Lesson #1

I'm only a few hours on the job and already I have my first lesson thanks to The New Republic's senior editor Lee Siegel. Maria Sapan of the New York Times reported last week that Siegel was suspended by the magazine on Sept. 1 after it was discovered that he was involved in attacking the readers of his blog on his own message board.

Mr. Siegel's alias is "sprezzatura" and if you check the blog's comments section from his Aug. 25 post, you'll see the exchange with "jhschwartz" that led to his demise.

This is not the first time The New Republic has had to deal with rogue writers either. TNR was embarassed in 1998 by its reporter Stephen Glass, who fabricated many of his stories for the magazine. I mention this because today I just happened to have watched Shattered Glass, a movie based on Glass and his great imagination.

One can say that it is tacky for a writer to criticize his readers, but it's downright intolerable for a writer to hide behind an alias to do it.

Needless to say, if anyone wants to criticize my blog, feel free to do so. I won't be signing in as "bumblebeeman" to attack you.