Xena’s online following offers a fresh example of how the Internet is altering the way fans and creators influence each other. In the absence of any clear sign, so far, of disapproval from Xena’s rights-holders, Universal Studios and Renaissance Pictures, Xenites have freely created a festival of Xena glory online — a world chock-full of unauthorized screen captures, video clips, sound files, screen savers, computer games, detailed episode summaries and ream after ream of fan fiction. On the Net, fans are hardly helpless consumers of pop cultural commodities. They have been given the power to redraw the lines that separate them from the objects of their devotion.

There is an intimate connection, in every sense of the word, between the Net and the Xenaverse.

“The producers are very aware of the Internet and the Internet fan’s reaction,” says Kym Taborn, editor of WHOOSH, a tongue-in-cheek Web zine that serves as the journal for the “International Association of Xena Studies” and focuses on such issues as the hair color myths surrounding Lucy Lawless (the actress who plays Xena) or Xena as Byronic hero. “I have a whole boatload of honorary members of the International Association of Xena Studies who are production people or actors on the show,” says Taborn.

“The Renaissance folks are very much aware of the large online community, the numerous Web sites and the fact that these Web sites have screen captures and use images from the MCA/Universal Xena/Herc Web sites,” says Michael Martinez, maintainer of the comprehensive Xena Online Resources Web site.

Representatives of Renaissance Pictures proved impossible to reach for this story — most of the show’s principals are in New Zealand, where Xena is taped, and the Renaissance publicist referred all questions to Universal Studios. But the online footprints of Renaissance are everywhere. Writers, editors and producers of the show subscribe to mailing lists and participate in chat room-based interview sessions — not all of which are smooth sailing. Lawless found herself kicked out of an IRC chat room devoted to Xena when she made fun of her own character while chatting under the nickname “Hercules.” The chat room regulars were outraged. Nobody messes with Xena.

Unless, that is, one is an author of Xena-related fan fiction, in which case anything goes. Not only does Xena get beat up and battered in some fan-written chronicles, but she and Gabrielle have been transmogrified into 1990s bikers in the American Southwest and have been known to pop up in regions as far afield as Ireland and Japan. And then there’s the sex. One measly televised kiss doesn’t even begin to capture the weight of passion expressed online in lesbian Xena/Gabrielle erotica. Xena is truly a feminist hero for the ’90s, an ass-kicking sex object accessible to men and women alike.

Which is not to say that in the annals of pop cultural fan obsessiveness, the outpouring of Xena/Gabrielle erotica is by any means unique. So-called slash fiction dates back at least 15 years, to the days when the first band of boldly-going “Star Trek” fans began to publish stories that posited a graphic homosexual relationship between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Spock. But back then, slash implied underground, and had an audience composed mostly of the slash writers themselves and sharp-eyed lit-crit academics.

In the Internet era, there is no more underground, and every obsessive subcultural faction is easily accessible. Xena/Gabrielle slash may not be unique, but it is vigorous, public and, to a certain extent, even officially condoned. Gene Roddenberry probably never intended Kirk and Spock to be seen as gay lovers, but there is no denying the explicit lesbian subtext in “Xena,” the television show. As one of the Subtext FAQs notes, the show’s producers have admitted as much. Televised incidents such as the Xena/Gabrielle kiss, or the even more notorious “disco lesbian vampire” episode “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” provide, at the very least, evidence of a tacit consent to a lesbian reading of the Xena-Gabrielle relationship.

Contemporary pop culture may be far more accepting of overt lesbianism than gay male sexuality, but the lesbian Xena scene flourishing online still presses some taboo buttons.

“I would say that in a climate of homophobia, any story which takes lesbian sexuality and relationships seriously and deals with them sympathetically has a transgressive element to it,” says Henry Jenkins, author of “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” “If Xena seems to allow a lesbian reading, it doesn’t insist on it. The producers want to have things both ways, while the fan stories make the lesbian subtext explicit.”

