Advantage: Blogofascists

The URL says it all: Lee Siegel's TNR blog, "Lee Siegel on Culture," has been suspended. [NOTE: See update below.] The most recent post, if you want to call it that—it's a single line of text—suggests that the blog is "currently unavailable." Make no mistake: In response to the generalist critic's inane blogging—and in particular, one notorious episode that prompted Matthew Yglesias to dub him "a modern-day Hannah Arendt," to cite just one of the critical-to-dismissive response Siegel earned—his editors at the magazine have permanently revoked his blogging privileges. Seemingly, his higher-ups along the masthead decided that his stint was sufficiently regrettable that the best thing to do was whitewash it: Previous posts and archives have, to the best of my browser's knowledge, been deleted.

Siegel no longer writes material for the back of the book under Leon Wieseltier (that's not news). But does he retain his position as senior editor with the magazine? While he's still listed as such on the masthead, I am led to understand that this recent development serves as his de facto termination/resignation. Which specifically—dooced or deferred?—G.p can't yet say; Liegel might continue to serve in the same senior-editorial capacity that, say, Andrew Sullivan does (which is to say, not really at all). There's more news forthcoming, so tune in.

(Why the Schaudenfreude? What beef do art writers have with Siegel? Click here and here for a sampler. And then there's this recent groaner. Short answer: Siegel's an inept critic, and a baby to boot, and the cultcha's better off without him.)

UPDATE: Franklin Foer, editor of TNR, replaces the placeholder text at Siegel's blog with an apology:

After an investigation, The New Republic has determined that the comments in our Talkback section defending Lee Siegel's articles and blog under the username "sprezzatura" were produced with Siegel's participation. We deeply regret misleading our readers. Lee Siegel's blog will no longer be published by TNR, and he has been suspended from writing for the magazine.

Siegel was much more familiar with the ways of the blogosphere than he ever let on! Apparently "sprezzatura" posted glowing praise for Siegel as rejoinder to his legion critics; when the magazine's readership—whom Siegel ought not to have mistaken for complete asses—cottoned on, someone at TNR did the homework and compared the IP addresses. Before this person could act on the information, the gig was up.

Apparently, when Siegel wrote,

Politics is about persuading your adversary's supporters to come to your side. It's not about reassuring everyone on your side--under the guise of "thinking strategically"--that you and they are absolutely right.

he was operating with a fuzzy definition for the number of agents that "you" constitutes. One wonders whether he's employed the same tactics against his enemies in the blogosphere. Ezra Klein, checked your logs lately? (Let's all give thanks that Uma Thurman doesn't keep on online diary.)

Perhaps most delicious of all—and sure, this story is a whole heaping spoonful of tasty—is Siegel's handle. One definition of sprezzatura—a paradoxical Renaissance term that summons forth a lot of intro-humanities course memories—might be a certain sort of graceful carelessness. The best locution is given by the character Count Ludovico in Baldassar Castiglione's Book of the Courtier:

It is an art which does not seem to be an art. One must avoid affectation and practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, disdain or carelessness, so as to conceal art, and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it . . . obvious effort is the antithesis of grace."

I'd say Siegel absolutely nailed it.

NB: The decision to oust Siegel was made, apparently, before it was revealed that he played sock puppet for his own blog.

Posted by Kriston at September 1, 2006 5:58 PM