONet created VDO-Movies <www.vdomovies.com>, which shows streaming video previews of new films from major Hollywood studios, and in July it set up the Web site  VDO-Indies <www.vdoindies.com> showcasing independent film producers, and exposing their films to potential investors and distributors. Along with streaming video previews of indie films, the Web site has information about independent movie companies, the films they are planning and those in production.

One problem with streaming video is that your computer tends to run out of memory if you try to view it with your Web browser. But that’s because Web browsers take up a lot of memory, not video players. So here’s a trick:

When you click on a streaming video “channel,” sometimes a screen appears that says you can’t view the channel, but may instead download a tiny file. The file is like a bookmark that lets you view that channel without your Web browser. So download the file, close your Web browser, open your streaming video player, and use that application to open the file you downloaded.

Another trick is to figure out the address of the streaming video channel. A streaming video player can read certain addresses the same way a Web browser can read an “http” address. So to see the NASA channel with RealPlayer, you can tell it to open the location <pnm://zeus.arc.nasa.gov/live.rm>.

To give an idea of just how much memory is saved by not using a Web browser, I was able to have the RealPlayer playing NASA, StreamWorks playing Billboard Live, and VDOLive playing AFI’s silent movie, all at the same time.

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

Cyber Bar 10/9/1997

Exterior of Billboard Live with dual JumboTrons after the short-lived club was renamed the Key Club.
— 9039 Sunset Blvd on the Strip – A Brief Photographic History.

Billboard Live was ahead of its time, spending millions of dollars to try to accomplish what most smartphones can do today, which was videoconference from the club. The bar was also kind of creepy, with spycams everywhere. It also had the first JumboTron outside of a sports arena, which loomed over the traffic on the Sunset Strip. The high tech bar didn’t last long; 18 months later it was renamed the Key Club, and most of its cyber-gadgetry was decommissioned.

Billboard Live 10/9/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

Recently, a producer friend and I got a private tour of Billboard Live, a hot new nightclub on the  Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Partly owned by Billboard magazine, and at the former location of  Gazarri’s, one of the Strip’s premier clubs, Billboard Live aspires to be a watering hole for music  moguls and a launch pad for upcoming bands. It’s got all the right amenities — bar, restaurant,  entertainment, dance floor, and a members only club in the basement. It’s also got enough high tech  gadgetry to give new meaning to “cyber bar.”

Of the nearly $9 million it cost to open Billboard Live, only about $3.5  million went for conventional furnishings, fixtures and equipment. Much of the rest was lavished on  lighting, technology and JumboTrons.

“Our goal is to pay homage to music by providing a showcase for new artists to be seen live on the  Sunset Strip and worldwide via our electronic media,” said Billboard Live President Keith Pressman.

The club also books established bands, providing the intimacy of a club with all the gear a top band  would use on a multimillion dollar tour, he said.

The main ballroom has a 10′ x 12′ video projector screen so patrons can see the band if it gets  crowded. And if it gets really really crowded, or you get really really drunk, five-inch TV screens are  embedded in the floor.

Downstairs, members of the exclusive “Board Room” can view the main floor action from wall  screens or computers at their tables. For a limited number of personal and corporate paying members,  the subterranean Board Room furnishes privacy for celebs seeking their space, along with a virtual  cyber office with teleconferencing, Internet access and an e-mail address at the club.

In the mezzanine restaurant, many tables also are equipped with touch-screen computers to watch the  stage show, surf the net or order food and drinks. The table-side computers weren’t working when I  was there, but may be now.

Behind the scenes, a five-camera video production center is used to record shows and broadcast live  inside the club and onto the JumboTrons and Internet. With 35,000 main watts of audio power, and a  monitor system with 52 channels and 18 mixes and wedges, it’s the envy of many studios.

“Everything is set up so that as technology changes, we just re-program what we have,” said Steve  Strauss, vice president of operations, and former general manager of the nearby House of Blues. “We  may not use it all immediately, but we’re having everything wired now, so that when the times comes,  we are ready.”