“Most slash stories are a form of cultural criticism,” says Jenkins, “often an attempt to explore more fully the characters and their motivations, and thus fall under the legal notion of parody. On the other hand, if you are a schoolteacher in the Midwest posting slash stories on the net, and Viacom comes crashing down upon you armed with a whole tribe of lawyers, you stand to lose far too much to go to court … They will crush you and all you can do is roll over and play dead, whether they are legally in the right or not.” But the legal implications of fan fiction aren’t as simple as cut-and-dried trademark infringement. For instance, producers and writers for “Xena” are careful to note that they do not read fan fiction for fear of being accused of stealing ideas. In other words, they’re afraid of being sued for stealing from their own fans, who are blithely adapting already trademarked characters. Confusing? So be it. Nobody ever claimed that the Xenaverse makes sense.

Right now, apparent trademark violation and copyright infringement are rampant in the Xenaverse, but so far, Universal isn’t cracking down on anyone. The Universal approach is in sharp contrast to that taken by its media-titan brethren, Fox Television and Viacom, both of whom have stirred up considerable Net ire with harsh cease-and-desist stances against unauthorized Web site creations by fans of such shows as “The X-Files,” “Millennium” and “Star Trek.”

But what is Universal’s policy? It’s not easy to find out. In response to repeated inquiries, a spokesperson for Universal (who insisted that she be referred to only by that label) finally issued the following statement:

“We do monitor Internet sites for many of our characters and properties and sometimes certain Web sites are also called to our attention, and in such cases we will analyze on a case-to-case basis when it might be appropriate to take action. But we recognize that most of these unauthorized sites are created by fans, and we find that flattering and supportive of our shows and properties.”

The spokesperson noted that Universal reserves the right to take action against sites that cross the line into “bad taste,” but at the same time admitted that the notion of bad taste is “very subjective.”

There is no shortage of bad taste on the Net, to be sure. When Lawless accidentally exposed her left breast while singing the National Anthem at an NHL playoff game, pictures of the incident immediately popped up on the Web. Lia Crandall, a publicist for Renaissance Pictures, recalled being sent a photograph of Lawless in which the actress’ head had been digitally superimposed on a naked body. The Xenaverse can be a rough place.

But still, most Xena Webmasters say that Universal has taken no action against fans.

“The official policy of MCA/Universal seems to be a don’t-ask-don’t-tell one,” said Tom Simpson, a Web producer who works for CitySearch. “Obviously people haven’t been asking permission to create the Web sites, but MCA/Universal hasn’t asked anyone to shut down their site. If they did, I would be one of the first asked. I have over 400 megabytes of Xena images, sounds and QuickTime videos, and around 3,000 visitors daily.”

And, intriguingly, the most potentially controversial aspect of Xena on the Net — the lesbian erotica fan fiction — is also probably the best protected from any potential corporate-sponsored censorship. Despite using trademarked characters, fan fiction is protected, says lawyer (and devoted “Star Trek” fan) Judith Gran, by several Supreme Court precedents ruling that “transformative” works are not necessarily infringements on copyright.

Furthermore, for a corporation to win a cease-and-desist order against an author of fan fiction, says Gran, it would have to prove that it was suffering financial damage — when the truth could be exactly the opposite.

As fans see it, their online creativity has helped propel “Xena’s” huge popularity to its spot today as the No. 1 syndicated action-adventure television show in the world.

“It appears that MCA/Universal has realized the value of a few dedicated Webmasters who spend ungodly hours creating monstrous Web pages that only serve to help advertise their product more,” says Simpson.

“The Xena fans are for the most part extremely thoughtful, courteous, law-abiding citizens,” says Kym Taborn, the WHOOSH editor. “All they want to do is enjoy the Xenaverse. There are many who take great delight in writing their own Xena adventures and even more who take delight in reading them. Who is this harming? If it is doing anything, it is adding value to the property of Xena. The Web activity enhances the product.”

