Impersonations for Comedy and Everyday

RECENTLY SOCK PUPPETRY HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS. IT IS CURIOUS HOW the latest means of faking identity can take on the names of age-old - in this instance also childish - games and performances. That nomenclature helps us understand what is going on, apparently. Puppet theater goes well back in history, and probably few children to this day have not played with a sock puppet of their own or others' making. Thus a headline across the top of the business section of the New York Times (2007: Cl) reads, "The Hand that Controls the Sock Puppet Could Get Slapped." The article defines this puppetry as "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one's self, allies or company," and that sounds like cheating. I don't know whether to be amused or indignant, and the headline writer seems to have reacted with the same double take. The case is serious, because the CEO of a publicly traded supermarket chain has been using a fake identity online for eight years, no less, to promote his company's stock; and the authors of the article cite, without naming, a journalist and others who have been playing similar games. No question: rapidly expanding information technology has in recent years multiplied many times over the opportunities for identity fraud. Happily we have other institutions besides markets and newsrooms, regulatory agencies and courtrooms that cope successfully with fictions of identity and many more fictions. I mean literature and