For example, the stage revolves, so one band can be setting up behind the curtain while another band is on stage performing. But they seldom book more than one band  a night. They’ve also got 44 permanently installed Vari*lites, when it only takes four to light a KISS  concert.

Even by L.A. standards, Billboard Live’s building facade is bodacious, with two 9′ by 12′  JumboTron video marquees projecting movie ads, PSAs, music videos and sometimes simulcasts of  live entertainment from inside the club. Within a mile radius, drivers can hear audio transmissions  from the JumboTrons on their AM radios. The club sells time on the video marquees for music video  promotions and other advertising targeted at the 65,000 vehicles that cruise the Sunset Strip daily.

If that ain’t enough, it’s all fed onto the World Wide Web. With free “streaming video” software  called StreamWorks, you can view on your home computer the same thing that is on the Billboard  Live JumboTron, which sometimes is what’s going on inside the club.

To view Billboard Live’s streaming video ads, music videos and simulcasts (and get concert dates and  Billboard charts), point your Web browser to www.billboardlive.com. Click on the “Stage” link, and  then on the big eyeball that says “Live Video.” (If you don’t have the StreamWorks software, you can  download it for free at www.streamworks.com. The StreamWorks Web site also has links to other  streaming video websites.)

Eventually, the owners of Billboard Live plan to have 12 clubs around the globe, and to link them all  by computer. When I asked a manager why, he said that once they have a club in Shanghai, it will be  possible to sit at a table at the L.A. Billboard Live, call up on the computer a live streaming video  picture of the bar in Shanghai, zoom in on a pretty girl, or, ahem, music industry executive, and be  able to buy that person in Shanghai a drink from your table in L.A.

Oh.

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

Star Dreck 10/2/1997

Having strayed into the creepy crevices of the internet a bit too often, for my eighth column I decided to go commercial, and pretended that the editors were forcing me to use the press releases they were shoveling my way.

Star Dreck 10/2/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

I try to avoid reviewing “official” Web sites. But how can I expect trade-outs, comps and other perks unless I suck up to promoters? So here’s some Web sites I have been “encouraged” to review. Warning: Some of the following may have been taken verbatim from press releases.

Star Trek: The Ad: “Star Trek: The Experience™” is a 65,000-square-foot attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel. The completely interactive entertainment concept is based on the voyages of the most enduring and extraordinary television series of all time — “Star Trek®”. There’s only one problem: It ain’t open yet.

No matter. You can still visit “Star Trek: The Ad” <www.startrekexp.com>. The Web site has news, tour information and even a so-called “virtual tour,” which gives a sneak preview (mostly descriptions and drawings) of the $70 million attraction.

Once the experience opens later this fall or winter, visitors will be transported to the 24th century and immersed in a futuristic adventure that starts with a museum-like exhibit featuring authentic “Star Trek” stuff from the four TV series and eight movies. Next they get beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise for a deep space adventure that includes an exciting shuttlecraft voyage through space and time. Afterwards, awestruck visitors can hang at the Deep Space Nine™ Promenade and enjoy the galaxy’s finest dining, entertainment and shopping for officially licensed and custom Star Dreck.

“Star Trek: The Experience” won’t have gambling. However, a 22,000-square-foot space-themed casino will serve as the gateway to the attraction. You can’t purchase tickets by phone, mail or Web site, but must get them in person at the Las Vegas Hilton. With 3,174 rooms and suites, the Las Vegas Hilton <www.lv-hilton.com> is one of Las Vegas’ most luxurious and exciting casino-resorts. [Star Trek: The Experience closed in 2008.]

Spooktacular Video: Hey kids, join Casper the friendly ghost as Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment launches an out-of-this-world “Casper Web site” <www.caspervideo.com> to support the studio’s first made-for-video release, “Casper, A Spirited Beginning.”