Still, statements like Universal’s appear to be designed to allow for a future change of direction. The current peace could easily be just the calm before the crackdown. But the Xenites, like their hero, don’t intend to go quietly. Should the media colossus ever decide to move, they intend to be ready. Taborn and Martinez, of Xena Online Resources, recently began organizing a Xena Webmaster’s Association that will act as an intermediary between the Net and Universal. If Universal suddenly decides that certain activities are unacceptable, the XWA will work to get the information out as quickly as possible. As Xena would be the first to observe, forewarned is forearmed.

If the consensus reporting from Capitol Hill is correct, sometime in the next two days, Republicans and Democrats will agree on a deal that keeps the payroll tax cut in place, extends unemployment benefits (albeit with a gradual reduction in the length of benefits put into place) and, once again, protects doctors from a cut in their Medicare reimbursement rate. The unemployment benefits and the so-called doc fix will purportedly be paid for by a combination of wireless spectrum sales, tweaks to how much the federal government contributes to federal worker pensions, and cash carved out of the health reform deal.

The politics of this are a lot easier to figure out than the economics. Simply put: It’s a win for Obama. The White House avoids putting the brakes on economic growth by preventing an imminent tax hike and keeping the safety net more or less intact for unemployed workers. In the run-up to an election that may be largely decided by the performance of the economy over the summer, that’s huge. If Republicans, as some have suggested, wanted to tank the economy to ensure new occupants in the White House, this is not the way to go about it.

And as a bonus, at least for the moment, the White House has also managed to avoid another game of budget showdown chicken. That said, the House has yet to vote, and over the past two years we’ve  witnessed several occasions in which recalcitrant conservative representatives have torpedoed deals that were supposedly set in place. On the other hand, it’s possible that the negative political consequences of the 10 percent approval rating currently “enjoyed” by House Republicans is beginning to sink in.

Economically, the deal doesn’t do anything to additionally stimulate the economy, it merely keeps in place measures that have already been enacted. The maximum length of eligibility for unemployment benefits will gradually contract, a process that will cause hardship for workers who drop through the safety net. But macroeconomically speaking, the effect isn’t going to be that huge. Nor will the offsets that pay for the unemployment extensions and the doc fix add up to much in the way of contractionary austerity, though it certainly won’t be pleasant for federal workers who may end having to contribute more to their own pensions.

All in all, it’s kind of a wash. The White House avoids sabotaging the economy, the Republicans avoid making themselves any more unpopular than they already are. It’s a sign of just how dysfunctional Washington has been over the last couple of years that the absence of drama seems like a masterful political stroke by Obama. Maybe, as James Fallows suggests, he really is learning how to be president.

Not only does the foreclosure deal add up to peanuts compared to the $350 billion tobacco settlement, but it also pales before the size of the problem that it is theoretically supposed to address. The amount of negative equity held by Americans in their homes is currently calculated at around $700 billion. As a result of the foreclosure settlement around 750,000 Americans who lost their homes to foreclosure will receive checks of around $2,000 and another million homeowners will see the size of their outstanding loans reduced by an estimated average of around $20,000. Sure, any additional stimulus will be sorely appreciated in today’s demand-constrained U.S. economy, but a $2,000 check isn’t going to make up for a foreclosed home, and it is silly to think the banks will feel more than a slight pinch. The banks have already reserved enough capital to cover the checks that they are going to have to cut (around $5 billion). Compared to the damage caused to American families by both the financial crisis and the rush to foreclosure, the banks are getting off easy.

Obama may be technically correct to say that the settlement “will deliver some measure of justice for some families who have been victims of abusive practices,” but it’s wrong to treat the news as any kind of real payback for bank misdeeds. It’s just nibbling around the margins.

So is it a sellout — “another raw demonstration of who wields power in America,” as Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith, — undoubtedly the harshest critic of the Obama administration on housing policy and bank reform — argues? That’s a little harder to say, and a lot depends on the future course of events.

Some defenders of the settlement are arguing that the size of the deal is smaller than it might otherwise be because the government has retained the right to sue the banks for a wide variety of mortgage-related bad behavior stretching beyond the fraudulent processing of foreclosure paperwork at the heart of this deal. In particular, the states attorneys general of New York and California can continue their own separate investigations. As Felix Salmon writes, “other big-money lawsuits over securitization can and almost certainly will still be brought — which means that the big banks all still have significant litigation risk hanging over their heads.” As if to punctuate this point, on Wednesday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that federal regulators plan to sue some of the largest banks on charges of fraud related to the dodgy securitization of mortgages in 2007 and 2008.

The proof of this theory will only come when we see how hard the Obama administration and states like California go after the banks in the future. Given the track record of this administration, that may be doubtful. (Although, it may be worth noting that at least one conservative critic of the settlement, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, bases his critique precisely on the fact that banks still can’t put the whole crisis behind them. The administration can’t leave well enough alone, complains Holtz-Eakin, or “resist the political temptation to rouse its base with finger-pointing and lawsuits.”)

A more interesting question to consider, however, is how the housing relief contained in this settlement fits into other administration housing policy efforts currently in the works.

First off, government negotiators are still working on roping another nine mortgage providers into the deal, which could raise the overall settlement total from $26 billion to around $40 billion. In March, the rejiggered HARP refinance program will kick in, presumably allowing hundreds of thousands of homeowners to refinance at currently rock bottom mortgage rates. There is also strong pressure coming from the Federal Reserve and the White House to convert currently unoccupied foreclosed homes owned by the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into rental properties, a step that would remove excess inventory from the housing market.

Each individual nibble here is unlikely to make a profound difference, but taken together, all these initiatives add up to the most concerted effort the Obama administration has taken to date to bring relief to the housing sector. It’s also worth noting that it’s all happening without any help whatsoever from Congress. The approach does not address the desire for punishment that so many would like to see meted out upon the banks, but it will likely help spur additional economic growth. At a point when the economy already seems to have solid momentum toward recovery, every extra bit of help is gravy.

President George W. Bush cut taxes for almost everyone who paid income taxes. Romney would make the Bush tax cuts permanent. But that’s only a first step.

He would also raise taxes on poor families with children at home and those going to college.

Romney does this by reducing benefits from the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit and by ending the American Opportunity tax credit for college education.

To be fair to Romney, when the candidate made his comment on not caring about the poor, he did it in the context of noting that there is a “safety net” for the poor, and if it was broken, he would “fix it.” But it’s a little difficult to square the idea of fixing a broken safety net with the plan to eliminate tax breaks that benefit poor families with children who aspire to a college education. (Not to mention the little problem of figuring out how to pay for that safety net, while at the same time committing to making permanent budget-busting tax cuts.)

Romney’s tax plan appears tailor-made for an Obama attack team to rip to shreds. Of course, judging by the results from the primary and caucus contests so far, poor people don’t seem very inclined to vote for Romney, so maybe he figures he’s got nothing to lose.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against Jeremy Lin. He was a high school phenom in Palo Alto, Calif., and I know some Asian American kids out here in Berkeley who worship the ground he walks on. Lin didn’t make the NBA because he’s freakishly tall, like the 7-foot-4 Yao Ming (Lin is “only” 6″3′). He’s there because he can play ball, because he has a wicked fast first step when he drives to the basket, and he knows how to deliver the rock to the big guys (a skill a surprising number of “legitimate” NBA guards show little interest in mastering). He’s a triumph of will over genetic endowment, a fact that makes him inspiring to an entire generation of Californian kids restless with their model minority shackles.

But you can like Lin, and you can root for him, and yet still find his instantaneous, Tim Tebow-like ascent (in more ways than one!) to pop-cultural phenom — LINSANITY! — to be more than a little disorienting. Jeremy Lin is the latest example of how our socially-mediated, always-on world can churn any data point, any outrage, any act of heroism or moment of despair into a full-scale world-wide frenzy in less time than it took me to write this sentence.

