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Alyssa

More On the Ethics of Fiction in the Wake of Gay Girl In Damascus

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 14, 2011 at 5:21 pm

After writing yesterday’s post about Gay Girl In Damascus and vague boundary between creating fiction that’s consumed as such and carrying out a hoax, I emailed Andrea Phillips, the pervasive media artist whose SXSW talk I mentioned, and asked her where we can draw the line and say what practices of fiction are unethical. She wrote back:

I guess if I absolutely had to draw a line between fiction and reality, it would deal with the point in a fiction where your character forms a relationship with your audience. It’s one thing to use a blog as a format for serial fiction. It’s even OK, I think, to use a blog for serial fiction and not specifically mark it out as such. But it becomes something much more questionable when the fiction becomes personalized—when the fictional character is responding to Tweets and emails, for example. That’s the danger zone.

At that point, you have to ask yourself how the people you’re relating to would feel if the truth came out. Would they feel betrayed? If the answer is yes, then you should seriously reconsider what you’re doing and how you’re going about it.

But at the same time… people often experiment with wildly different personas on the internet, and make friendships in those varying
personas, and this can be a valuable way to learn about yourself. Identity is a very fluid thing to begin with. I’m not the same person with my colleagues as I am with the other moms at school, you know? So I hate to draw any absolute lines, because every circumstance is unique.

Think about if the Gay Girl in Damascus situation was reversed: Amina was the real one but Tom was fictional, and he was her way of speaking
with the advantage of privilege, of being heard and listened to. Would we be reacting differently if the power dynamics shifted like that? I
seriously think we would.

I suggested that maybe we cross the line when a character asks readers to do something they wouldn’t do if they knew the character was a creation rather than a real person, whether it’s sending pictures or asking for help springing them from a Syrian prison. I’ve had pretty hilarious Twitter conversations with accounts set up in the voices of Game of Thrones characters, and it sure didn’t hurt me. But then, I was enjoying engaging with the fiction, rather than being deceived by it. There’s a level of safety in detachment.

Climate Progress

Why you should follow popular culture — and culture blogger Alyssa Rosenberg

By Joe Romm on Jun 10, 2011 at 4:46 pm

When readers ask me how they can get better at communicating, I always urge them to 1) study rhetoric and 2) follow popular culture.  For the latter, a good place to start is with Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog.

I know that many progressives — including some readers here –  don’t own a TV.  I can fully understand that but firmly believe that if you want to understand and communicate to the populace, there’s no better place to start than with the culture.

For those who don’t think TV is high culture, I would make two points.  First,  I’ve studied Shakespeare for decades — and even published a scholarly article on Hamlet — and the Bard combined highbrow and lowbrow seamlessly.  I  seriously doubt the greatest rhetorician of all time drew a distinction.

Second, I’ve been a TV junkie for nearly 5 decades, and I think it’s safe to say that there is as much high-quality television on now as there ever was.  There just happens to be a lot more crap. You need a way of separating the two — or someone to tell you what you need to know about what you don’t have time for.

And that’s my segue into Alyssa.  She has written this introduction for Climate Progress readers:

I’m Alyssa Rosenberg, your friendly ThinkProgress culture blogger. One of my long-term interests is the role that science fiction plays in helping us come to terms with what we’re doing to ourselves and to the planet, and in playing with ideas we might have to consider as we face a future defined by environmental devastation. I’ve written about the role of scientific arrogance in this summer’s upcoming blockbuster Planet of the Apes, my worries about how Fox’s Terra Nova will handle the creation of a utopian society without overexploiting a new planet’s resources, and how female scientists are depicted in movies ranging from Contact to Thor. Today on my blog, we’re kicking off a book club on Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic exploration of deliberately engineered climate change, Red Mars, on the eve of that novel’s 20th birthday next year. I hope you’ll consider stopping by.

As you can see, she doesn’t just write about TV.

For the record, I thought the Mars trilogy was a masterpiece, unlike, say, Robinson’s novels on climate change.  Anyway, friends, Romm-ans, Countrymen, lend her your ears (and eyes).

