TNR’s Odd Sense of Responsibility

by Kevin

September 4th, 2006

So TNR has fired Lee Siegel. Siegel, the man who coined the term “blogofacism”, obsessed over baseball hats, and accused a Slate writer of being a pedophile got caught using a sock puppet to support himself in the comments of his TNR blog:

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.

Franklin Foer
Editor, The New Republic

Before anyone feels too sorry for the man, remember - - he accused another person of being a pedophile. And then there was his attempt to ruin Ezra Klein:

I’ve never been entirely sure what happened next, why that throwaway line ignited such white hot rage. Plenty of folks were mocking Siegel’s inanity, but something about my punch really wounded him. Here’s what came the next day:

“One madly ambitious blogger, who has been alternately trying to provoke and fawning over TNR writers in an attempt to break down the door–I’m too polite to mention any names–even asked who it was at TNR who gave me “the keys to a blog.” This after his mom sent me a very sweet private email complimenting me on something I’d written and appealing to me to get in touch with her little boy! Tsk tsk. Go to your room.”

Awhile back, my mother had followed a link off my site to Siegel’s. Unbeknownst to me, she liked what he wrote, and sent him a complimentary e-mail. I wasn’t aware of it, nor did the e-mail, which I later saw, seek to set up a meeting or introduction. But distorting and deploying the kind note of a writer’s parent — I can hardly even imagine blogofascists sinking so low!

There’s a reason I never mentioned this till now. E-mails with that excerpt were piled in my inbox, but by the time I saw any of them, TNR brass had forced the graf’s removal and apologized to me. That was, I thought, the honorable thing, and I decided to hold fire, not wanting the magazine to suffer more damage than it already was. The paragraph was amended to only contain the nonsensical accusation that I was seeking new employment by attacking eminent TNR author Lee Siegel and senior editor Jason Zengerle while defending reporter-research Eve Fairbanks.

Siegel tried to make Ezra a joke and thus destroy his writing career when it was just starting. Lying about a letter from Ezra’s mother was just icing on the slimy cake Siegel had baked. Siegel got what he deserved.

Which makes me wonder about Jason Zengerle. Zengerle is the man who printed three fake emails, claming they were from Steve Gilliard. Zengerle, after an initial defense, admitted the emails were faked. TNR apologized, but they never released the names of the sources that provided the false emails to Zengerle. In other words, there is no evidence beyond the word of the people most vested in protecting the reputation of TNR that Zengerle did not just make up the emails in order to further his contention that the left blogosphere was a Borg-like creature taking orders from Kos.

TNR did the right thing in Siegel’s case, but the wrong thing in a similar case involving Zengerle. Remember, too, that Siegel was fired, according to TNR, not for his slander of the Slate writer or Ezra but for using a sock puppet in his own comment section. Sock-puppetry is embarrassing; printing false information as if it was true undermines TNR’s only real asset — journalistic integrity. One has to wonder why either protecting a man who either makes up stories in print or protects sources that lie to him is less worthy of condemnation than someone who uses a different name to protect himself in the comments of a blog.

Categories: Bloggin, Media, Writing |