We’ve seen this before. The same forces — social media, digital publishing tools, smartphone ubiquity — that are giving us Linsanity just blitzkrieged the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation. They torpedoed Hollywood’s attempt to force SOPA and PIPA through Congress and blew up Bank of America’s plan to charge a $5 fee for debit card use. They fueled the Occupy Wall Street movement, magnified every Tebow prostration before God into a worldwide religious orgy and are ever-more ready to pounce on any misstep by a Mitt Romney or a Newt Gingrich and explode it into an instant political crisis.

And the crazy thing is, we’re figuring this out as it goes along — and giving the phenomenon more power. As we understand this new world, and submerge ourselves in it, we are beginning to take our cues from it.

Just want every one to know that I wrote about #linsanity this morning long before it became “hip” this afternoon: bit.ly/Apjdq4

— Jon (@viewmyseats) February 8, 2012

The mainstream media now seems to be adapting its coverage of events on the basis of whether something blows up in social media as much as it does from the perceived newsworthiness of the event itself. It’s startling, but also natural: When you see a fire start to blaze, you run to cover to it. And so Linsanity breeds more Linsanity.

You want highlights? Here’s a distilled package of nine minutes of Lin’s exploits from his 28-point explosion on Monday night. You want a tribute video with an original rap soundtrack on top of some T.I. beats?  Someone is recommending it to you on Facebook or Twitter right now. You want analysis, pro or con? Plug “Jeremy Lin” into Google News and say goodbye to the rest of your day.

You want vaguely disconcerting racially tinged jokes playing on Asian, black, and white stereotypes? Twitter’s going crazy:

Jeremy Lin is a huge pickup for the Knicks. Not only is he scoring a ton of points but he is also tutoring his teammates children in math.

— The Bill Walton Trip (@NotBillWalton) February 7, 2012

“We know that Lin has been playing along, but honestly, fellow Knicks, stop bowing to him after a great play.” nymag.com/daily/sports/2…

— Angry Asian Man (@angryasianman) February 8, 2012

Lots of sterile white folks offer to adopt Jeremy Lin, concerned with the all black family he is currently with.

— The Fake ESPN (@TheFakeESPN) February 7, 2012

On Monday, the social media world was also getting worked up about Michigan Republican Senate hopeful Pete Hoekstra’s racist Super Bowl ad, featuring a Chinese woman (labeled “yellowgirl” in the HTML code for the Web version) gloating over all the jobs her country was taking from the U.S. Once thrown into the 24/7 crazy cultural mashup perpetual motion machine, it didn’t take long before anger about that ad ran head on into Jeremy Lin pride. I have seen tweets urging Jeremy Lin to run for the Republican nomination for the Michigan senate seat, tweets warning that the only American jobs in danger from Asians are those belonging to New York Knick starting point guards, and even a tweet riffing off Kobe Bryant’s self-identification as “black mamba” — Jeremy Lin is suddenly  the “yellow mamba.”

It’s a tricky, tricky world. We get pissed off when we learn that an HTML jockey has labeled a Chinese woman “yellowgirl” but we grin when see Lin dubbed “yellow mamba.” Or maybe not; maybe we get mad at both. The tweet-stream moves too fast too tell for sure. It’s just one non-stop improv jazz riff frenzy.

The craziest thing is, from his record so far we know absolutely nothing about Lin’s staying power as a potential long-term starting NBA point guard. Lin won a state championship as a senior high school and broke all kinds of Ivy League records at Harvard, but he wasn’t drafted by a single NBA team, sat on the bench last year as a rookie for the Golden State Warriors, was cut by both Golden State and Houston before this season, and was playing in the NBA’s developmental league just two months ago. He’s had two great games against two bad teams, and once the league figures him out, he could easily become old news as quickly as he became the news. Or he might tear his ACL next week, be out for the season, and never manage a full comeback. His incredible domination of the basketball world right now tells us nothing about his future.

