JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

I don’t watch tv, instead I read and write blogs. But last night bloggers convinced me to turn on the tv (actually through one of our computers).

First Heather B. Armstrong, dooce, posted that she would be on ABC World News Tonight. So we turned on the television to see Heather typing dork repeatedly into her laptop, yes. I had told the girls in the midst of cooking dinner, that I wanted to watch a report on bloggers who had been fired.

Why are bloggers always getting fired? my six year old asked me.

How do you know bloggers get fired?

Because I’ve heard you talk about it.

In light of the recent buzz on bloggers getting fired, quite a few cases in this new year already I’ve read in my aggregator, I was curious to see how ABC would portray the situations. However, the take home message seemed to be, thanks to Washingtonienne, that it is okay to be fired for writing sexually explicit posts because one can make tons of money afterwards in a book deal. How many fired bloggers though get book deals? I was disappointed. Instead I had hoped they might address various angles such as Robert Scoble did in his post today.

It’s not easy writing in public. All it takes is one paragraph to lose credibility, have people laugh at you, get you sued, create a PR firestorm, or get your boss mad at you. Think about that one for a while. Just a few hundred pixels on the screen can dramatically change what people think about you.

I wanted to hear some debate whether it’s best to blog about writing recipes and about how much you love puppies and kittens as Rachel Mosteller said in the Christian Science Monitor piece Dave Winer linked yesterday.

The girls were more excited watching the lemurs in the segment after Heather’s. They begged me to let them watch the story of Madagascar creatures living in a Florida reserve. Furry lemurs win out over fired bloggers in my kids’ minds any day.

Then Dave Winer convinced me to turn on the tv again and watch Lawrence Lessig portrayed by Christopher Lloyd on The West Wing. First time I saw the actor come on the screen I laughed. What happened to Lessig’s hair?! I’d never watched West Wing before and it was fun, even if not quite the same as being in the same room with Larry (as Joi Ito was last night, and as I was at BloggerCon III). Two quotes I caught: when Lessig the character is introduced, he is asked if he is the future of ideas Lawrence Lessig? Then Lessig (Lloyd) responded with a short paragraph about his role birthing constitutional law in other nations: I’m more the midwife.