Fade to Pink

The death of a blog is always a sad event. Given my long silence, I suppose that this blog could have just as easily gone the way of my Doppelgänger, the other Liz Losh, whose blog was aborted after just two entries.

In my case, I am in mourning for the loss of the parody blog of Harriet Miers. Since she is no longer a viable candidate for Supreme Court justice, it's a dark day in my virtual Dallas. Now the heading for "Harriet's" blog reads: "The blog of the #1 nominee for Associate Justice to be picked by the #1 smartest President to ever withdraw, in all of history!!"

Patricia Roberts-Miller has written about how parody blogging can still involve engagement with audiences, and that even if the subject isn't intentionally political, politics comes into blogging like the return of the repressed, as it did when she was blogging in the voice of her dog Chester.

Obviously, the blogspot interface enables anonymity in ways that serve humor, but can also mask political or advertising sources. For example, this year, many have expressed wariness of blogs that could serve as propaganda for the occupation of Iraq, such as those listed on the conservative website Little Green Footballs. The media debate about whether Iraq the Model is a front for a CIA operation points to precisely how difficult it is to draw geopolitical boundaries in the blogosphere.

Stay tuned for more on this subject in my Humanitech talk on Blogs and Wikis.