A gut-busting work of staggering douchebaggery
An artist’s rendering of Lee Siegel’s interview with Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine.
It’s hard to know which of Lee Siegel’s petulant, verbose variations on “I know you are, but what am I?” is most obnoxious:
Siegel on self-aggrandizement: [I]t never occurred to me at the time that I was doing something wrong. There are other people who appear anonymously on Web sites; they do battle with their detractors. Anonymity is a universal convention of the blogosphere, and the wicked expedience is that you can speak without consequences.
Ah yes, if only we knew the names of such shadowy fringe characters as Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, Michael Bérubé, Michelle Malkin, Steve Gilliard, Andrew Sullivan, Juan Cole, Jeff Goldstein and Glenn Greenwald. That is, if only we knew their real names. Their anonymous missives betray the honorable tradition set down by such courageous writers as Silence Dogood, Publius, Voltaire, Mark Twain and Ibn Warraq. And it certainly is an outrage that no blogger has ever faced real-life consequences for their online shenanigans.
Siegel on self-awareness: Everyone seems to be fleeing from the responsibilities that come from being who you are. I think that is why the blogosphere is thriving. It allows people to develop a fantasy self.
Alas, you should see the life I hide behind my clever screen name. You would fantasize about being me, too.
Siegel on self-control: [A]s Sprezzatura, I wasn’t practicing criticism. I was indulging my temperament and abandoning my intellect. Look, putting a polemicist like myself in the blogosphere is like putting someone with an obesity problem in a chocolate factory.
To her great credit, Deborah Solomon asks the most perfectly natural follow-up question: “What are you talking about?”
Siegel on self-pity: At least for those who practice incessant character assassination, which represents a good portion of the blogosphere, they vent out of the pain of being unacknowledged.
I can speak only for myself and my four esteemed colleagues, but I wouldn’t say our character assassination is “incessant.” Hell, this is the first thing any of us has bothered to post today. And no one’s heard a peep out of Seb in who knows how long. “Incessant” sounds a bit hyperbolic and self-serving, Lee. (PS-Call me. Ringy-dingy. Please?)
Gavin adds: I feel you’re unacknowledged, Travis.
and the wicked expedience is that you can speak without consequences.
So what word did Siegel mean when he wrote ‘expedience’? This question is entirely occupying my mind, now, and I can’t do any work. Curse you Travis G.
He wanted to book a trip to Thailand. He was refering to the sex-travel subsidiary of expedia dot com, Wicked Expedience. Uh, dot com…
It’s stunning isn’t it? How do you get to be so un-self-aware? Or are people like him and Richard Cohen so self-absorbed that they are aware how obnoxious they are but don’t care because it pisses off people they don’ t like?
While I give Solomon some credit for the “What are you talking about?” question, she was obscenely sycophantic for much of the interview:
See, I would have worded that: “As one of the country’s most narcissistic and slanderous cultural critics, what does it feel like to realise everyone thinks you’re a cunt?”
As for this –
– I’d probably just have committed seppuku to avoid saying anything.
“While I give Solomon some credit for the “What are you talking about?â€? question, she was obscenely sycophantic for much of the interview
Yeah, that whole thing read like Lee Siegel being interviewed by one of Lee Siegel’s sock puppets.
Mikey said,
He was refering to the sex-travel subsidiary of expedia dot com, Wicked Expedience. Uh, dot com…
I find that after a few pints of Wicked Expedience© Strong Ale, it is possible to speak without consequences (because no-one can understand a single word of my gibberish)
If “sprezzatura” is the art of doing something difficult with the appearance of no effort, then I propose “siegelatura” for the art of doing something stupid with the appearance of no self-awareness or critical thought.
Who’s with me? Guys? Guys??
Speaking as one of the unacknowledged, I have to ask this, what value is there in being acknowledged, if what you’re being acknowledged as is the stupidest friggin’ person in history?
Granted he has a lot of competition, Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. But the funny thing is, they don’t pretend to be other people to puff themselves up…. They puff themselves up via their own aggrandizing stupidity.
That makes him an idiot and a wannabe idiot all at the same time.
Oh, and Travis. Good call with the Max Cannon strip. Here’s a little known fact. His character, “Bug Eyed Earl” is modeled after me. Sure, he had to make him a little more, er, mainstream to be believable, but he got my appearance and gestalt dead center.
mikey
mikey said,
Good call with the Max Cannon strip. Here’s a little known fact. His character, “Bug Eyed Earl� is modeled after me.
Coming soon: the Studmuffins of Sadly,No Fund-raising Calendar, featuring Mikey as Mr. February…
Perhaps not such a good idea.
Everyone seems to be fleeing from the responsibilities that come from being who you are. I think that is why the blogosphere is thriving. It allows people to develop a fantasy self.
projecting much? Gee this guy must be soooooooo embarrassed. He can’t admit any responsibility for his actions.
As Sprezzatura, I wasn’t practicing criticism. I was indulging my temperament and abandoning my intellect. Look, putting a polemicist like myself in the blogosphere is like putting someone with an obesity problem in a chocolate factory.
Did one of you bastards “put” him there? You forced him didn’t you? It’s all your fault.
As one of the country’s most eloquent and acid-tongued cultural critics, what is it like to be so sharply criticized in public yourself?
Meaning, Siegel, you whimpering has been, why are you such a feckless gob that the same kind of shit you dish out reduces you to a whining slob when you are on the receiving end?