Scroll along the halls of Applegate Manor to access hauntingly fun activities including an interactive concentration game; a timeline to learn about the history of Casper; and behind-the-scenes production information with cool ghostly images. However, the site uses Java and other plug-ins, which means it is slow to load, tends to crash your computer, and unless you have the right plug-ins you can’t fully enjoy all the bells and whistles.

The made-for-video prequel answers the question: How did Casper become the friendly ghost? The video, which debuted Sept. 9 for $19.98, is an all-new adventure starring the same characters as the 1995 dud, “Casper.” Joining the spooktacular fun are two new ghostly characters, Snivel and Kibosh, voiced by Pauly Shore and James Earl Jones. The “fleshie” cast features Steve Guttenberg, Lori Loughlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Michael McKean, Brian Doyle-Murry and newcomer Brendon Ryan Barrett.

Inexplicably, the Web site won’t sell you the video, and doesn’t say where else you might buy it. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is the worldwide marketing, sales and distribution company for all FoxVideo and Fox Interactive products.

Haggle-Free Car Buying: Car buyers can avoid the haggling process — and save an average of 8 percent on the sticker price of a new car — by buying a car by computer. So says AutoVantage, which sells cars by computer.

At the Houston, Texas, company’s Web site, consumers can browse through car reviews for free and look up new car prices. They also can submit a price request through the Web site or by calling a toll-free number. AutoVantage then does the haggling for them and tries to respond within two hours with a “preferred price” to be honored by a nearby car dealer.

AutoVantage says it has been rated the best interactive car-buying service by Motor Trend magazine, and that 30,000 people a month submit price requests. It is also the featured new-car buying service for netMarket, which claims to be the leading interactive consumer commerce Web site.

AutoVantage offers financing and leasing options, and a national used car database containing more than 50,000 used cars. But before accessing many services you have to join netMarket, which turns out to be a buyers’ club. I never could figure out how much it costs to be a member. But you can join for three months for a mere $1 plus your credit card number.

If you want Blue Book values and used car prices without giving out your credit card number, try the online version of Kelly Blue Book <www.kbb.com> or any of the other services listed under the Auto Channel on the search engine Webcrawler <webcrawler.com>.

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

Guerrilla Filmmaking Online 9/25/97

My friend produced live events for Women In Film, and she turned me on to a WIF volunteer, Ken Tipton, who had what was then a novel idea for financing his independent film. Websites like GoFundMe are common today, but Tipton was one of the first to tap into the internet’s fundraising potential. Tipton never made it big in Hollywood, but another of his cyber publicity schemes would later earn him notoriety, although not in a good way.

Guerrilla Filmmaking Online 9/25/97

by H.B. Koplowitz

Ken Tipton wants to make it in Hollywood. With persistence, and creative marketing on the World Wide Web, the 44-year-old entrepreneur turned actor, writer, producer and director, just might.

Taking guerrilla filmmaking onto the Internet, Tipton may be the first to use a personal Web page to finance an independent film, Perfect Mate, which debuts at the International Feature Film Market Sept. 21 in New York City. He also used his Web site to recruit the 17,000 members of the Ken and Paul Tipton Fan Club, which wants the Drew Carey TV show to cast the stout Tipton as Mimi’s boyfriend in upcoming episodes.

“Everyone wants to feel like they are a part of Hollywood,” says Tipton, who lives in Toluca Lake. Through his Web page, he wants to help what he calls “movie geeks,” — including himself and his son — to live out their dreams.

Tipton grew up near St. Louis, where he was active in community theater and comedy clubs. He also was a small businessman, starting one of the first video stores in 1980, and in 1991 a paint-ball war game business.

In 1993 he decided to give “the acting thing” one more try. With the proceeds from selling the paint-ball business, and the blessing of his ex-wife, who continues to manage their video stores in St. Louis, he moved to L.A. with Paul, their 12-year-old son, who also wants to act.