Related Posts:

Climate Progress

DeSmogBlog Makes Time‘s List of ‘The Best Blogs of 2011′

By Joe Romm on Jun 6, 2011 at 3:25 pm

Last year, Climate Progress made Time’s list of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010.″

This year, DeSmogBlog deservedly made the list.   Here is what times Brian Walsh says about this  must-read climate blog:

Best Blogs desmogblog

A corporate smoke screen surrounds much of the coverage of climate-change and energy issues. Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation. Started in 2006 by James Hoogan, a Canadian p.r. guru, DeSmogBlog dissects the half truths and outright lies around climate change, acting as an aggregator for smart research and opinion on green issues. If it sometimes goes too far — as with its jihad against gas fracking — DeSmogBlog is nevertheless a necessary corrective.

Kudos to DeSmogBlog.

Here is the full list –  though I warn you if you start clicking on these catchy blogs,  you won’t get a lot of work done today:

Read more

Media

Forgetting His Attacks On The Netroots, O’Reilly Says Media Are Using ‘Nuts’ To ‘Brand’ Tea Party As ‘Racists

By Matt Corley on Mar 29, 2010 at 6:11 pm

Bill O'Reilly attacks JetBlue over DailyKos and YearlyKosAt the Tea Party protest on Capitol Hill the weekend that health care reform passed the House, reports surfaced of angry Tea Partiers yelling racist and homophobic epithets at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), and other House Democrats. In the days that followed, a series of vandalism incidents and death threats aimed at lawmakers became public, which were seen by many as a possible manifestation of the tea party’s anger over the passage of health care reform.

Conservatives have responded with outrage, complaining about double standards and hypothesizing that the racial slurs reported on Saturday were fabricated by the African-American lawmakers. In an interview with Laura Ingraham today, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly claimed that connecting the threats and bigoted language to the tea party as a whole was a “grossly unfair” effort to “brand the entire movement” as “a bunch of racists”:

O’REILLY: But the press showed no restraint at all in covering that story and immediately took that and branded the tea parties a bunch of racists. Now, that’s the strategy. This is why it’s a big story. Why I’m leading with it tonight on the Factor. And I got Al Sharpton in the seat. Because I can’t get the others and that tells me something too. I can’t John Lewis and I can’t get Emanuel Cleaver. These are the guys who made the accusations. They won’t come on. That shows, that tells me something. But anyway, the strategy is on the left because the Tea Party movement is a danger to them to brand everybody in it as a racist.

INGRAHAM: Isn’t that a sure sign of a scoundrel’s refuge, though? I mean, you always go to the racist charge.

O’REILLY: Sure. Of course it’s scoundrels. Of course, the left-wing media, you don’t get more scoundrel than those people. And but that’s what they’re doing. You can see it. You can see it that any nut — and there are some nuts, Laura, in the Tea Party movement — any nut and anything will be used to brand the entire movement.

“What is true is that the extreme far left is not often used to brand” the Democratic Party,” observed O’Reilly. “But the extreme right has been used to brand the Republican Party. And that, that’s what’s going on.” Listen here:

Of course, O’Reilly is correct that incidents of bigotry at Tea Party events do not mean that everybody in the Tea Party movement is racist. O’Reilly’s effort to make a nuanced distinction is surprising, however, considering his past efforts to use cherry-picked user comments to label the netroots as “hatemongerers” like “the Ku Klux Klan” and “the Nazi Party.” In 2007, when JetBlue sponsored the YearlyKos convention, O’Reilly attacked the company, saying that “if the company was sponsoring a David Duke convention, we’d do the same story. Hate is hate, no matter where it comes from.” The two or three comments picked out from a forum in which hundreds of thousands of people participate were not representative of the site as a whole.

When Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) appeared on O’Reilly’s show to defend YearlyKos, which he was attending, he argued that “the fact that there are objectionable people who show up here on this site doesn’t discredit everyone else who participates in this in a wonderful way to share their views on a variety of subjects.” “Your description of that site is so opposite from what it is,” responded O’Reilly. “You are so dead wrong on this.” A year later, when former Vice President Al Gore spoke at the convention (which had been re-named Netroots Nation), O’Reilly declared that “the fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference.”

Politics

Matthews: The netroots ‘get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.’