Or, in shorter words you can understand, You can dish it out but you sure can’t take it can you?
Hey, I think Siegel did a wonderful job in the interview. None of you critics are fit to lick his scrotal sac.
You folks are just player hating. Lee Siegel is the leading authority on the culture of anonymous blogging. I anxiously await the publication of his next book, Naked Emotion, Incessant Character Assassination, and the Pain of Unacknowledgment: The Truth Behind the Fantasy Life of the Anonymous Blogger.
You better recognize.
In a “half-savage nation” driven half-mad by celebrity,
anonymity is both a rebellion and a refuge.
I’d like to take this moment to point out that Sadly, No! poster I.F. Thunder, Esq. is both a brilliant common ‘tator and a fragile human being. I plan to make a full, heartfelt apology, just as soon as I can decide which one of us is the sockpuppet.
Shorter Siegel: Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh
Calendar pinup + Mikey = ARH….MY EYES…Avast…ya filthy bilge rat…send me to the crushin depths of davey jones locker or at least make him the March pinup. I think he’d be a lot cuter in those wonderful spring fashions that come out that time of year…
GoatBoy will be found in April, waiting in a clearing beneath the gibbous moon for unsuspecting underage nubile maidens to wander by.
/smelly old thing
I’d volunteer for April, but you’d best be prepared for some serious tits and I know how that gets all the wingnutty gals up in arms.
Besides, if I posed for a calendar, I’d be relinquishing my annoymity and thereby losing my fantasy life….
Nevermind.
But by exposing your identity you could always start a new life as a born again christian just like Tom Delay. Oh wait, that would only work out if you wanted to join a Indonesian christian street gang and chop up muslims. If you don’t mind the gore and bloodshed, it’s pretty good work for a born againer…just ask Tom.
Wow, proof that it’s never too late for an awkward adolescence.
I can say, with complete sincerity, that every time I read Siegel’s tv crit, I thought, “This guy isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, and isn’t as amusing as he thinks he is, so what’s the point, exactly?”
In precisely those words. Because that’s how I think. In smart words like that.
Don’t worry about those wingnutty gals, punkinsmom. Let them flail their arms in the air. It’s all good!
P.S. Don’t worry about the spiders, either. They eat bugs!
A tad off topic but, WTF?
A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.
punkinsmom,
Tits are always serious, especially in this country. From Janet Jackson’s tachyon-lenghth nipple flash to the rolling sillicone valleys flowing in the goddamnedest places* to Alhouse’s mental breakdown at just seeing another woman’s bossoms covered by cloth, I sometimes wonder if titties aren’t the Most Important Things In The Universe (capital letters are important). Titties make people insane, obviously. As a leg man I am, as usual, confused at all the hubbub.
* Friend of mine’s step mom got new hooters put in so she could start nekkid dancin’ at 46. Girl my brother graduated with got ’em for the same reason. Graduation present. From her dad. No shit.
Isn’t sprezzatura that twisty kind of pasta they call “priest stranglers?”
No? Oh, maybe I’m thinking of farafalle…..
Can I have a pint of Wicked Expediance?
I dunno. Ask Douglas Feith.
Farfalle might be better known as Tucker Carlson bowtie stranglers.
For some unexplained reason, farfalle is considered “Dead To Me” by Stephen Colbert.
Beats the heck outta me, I don’t have a working TV.
Friend of mine’s step mom got new hooters put in so she could start nekkid dancin’ at 46. Girl my brother graduated with got ‘em for the same reason. Graduation present. From her dad. No shit.
Women are getting implants straight out of high school in order to start pole dancing at 46? What a country!
Sprezzatura is the art of doing something difficult with the appearance of no effort. Then there’s Prezzytura, the art of making anything look batshit insane!
I thought Sprezzatura was Italian for “Santorum”. You’re telling me it’s not?
I’ve got nothing of substance to add, other than that Gavin is a meany for depressing me with Sadly, No!’s visitor figures…
So, the whiny twit’s “fantasy self” . . . is a whiny twit. Such imagination!
Lee, you’ve almost reached self-metalization. The final step is to discard all use of first person pronouns!
Mr. Siegel is evidently an asshole of biblical proportions. May I never have to endure his company.
“I’m thoroughly analyzed.”
Translated, this means “My analyst eventually came to the conclusion that my character pathology was harder than the Hope diamond and threw me out of his office. In a therapeutic sort of way, of course.” Right up there with “it’s not about the money.”
Seigel is a piker. In the annals of douchebaggery(or should that be the anals of cobaggery? Pick your poison), Seigel’s got NOTHING on John Yoo. If there really were a god, either merciful, or just, or any combintion of the two traits, wouldn’t thunder clouds loom, and lighting crackle and strike whenever Yoo walked outside? Hell, an omnipotent god wouldn’t even have to wait for that.
I sometimes wonder if titties aren’t the Most Important Things In The Universe (capital letters are important).
eh, works for me!
mt said,
September 19, 2006 at 5:57
A tad off topic but, WTF?
A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.
Yes, and the Canadian government is trying to buy him off and shut him up.
YAY FOR FREEDUMB!
“I was indulging my temperament”
so his temperment is to blow himself? interesting….
Them that can are talented.
This guy pretended to be someone else in order to stick up for himself.
Is that the grownup version of an imaginary friend? It seems every bit as pathetic.