He didn’t feel like he was getting anywhere until November 1995, when he attended a screening of Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays sponsored by the Independent Feature Project. As Foster talked about having to be “monumentally creative” to raise capital to make movies, Tipton thought back to his childhood in Missouri, staging plays using comic books as scripts. To pay for the productions, they would sell lemonade or toys. It occurred to him to use the same strategy to finance movies, only selling to the world, via the Internet.

Together with writer Carrie Armstrong and director Karl Armstrong, he founded Makers Of Visual Independent Entertainment (M.O.V.I.E.). “The M.O.V.I.E. Web site” <www.moviefund.com> went online in December 1995 selling mouse pads, hats, key chains and T-shirts with the M.O.V.I.E. logo. Profits were to help pay for Perfect Mate, a 20-minute short by the Armstrongs, in which Tipton had a starring role.

“My goal is to open up new areas of funding for Independent Film Makers,” Tipton wrote in a mission statement. “As the organization grows, hopefully we will develop into a place where talented and underfunded individuals can get a start. . .By buying a hat, or a mouse pad, or even a key chain, you help fulfill the dream that lies in every movie lover.”

No one knew the Web site existed for several months, until a Web reviewer described it as “strange, interesting and unique.” Suddenly, thousands of people a day started visiting M.O.V.I.E., and some — Tipton won’t say how many — bought merchandise.

Even more important than the sales, however, were the contacts. After seeing the Web page, a steadycam operator donated his services. Someone else offered to do animated credits, while others contributed free film. The Web page even helped persuade Disney to donate the use of an AVID digital film editor in exchange for a first look at the completed movie.

Perfect Mate grew from a short into a feature-length romantic comedy about a young woman who holds her party guests hostage while searching for her perfect mate. Tipton said the Web page helped finance much of the film, estimated to have cost $350,000, including the cost of donated goods and services. It will be debuted to foreign film distributors this weekend in New York.

The Web site is also used to recruit members of The Ken & Paul Tipton’s Fan Club, which is operated by a clerk at his St. Louis video store. One incentive to join is that fan club members are eligible to win a speaking part in an upcoming M.O.V.I.E. project.

The online fan club has grown to 17,000 members, which is to say, 17,000 e-mail addresses of supporters. Tipton realized what a powerful tool that was when he asked his fan club to e-mail the Sundance Film Festival with requests to show Perfect Mate. So many did that Sundance’s computer e-mail crashed.

Now Tipton is urging his fans to let the Drew Carey Show know that he would make the perfect mate for the bodacious Mimi character’s boyfriend.

“In this business you have to make your own breaks,” Tipton said. “The only thing worse than failure is never knowing what could have been if only you had tried.”
 

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

alt.sex 9/18/1997

alt.sex 9/18/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

For my sixth column, I returned to the subject of sex and cyberspace, reviewing kinky newsgroups in an outpost on the internet called Usenet. For some reason I neglected to mention alt.sex.binaries, which was a place to trade dirty pictures, and a precursor to file-sharing networks.

Once upon a time there was a place on the Internet where people with unusual and sometimes unspeakable fetishes could find each other. Where personal ads were placed for sex with animals, or stuffed animals, and others indulged their secret obsessions with spanking, chloroform, even robots.

The pictures, messages, personal ads and stories were sometimes erotic and sometimes idiotic, offensive or even illegal, but nonetheless reflected the startling diversity of human sexual appetites. That place was “alt.sex,” an unmoderated cluster of Internet bulletin boards or “newsgroups” devoted to all manner of sexual fetishism.

Even more than other Usenet newsgroups, alt.sex has been obliterated by “spam,” junk email ads, mostly for adult Web sites. Today, little remains except the names of the discussion groups. Below are some examples of what alt.sex used to be like, and where content that used to be in alt.sex newsgroups can now be found on the Web:

Furry Friends (alt.sex.plushies): A plushie is a stuffed animal or toy, like a teddy bear. Alt.sex.plushies was for people desiring a more than Platonic relationship with a plushie. Some plushophiles have a thing for “fursuits,” which are full-body costumes such as those worn by sports team mascots or amusement park employees, and for “furries,” which are characters with aspects of both animals and humans, like Bugs Bunny. Today, “PeterCat’s Furry InfoPage” <www.tigerden.com/~infopage/furry> is the keeper of the alt.sex.furry FAQ [Frequently Asked Questions], with links to other plushie pages, from stuffed toy lovers to stuffed toy makers like FAO Schwarz.

