AY Honors/Puppetry/Answer Key

Template:Redirect6 A sock puppet is a puppet made from a sock (or similar garment) which is placed over the hand of a puppeteer. When a sock puppeteer fits their hand into the closed end of the sock, the sock puppet can be made to "talk" with the opening and closing of the hand. The puppet's mouth is formed by the region between the heel and the toe, with the thumb forming a jaw. At a minimum the shape of the hand will instantly form the shape of a mouth, but sometimes the mouth is padded by putting in a fairly hard piece of felt (often with a tongue glued inside). Sometimes the region between the toe and heel is cut open with scissors to form a mouth.

Sock puppet

The sock is stretched out fully so that it is long enough to cover the puppeteer's wrist and part of the arm. Often, but not always, the puppeteer will hide behind a stand and raise up his or her hand above the stand so that only the puppet is visible. Many sock puppeteers, however, stand in full view along with their puppets and will hold conversations with their own sock puppets, using ventriloquism.

Composition

Sock puppets can be made from socks or stockings of any colour. Worn-out socks may be used, although socks that are too tattered may fall apart during performance, but socks are usually bought brand-new from the store in order to make sock puppets. Various additions can be glued on in order to give the sock a personality. Streamers and felt strings are popularly glued on for hair. Googly eyes (obtained from craft or fabric stores) are glued on for the puppet's eyes. Sometimes clothes can be added, but this is not frequently seen.

Uses

As sock puppets appear friendly, non-threatening, and clearly non-human, therapists often have their child patients use sock puppets to help them talk more freely about things. For the same reasons, and because oneself and one's sock puppet often feel like two different people, one can speak through a sock puppet to express thoughts or facets of one's personality that one would not feel free to admit in person or fears would harm one's reputation were they actually said in one's own person.

Sock puppets are often used for the education and entertainment of children. They can be used in often elaborate puppet shows or children's plays, much as marionettes would be used. The process of making sock puppets is popularly taught as a creative activity in elementary schools. Many schools teach children to make sock puppets and then have the children put on shows or plays for the whole school with them, sometimes with all the sock puppets singing.

Sock puppets also appear in children's television shows where they can be used alone on the puppeteer's hand, without a complex stage or show. Two orange sock puppets named "Fu" and "Fara" are used in teaching German children how to read. In the United States, sock puppeteer Shari Lewis was well known for her television show Lamb Chop's Play-Along featuring the sock puppets Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, and Hush Puppy.

Sock puppets have also been used in television programming aimed at adults. The 1990s saw the introduction of the Ed the Sock character on the MuchMusic video network, and the Sifl and Olly show on the MTV music network. Both of these were aimed at teenagers and young adults. Sock puppets have also appeared in advertising geared towards adults. During the late 1990s, the ecommerce company Pets.com used a "spokespuppet" in its advertising to much critical acclaim. The Pets.com puppet was given a "second chance" by 1-800-BarNone, which helps consumers obtain financing for autos. In 2003 the online bank Egg also used sock puppets in its advertising campaign.

Greenwald has been accused of using anonymous pseudonyms, or "sockpuppets", as they are called on the internet, purporting to be other people while posting comments on other blogs defending his own posts or character. Greenwald shared an IP address with sock puppets named “Ryan”[1] (posting at [World View]), “Ellison” (posting at [of Spades]), and “Thomas Ellers” (posting at [2]]).

Greenwald shared a second IP address with a sock puppet named “Wilson” (posting at [Wisdom]).

IP address 201.37.43.117

Three comments from a “Rick Ellensburg” at a [2006 Right Wing Nuthouse post] originate from the same service provider that Greenwald was using at the end of 2005 and in January 2006[3]. All of the IP addresses are based in Brazil, where Greenwald spends much of the year with his boyfriend[4].

No actual people have come forward claiming to be Ellers, or Ellensburg, or Ellison, or Ryan, or Wilson. And in addition to IP address evidence, other factors point to the sock-puppets being Greenwald, including similarities between the style and content of the sock-puppet comments and Greenwald’s style and content[5], personality, writing style and verbal tics, plus showing a strong interest in (and encyclopedic knowledge of) Greenwald's writing, posts, updates, and Greenwald’s enemies and commenters on the internet.

The posts from IP address 201.37.43.117 began on July 13. Blogger Ace of Spades wrote a post about Glenn Greenwald, followed by many derogatory comments on Greenwald by commenters[6] At 6:14 a.m. Pacific time (10:14 a.m. Brazil time), someone named Ellison (a name similar to suspected sock-puppets “Rick Ellensburg” and “Thomas Ellers”) left a comment on Ace’s site [7]. At 6:31 a.m. Pacific time, seventeen minutes after Ellison’s comment at Ace’s site, Greenwald left four seperate comments on Pontifications under his own name, using the same IP address as the Ellison comment.[8] [9] [10] [11]. He left another at 7:19 a.m. that same day [12]

Later that same day, Greenwald left two comments under his own name, from that same IP address, at [>this Villainous Company]11:13 a.m. Pacific and 12:15 p.m. Pacific.

Four days later, on July 17, someone using the same IP address used it to leave three comments under the name “Ryan” on [World View], again defending Greenwald. [13]

The second “Ryan” comment, also from the same IP address as Greenwald's previous posts, was left on the same day, at 6:42 a.m.[14]Pacific. “Ryan” claimed to e-mail Greenwald, who responded in an e-mail that Ryan could then post in comment threads (apparently Greenwald using the device to post his own thoughts, purported posted by another person).At almost the same time, the same IP address was used numerous times by a Thomas Ellers in comments to a Q&O post [15]. (Note that the name “Thomas Ellers” is similar to “Ellison” and “Rick Ellensburg.”) On July 4 Greenwald used the same IP address in question to post on Wizbang blog [16].

Comments showing that “Ellers”, “Ellison” and “Ryan” have encyclopedic knowledge of Greenwald’s site, including Greenwald’s arguments, his commenters, and the content of his posts and updates, yet none of these names has ever appeared on Glenn Greenwald's actual blog in the comments, only in other blogs defending him [17]

IP address 201.17.101.161

Greenwald used IP address 201.17.101.161 to leave a comment at Wizbang on July 4[18]

On July 8, Greenwald posted at Confederate Yankee under his own name [19] using the same IP address. The same IP address was in evidence on July 12, when Greenwald left three comments on Patterico's Pontifications [20] 5:01 a.m. Pacific.

Greenwald left two more comments there using this IP address on July 12, 5:10 a.m. Pacific [21]and 6:54 a.m.[22]

Later that night, someone calling themself “Wilson,” posted from the same IP address on Jeff Goldstein’s site.

Someone purporting to be "Rick Ellensburg", [23] shared an address space with Greenwald on the Brazilian Telemar Norte ISP in late 2005 and early 2006. This is based on Greenwald’s having posted comments under that address space on numerous blogs in early 2006, including Protein Wisdom in January 2006. Ellensburg’s comments were posted in February 2006. The name “Rick Ellensburg” is, of course, similar to “Thomas Ellers” and “Ellison" and the writing style and content is remarkably similar to that of Greenwald. [24], and he quotes Greenwald's posts at length, yet there is no evidence that "Rick Ellison" ever posted on Greenwald's blog [href="http://www.google.com/search?hs=naF&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3A official&as_qdr=all&q=%22Rick+Ellensburg%22+site%3Aglenngreenwald.blogspot.com&btnG=Search] Despite Ellensburg’s extensive knowledge of Greenwald’s posts and arguments, Ellensburg has appeared on the Internet only once, to defend Greenwald in this one situation.