By Amanda Terkel on Dec 17, 2009 at 5:43 pm

Today on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews brought on John Heilemann from New York Magazine to talk about President Obama’s popularity with Democrats. When Heilemann noted that the “Democratic left” has been “trashing the health care bill” this week, Matthews said that those people were part of the “netroots” and not “regular grown-up Democrats”:

MATTHEWS: I don’t consider them Democrats, I consider them netroots, and they’re different. And if I see that they vote in every election or most elections, I’ll be worried. But I’m not sure that they’re regular grown-up Democrats. I think that a lot of those people are troublemakers who love to sit in the backseat and complain. They’re not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they’re not interested in working for somebody in public office. They get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.

Watch it:

Update

OpenLeft, Media Matters, and FireDogLake offer reactions.

Politics

Harwood: Anonymous WH adviser says bloggers need to ‘take off the pjs, get dressed,’ and stop criticizing us.

By Amanda Terkel on Oct 12, 2009 at 9:00 am

Yesterday, CNBC’s Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood said that the Obama White House doesn’t view dissatisfaction amongst LGBT advocates — tens of thousands of whom marched in Washington, DC yesterday — as a “serious problem” because officials feel “that if they take care of the big issues — health care, energy, the economy — he’s [Obama] going to be just fine with this group.” As evidence, Harwood cited an anonymous “adviser” who bashed bloggers and dismissed critics as part of the “Internet left fringe”:

HOLT: But in general when you look at the left as a whole, have there been conversations about some things they thought would have been done but haven’t?

HARWOOD: Sure, but if you look at the polling, Barack Obama is doing well with 90 percent or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the “Internet left fringe,” Lester. And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

Watch it:

On Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner, Obama sent a far different message. “I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight,” said the President, candidly adding, “I also appreciate that many of you don’t believe that progress has come fast enough. I want to be honest about that. Because it’s important to be honest amongst friends.”

Update

The White House is disavowing the comment made by the anonymous adviser. Greg Sargent reports, asked for comment, White House deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer emailed:

That sentiment does not reflect White House thinking at all, we’ve held easily a dozen calls with the progressive online community because we believe the online communities can often keep the focus on how policy will affect the American people rather than just the political back-and-forth.

Politics

Chris Matthews: ‘The bloggers don’t fact check.’

By Matt Corley on Aug 23, 2009 at 1:30 pm

During a discussion on the future of newspapers and journalism on the Chris Matthews Show today, Time’s Joe Klein said that “on complicated stories, you can do this stuff on the internet.” Matthews responded by asking “who’s going to fact check?” As CNN’s Gloria Bolger began to answer that online editors would, Matthews interjected, “the bloggers don’t fact check.” “Nobody fact checks” online, added Klein. Watch it:

It’s ironic that a cable news host such as Chris Matthews would attack bloggers for supposedly not checking their facts, considering the amount of falsehoods and factually inaccurate statements he regularly utters on the air — which have all been fact-checked by bloggers.

Politics

At Netroots Nation, Blogger Challenges Bill Clinton On Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By Matt Corley on Aug 14, 2009 at 11:51 am

At the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh yesterday, former President Bill Clinton delivered the opening day’s keynote address. In his speech, Clinton declared that it is “imperative for the Democrats to pass a health care bill now,” telling the bloggers and activists that “the president needs your help and the cause needs your help.”

About 20 minutes into his speech, however, Clinton was interrupted by blogger Lane Hudson, who asked about the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that Clinton implemented. “Hey, you ought to go to one of those congressional health care meetings,” Clinton joked before defending his actions as president and claiming that “nobody regrets how this was implemented anymore than I do”:

CLINTON: I hated what happened. I regret it but I didn’t have, I didn’t think at the time, any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all. Look, I think it’s ridiculous. Can you believe they spent, whatever they spent, $150,000 to get rid of a valued Arabic speaker recently? You know, the thing that changed me forever on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was when I learned that 130 gay service people were allowed to serve and risk their lives in the first Gulf War and all their commanders knew they were gay, but they let them go out there and risk their lives because they needed them. Then as soon as the first Gulf War was over, they kicked them out. That’s all I needed to know. That’s all anybody needs to know that this policy should be changed.