Animal Lovers (alt.sex.bestiality and alt.sex.zoophilia): A bestialist wants sex with an animal, while a zoophile seeks a relationship, too, according to the FAQ in alt.sex.bestiality. However, personal ads for canines and other critters appeared in both newsgroups, as did practical advice on how to get physical with the species of your choice. Did some of the people in these newsgroups actually have sexual relations with animals? “You bet’cha!” says the FAQ. Today, links to Web sites, newsgroups, chat rooms and other bestial resources can be found at “Zoophile Server” <http://www.zoophile.org>, the original zoophile Web server.

Techno-Sexual (alt.sex.fetish.robots): A.S.F.R. was for people sexually attracted to robots and robot-like beings. “Techno-sexuals” are aroused by depictions of people behaving like or turning into robots, androids, mannequins, dolls, wind-up toys or hypnotized mechanical sex zombies, according to the newsgroup’s FAQ. The ASFR home page, which was created by “Robotdoll,” is not presently online. But Robotdoll’s FAQ has been preserved on “Robo-Lover’s Homepage” <members.aol.com/robolvr/index.htm>, along with pictures, stories, and links “dealing with the mechanical maidens and delectable dolls that is ASFR.”

Overlapping newsgroups included alt.sex.fetish.sleepy, which had stories and pictures about people overcome by hypnosis, chloroform and other mind control methods, and alt.sex.fetish.wet-and-messy, which was about erotic encounters with drenching rain, mud, quicksand, cream pies and other gooey stuff. On the Web today, “The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive” <www.mcstories.com> has salacious tales broken into such categories as hypnosis, sudden growth of body parts, lactation, even Star Trek and X-Files characters. Wet and Messy Web sites include the “WAMSAT Project,” with links to sites with names like “Shokolada’s Mess,” “Muddy Melodrama” and “World Wide Wet Page.”

Spanking Good Time (alt.sex.spanking): Today’s fetish websites are far more stylish and better organized than alt.sex ever was. Still, they cannot replace the intimacy of a discussion group. Even if you aren’t into erotic spanking between consenting adults, to see what some alt.sex newsgroups used to be like, take a peek at soc.sexuality.spanking.

When alt.sex.spanking got overrun by spam, newsgroup regulars debated picking a “moderator” to screen messages for spams, pictures and other off-topic posts. They eventually agreed on a “robo-moderated” newsgroup, in which posts are electronically filtered by computer, with human moderators only seeing posts rejected by the ‘Bot. As a result, most of the messages in the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup are actually about spanking, at least most of the time.

Each summer the newsgroup holds a spanking short story contest, with the entries archived on the “S.S.S. Resource Page” <https://groups.google.com/g/soc.sexuality.spanking>. But some of the most compelling stories are the true ones posted in the newsgroup by “delurkers” revealing their spanking fetish, and their relief at finding kindred souls.

What newsgroups have that Web pages don’t is a sense of community. And as stated in the new soc.sexuality.spanking charter, “Regaining the feelings of community and support was the reason for the formation of s.s.s, and in s.s.s., the tradition of welcoming newcomers with open arms continues.”

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.

Princess Di Online 9/11/1997

As this story about the tragic death of Princess Diana illustrates, online trolling did not begin with Facebook and Twitter. It also hints at some of the ways a wired global community was changing journalism.

Princess Di Online 9/11/1997

by H.B. Koplowitz

The mainstream media consensus is that the whole world is mourning the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. But on the unfiltered Internet, emotions amongst the cyber commoners are decidedly mixed. Equal venom is being spewed at the “stalkarazzi” and the “people’s princess,” and, as always, at each other.