But one thing we do know for sure: There will be something to replace him, sooner rather than later. We’re strapped to a new kind of rollercoaster — the only thing we can be certain of is that our passions will be constantly roiled by whatever new outrage or delight seethes our way via our new information channels. You know that the Susan G. Komen foundation is reeling from their contact with this world. And you’ve got to guess Jeremy Lin is having a strange week.

Who’s next?

For New York’s bankers and traders, the new math suddenly reordered their assumptions about their place in a post-crash city. “After tax, that’s like, what, $75,000?” an investment banker at a rival firm said as he contemplated Morgan Stanley’s decision. He ran the numbers, modeling the implications. “I’m not married and I take the subway and I watch what I spend very carefully. But my girlfriend likes to eat good food. It all adds up really quick. A taxi here, another taxi there. I just bought an apartment, so now I have a big old mortgage bill.”

And there’s more where that came from! Banking analyst Dick Bove complains that the government has “basically castrated these companies.” Sorry, Dick, but it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of testosterone-crazed bulls in the entire global economy pasture. Hard times for investment bankers? It’s hard to imagine anything in the world that the average American could care less about, at this particular juncture in time.

2) As proof, amazing as it may seem, that the Dodd-Frank bank reform law is achieving exactly what the U.S. economy needs most: a reversal of the long-term trend in which the financial sector steadily gobbled up more and more of the U.S. economy.

Sherman makes a persuasive case that, even before the full implementation of Dodd-Frank, in anticipation of the new rules the big banks have been forced to make major changes to their businesses that have had a serious negative impact on their bottom line.

What is even more startling about this reversal is that few thought the much-vilified Dodd-Frank act would have much effect at all … And yet, from the moment Dodd-Frank passed, the banks’ financial results have tended to slide downward, in significant part because of measures taken in anticipation of its future effect. Since July 2010, Bank of America nosed down 42 percent, Morgan Stanley fell 25 percent, Goldman fell 21 percent, and Citigroup fell 16 — in a period when the Dow rose 25 percent. Partly, this is a function of the economic headwinds. But the bill’s major provisions — forcing banks to reduce leverage, imposing a ban on proprietary trading, making derivatives markets more transparent, and ending abusive debit-card practices — have taken a pickax to the Wall Street business model

If true, this is great news. In 1986, Wall Street accounted for 19 percent of all U.S. corporate profits. Just before the financial crash that figure had grown to 41 percent. That’s not a healthy economy. That’s an economy of speculators trading with each other and blowing up financial bubbles. Obama has gotten no end of grief from the left for not breaking up the big banks immediately after becoming president, even though one could make a good argument that to do so in the middle of the crisis would have damaged the U.S. economy even further. If, in fact, the long-run resolution of this drama is a Wall Street that is withering on the vine, while the “real” “Main Street” economy gradually strengthens, then we are looking at something remarkable: a profound transformation of the U.S. economy, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Reagan administration.

3) As unwarranted hype.

Of course, Dodd-Frank has not been fully implemented, and financial sector lobbyists are busily exerting tremendous pressure to make sure every new rule gets written so as to have the weakest effect possible. At the same time, Wall Street will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign of Mitt Romney, who has promised to make rolling back Dodd-Frank one of the primary goals of his presidency. Profits may be bad this year, and bankers might be whining about their bonuses, but Wall Street will regroup, Dodd-Frank will be neutered, and it will be business as usual in just a few years.

Readings 2 and 3 are not necessarily in contradiction with each other. It’s possible for Dodd-Frank to already be having a salutary effect and for that effect to be short-lived. In some ways, Dodd-Frank’s legacy may be what November’s election ends up deciding — although whichever party wins the White House in 2012, the power of the financial sector over the political process is unlikely to diminish significantly.

But regardless of which reading you choose, the piece itself is amazing if only for the plethora of quotes from bankers lamenting how the times have changed. There’s a self-awareness of the fact that the country headed down the wrong road, that maybe, just maybe, there was something wrong with all the easy money. Wall Street sounds chastened. Whether or not the Occupy movement, or Dodd-Frank, or the bad economy is most responsible for this reality is impossible to say, but for now, let’s call it progress.