Watch it:

At the Huffington Post, Hudson wrote that he interrupted the speech because “it became clear there would be no questions,” so when President Clinton said that “We need an honest, principled debate,” he stood and asked his question. Hudson said he was satisfied with Clinton’s answer on DADT, writing that “he made the strongest objection to DADT he has ever made to the best of my knowledge.”

The Obama White House has committed to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but is waiting to see “congressional action” first. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) and Sen. Kristian Gillibrand (D-NY) are taking the lead on repealing the provision in Congress.

Politics

Right-wing bloggers at annual conference admit to being ‘outgunned’ by progressives.

By Amanda Terkel on Aug 13, 2009 at 12:45 pm

ThinkProgress and nearly 2,000 other progressive bloggers and activists are currently in Pittsburgh for the annual Netroots Nation conference. Speakers at the event include White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, Gov. Howard Dean, and President Bill Clinton. But also going on in Pittsburgh is the RightOnline conference for conservative bloggers:

The RightOnline conference starting tomorrow morning at the Sheraton Station Square will have about a quarter of the 2,000 attendees at the liberal conference in the convention center, and only about 20 speakers to the 400 at Netroots. …

Right-wing activists know very well they are being out-gunned by the left online, which is precisely why they are holding the conference. They held the first RightOnline convention in Austin, Texas, to coincide with last year’s Netroots Nation meeting there, too.

Erick Erickson from RedState said that on the right, the focus has been “on punditry as opposed to activism.” “It has been focused on bloggers trying to be the next Rush Limbaugh or the next columnist, not on urging readers to call members of Congress or go to tea parties,” he added.

Media

Clueless O’Reilly Launches Uninformed Attack On Bloggers, Including ThinkProgress

By Faiz Shakir on May 28, 2009 at 10:30 am

Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly engaged in one of his usual diatribes against bloggers. In attempting to demonstrate that the blogosphere is full of extreme hate-mongers, O’Reilly criticized both conservative and liberal blogs for allowing commenters to freely post opinions with which the sites may not agree.

In his “policing the net” segment, O’Reilly displayed a few hateful comments against Judge Sonia Sotomayor that were posted on Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air blog. Then O’Reilly set his sights on ThinkProgress (aka “the insects”):

ThinkProgress, another crazy website on the left: “It will be so funny seeing a bunch of old white guys questioning her during the Senate hearings.” Nothing racist about that. You know, these people — as I said on the conservative guy — they don’t think that they’re racist. They don’t think that they’re bigoted. But you know, it’s so obvious they are.

In both cases, O’Reilly was not quoting posts on ThinkProgress or Hot Air. Rather, he was referencing a couple of the many commenters that post to each site. Watch it:

You have to forgive O’Reilly because he doesn’t actually “go on the Internet” to figure out what he’s talking about. Conservatives are rightfully criticizing O’Reilly for unfairly attacking Hot Air. Allahpundit writes, “Ah, there’s nothing like yanking a comment out of context and using it to smear the entire site.”

The comments policy of this blog — like most blogs on the Internet — is to allow postings from people with whom we agree and disagree. ThinkProgress values and appreciates an open commenting section that allows for a candid and frank exchange of views. Those comments do not always reflect the positions and views of the site’s editors and authors. As long as commenters abide by our terms of use, they are free to post whatever they’d like, even things which offend Bill O’Reilly’s sensitivities.

It’s worth recalling, of course, that O’Reilly’s own website has allowed commenters to post hateful things in the past. But thankfully, O’Reilly is around to help police us all.

Update

This morning on Fox and Friends, Malkin criticized O’Reilly, saying that he unfairly “smeared” bloggers last night:

MALKIN: I think there is this attitude about the blogosphere that, “Oh, they don’t know what they’re talking about.” There’s denigration — Hot Air was smeared, unfortunately, by the O’Reilly Factor last night — when a lot of people get good information, information they cannot get anywhere else.

Watch it:

Right-of-center blogger Jon Henke calls O’Reilly a “dumbass.”


Update

,Right Wing News writes that if O’Reilly cares about accuracy, “he definitely should do a retraction and he needs to make sure that the people compiling this info for him in the future know the difference between a comment and a blog post.”


Update

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