Princess Di and her beau, Dodi Fayed, died early Sunday morning [Aug. 31, 1997] in Paris (Saturday night in Los Angeles). Fleeing from biker paparazzi, their Mercedes crashed while traveling in excess of 100 miles an hour through a Paris tunnel beneath the Seine. Dodi, 41, and the driver, who was legally drunk, were killed instantly. Diana, 36, was pronounced dead about 4 a.m. Sunday, Paris time.

Some, especially in Europe, first heard about the tragedy on the Internet, from American computer users monitoring TV news reports. An Internet friend visiting Paris said her first awareness that Princess Di was dead was at 6 a.m. local time Sunday morning, when she logged onto her computer and entered a chat room on America Online.

“They asked me what they were saying in France and I did not know what they were talking about,” she recounted. “So they told me what happened. And when I checked the French news, the titles on AOL, there was still nothing about it.”

When big news breaks, chat rooms become like talk radio, only without the radio and without the talk show host. Potshots fly in all directions, with special attention given to sexual innuendo. Typical comments from the AOL chat room “Papparatzi Killed Di” Monday evening included:

MastrBaitz: she knew what the price was when she married prince bozo

BADBOY6552: IWILL PRAY FOR DIANA AND KEEP IN MY HEART ALL SHE HAS DONE FOR SO MANY

EL P0RK: he was spanking himself in the front seat as Di was spanking her man’s meat in the back

EL P0RK: he was spanking himself in the front seat as Di was spanking her man’s meat in the back

MastrBaitz: i think the british intelligence servces probably killed her

SueKewpie: holy smokes, I canot believe the drivel that is filtering thru here. I just can’t…

Jkren: god bles the ignore button

Usenet newsgroups also lit up with messages, not unlike these posted in alt.talk.royalty:

“We want to know


MastrBaitz: i think the british intelligence servces probably killed her

We create an industry
To pry and expose
We build them up
We take them down.

Today I cry.
And tommorow I will buy
The newsprint that killed her.
God help me.
And you…
— mrblonde”

“Diana and Dodi’s tragic death was caused by the poor judgement of a drunk driver. They were being followed with cameras, not guns. It is a horrible, horrible accident that should never have happened. If you want to blame something, blame foolish decisions and drunken driving. Beverly”

“Call her Lady, call her Princess, call her whatever you like. Diana was Queen in our hearts!”

SueKewpie: holy smokes, I canot believe the drivel that is filtering thru here. I just can’t…

“Such pious nonsense. She represented nothing and nobody. She was a loose cannon addicted to high living and media attention.”

Trying to start an urban legend, one message writer claimed Buckingham Palace had given permission to sell bone china gilded plates engraved with photos of the crash.

Charlene Vickers of Yellowknife, NWT, announced a memorial Web page , along with a petition to create a permanent memorial for Diana: “It occurred to me that many late members of the Family have had monuments built to their memories in London and at Windsor. I feel that Diana, Princess of Wales, deserves a similar monument, and I am asking you to sign a petition to that effect.”

The official British Monarchy home page has set up an area for people to leave their written condolences, but it is hard to access now because so many people are trying to get in.

Jkren: god bles the ignore button

However, the Unofficial British Royal Family Pages has current information on the accident and aftermath, along with excellent links to other royal Web sites, and a Diana Memorial Page where people can leave condolences. Most of these comments have been more respectful, such as this one from Shannon Tod of Australia:

“Princess Diana, a true legend in my eyes. U are an inspiration to me and a best friend to the world. I will always remember your courage, patience, and mostly love to other people that u showed. Nothing could ever replace the true and wonderful you that I have known. U will live in me forever, and the light that you shone upon this world will always remain. I luv you, Sweet Princess. @}—>—‘— “

© 1997-2021 by H.B. Koplowitz, all rights reserved.