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.

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:

• Jack Bauer becomes first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Rupert Murdoch says “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats”
• Wall-E is an eco-dystopian gem — an anti-consumption movie (from Disney!)
• How to be as persuasive as Abraham Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare

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

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.

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.”

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:

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen. […]

So I will take a look at Senator Leahy’s proposal, but my general orientation is to say let’s get it right moving forward.

Watch it:

Liberal blogger Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog was credentialed to attend the press conference last night. And prominent liberal radio host Ed Schultz was rewarded with a front-row seat. Politico’s Michael Calderone reports which outlets got to ask a question (Politico was not one of them). Correspondents for The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Time, and Newsweek also were not on the White House’s pre-selected list of reporters to be called on.

I worked on a very part-time basis for TPM Media in what I guess you’d call its larval stage and even though I was—and am—a huge fan of Josh’s writing, I didn’t think the more ambitious projects he had in mind were really workable. Obviously I was dead wrong about that and Josh and the people he hired went on to build one of the most amazing new institutions of our time. So we’ll see.

Foreign Policy magazine is going to be bolstering its web presence with a new group blog that apparently will feature Daniel Drezner and Marc Lynch along with other similar sorts whose identities I don’t yet know. This seems like a great project. I’m especially excited about Lynch. Drezner is a sharp thinker and a good blogger, but I think the kind of point-of-view he has is already pretty well-reflected in the US media.

Lynch, on the other hand, like Juan Cole comes out of the weirdly neglected corner of academia that specializes in knowing things about the Middle East. You would have thought that 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would bring a lot more prominence to people working in this field. But instead, the mainstream views represented in this field weren’t — and aren’t — what the political powers that be wanted to hear so somehow the conclusion came about that Bernard Lewis was the only Middle East expert worth listening to about anything. After all, he was willing to tell people what they wanted to hear!

One of the things the blogosphere has done, however, has been to open up some space in which a more diverse set of voices can be heard. I’ve been a reader of Lynch’s blog for years, going back to before he had tenure and it was a pseudonymous site. Back then, the about page asserted that the unnamed author was an expert on Arab media and political reform, and at one point I realized that I wanted to quote something this fellow had said for a print article. But whereas on the blog it was fine to attribute something to Abu Aardvark, that wasn’t going to fly in print so I had to uncover the writer’s secret identity and I was certainly glad when it turned out to be a real expert. Meanwhile, besides Middle East issues Lynch also has considerable expertise in the field of comic books which I hope FP will consider an important area.

Andrew Golis lists ten young progressive intellectuals who make him hopeful. But who cares about that? The real issue is those of us who didn’t make the cut:

I probably would have included Jessica Valenti and Josh Marshall if not for the painfully obvious conflicts of interest (fiancee and boss). I might also have included a few more bloggers (Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Atrios) but for a desire to not overwhelm things with whiteboysblogging.

I’m going to have to start leaning harder on my Hispanic credentials so I can make it onto more prestigious lists. Admittedly, my skin is pretty pale. But look at Bill Richardson! And I’ve got an actual Spanish name which is more than he can say.

Now that CBO Director Peter Orszag’s designation as the new administration’s OMB Director is official, we can get down to the really important questions. For example: Wither the CBO Director’s blog? Acting Director Bob Sunshine has a post up saying goodbye to Orszag, but no word on the future, perhaps because he’s only the acting director. And will OMB have a blog?

I raise these issues somewhat in jest. But also in earnest. The CBO blog was, in my view, an excellent idea. Blogs have a reputation for being full of fluff and trivia, but they’re actually an ideal publication outlet for hyper-earnest, incredibly boring reports that are of very little interest to anyone. Obviously, the highest traffic is going to go to sites that write about stuff people do find interesting. But it’s not the CBO’s fault that its products don’t attract widespread interest — it’s inherent to their mission. And the genius of online publishing is that there’s no problem with being unpopular. The nature of publishing is that the higher your fixed costs of production and distribution, the more important it becomes to be able to move a large volume of product so as to spread the fixed costs out. But online your fixed costs are essentially zero. What’s more, putting your stuff on a blog — even if it’s mostly links to PDFs and stuff — can render your material much more salient to Google, thus meaning that that minority of people who are interested in what you’re doing have maximum chance of finding it.

Conservatives love to blast bloggers. Defending Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Scarborough mocked bloggers “just sitting there, eating Cheetos” in “their underwear,” while Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) complained that bloggers add “vituperation toxicity” to the political debate.

The problem with the Internet pessimists, however, is that their skepticism often borders on Chicken Little-ism or outright Ludditism. I thought Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur was about as over-the-top as things could get in this regard. (See my 2-part book review here and here), but then I worked my way through Lee Siegal’s tedious screed, Against the Machine. It made Keen seem downright reasonable and cheery by comparison! Keen and Siegal seem to be in heated competition for the title “High Prophet of Internet Doom,” but Siegal is currently a nose ahead in that race.

And it’s true — Keen’s book is quite annoying, but Siegel’s absolutely blows it away. Both, though, seem a bit like cleverly postmodern efforts to undercut their own theses and prove that the quality control mechanisms of traditional media don’t actually work. Lots of blogs suck, in other words, but so do lots of books.

You hear complaints of this form being leveled all the time and not just against blogs. Something happens that’s politically relevant. And most-but-not-all conservatives see it one way, and most-but-not-all liberals see it another way. Then we bemoan everyone’s predictable ideological responses. It’s as if we’re supposed to believe that in an ideal world, folks would walk around with these ideologies in our heads, but then when things happen in the world our understanding of those events would not at all be impacted by our large set of pre-existing beliefs about how the world works. But why would that happen? And why would that be a good thing? After all, the reason it’s predictable that most liberals will react to a given politically-relevant occurrence is that most liberals have a lot of beliefs and principles in common. Similarly, most conservatives have a lot of beliefs and principles in common. So, again, it’s predictable that people who share many background beliefs will usually have similar responses to new events. But how else could things possibly go?

A lot of the journalistic ideal and bien pensant critiques of partisanship implicitly partakes of some very naive ideas about empiricism whereby if we just all somehow cast aside the blinders of pre-existing prejudice we could see things as they are and our unmediated perception of them would lead to consensus. But nobody who thinks seriously about these issues has believed anything of the sort for a long time — fact and theory are interdependent and all that would happen if we looked at new events without any pre-existing commitments is that we’d have no way whatsoever to make sense of things.