New Republic Terminates Lee Siegel's Blog

Posted on September 2, 2006

The New Republic announced that they have suspended Lee Siegel and terminated his blog, Lee Siegel on Culture. Spiegel was suspended after he was discovered to be posting comments that praised his own blog and column under the username "sprezzatura."

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.

Lee Siegel was a National Magazine Award winner in 2002. He also writes for Slate and the The New York Review of Books. University Diaries writes that Siegel, "invented the sprezzatura persona and wrote on his NR blog's comment threads in praise of himself and vicious denunciation of his detractors, some of whom he singled out by name."

A post on Internal Monologue says Siegel invented the term blogofascism and used it to describe "left-wing bloggers who didn't like him." Internal Monologue's post also has one of the comments Siegel left under the name Sprezzatura. Part of it reads, "Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep."