I caught wind of Lonelygirl15 just a day or two before her story broke. What appeared to be a teen’s self-produced video blog is instead a joke, a hoax, a movie teaser, a conspiracy, and/or an occult recruitment ploy.

Some people are mad, but many “fans” of the “show” say they don’t care if it’s real or not. They are entertained.

Doc-u-drama’s were also big this week. ABC’s miniseries, The Path to 9/11, drew critics and calls for censorship. The argument? Stuff wasn’t true. The defense? It’s a dramatization. The worry? Folks would take as historical fact dramatic embellishments and compressions. To make the show more exciting characters (with the names of the real people) are composites of many people and their actions. And some events are embellished or happen out of sequence. Stuff that made some people look worse than they were. Some stuff that might have made other people–characters??–look better than they were.

It’s a show. So lots of people say it doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. It’s entertainment.

What about the biggest entertainment here in D.C.? Politics. The past weeks have had very dramatic revelations by President Bush. About what we have learned from “high-value” detainees. About why we are at war with Iraq. And the continuing on-again, off-again linking of al-Qaeda with Saddam Hussein.

Does the truth matter? Or is it all just a show where either truth or fiction are legitimate jumping-off points for the next episode.