For those of you able to blissfully unplug over the holiday weekend, the big news Friday was
Lee Siegel's suspension from the New Republic for sock puppetry.
If you missed out on the fun, there were great posts about the pathetic buffoon's ignoble ousting from the dying TNR by Shakespeare's Sister, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and Ezra Klein.
And for a taste of his sockpuppetry, there's this:
I'm a huge fan of Siegel, been reading him since he started writing for TNR almost ten years ago. (Full disclosure: I'm an editor at a magazine in NYC and he's written for me too.) I watch the goings-on and have to scratch my head. The people who hate him the most are all in their twenties and early thirties. There's this awful suck-up named Ezra Klein--his "writing" is sweaty with panting obsequious ambition--who keeps distorting everything Siegel writes--the only way this no-talent can get him. And I ask myself: why is it the young guys who go after Siegel? Must be because he writes the way young guys should be writing: angry, independent, not afraid of offending powerful people. They on the other hand write like aging careerists: timid, ingratiating, careful not to offend people who are powerful. They hate him because they want to write like him but can't. Maybe if they'd let themselves go and write truthfully, they'd get Leon Wieseltier to notice them too.
Hilarious. And it couldn't have happened to a better magazine.