Pride goeth before a fall

I haven't had the computer on at all today until just now -- I've been outside in the sunshine cutting firewood -- so I don't think I'll be posting anything much tonight. But I've been thinking about the recent exposure of Lee Siegel as a fraud and I thought I'd share the spectacle of his shame.

He's always seemed to me to be too full of himself and he offered me no insights that would make reading him worthwhile. But to learn that Mr. Snarky, Mr. "Look at Me, I'm Too Good for You" has been exposed this way is just too pathetic. What a loser!

It appears that, while masquerading as someone else, Siegel wrote the following (and this is only some of it) in the Comments section of a post that he had written (under his own name :-) in which he was critical of Jon Stewart.

Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.
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Groupthink from a mob of bullies cowering behind their user-name aliases. Groupthink! Groupthink! Naaa naaa naaa-naaa naaa!
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You have quite an obsession with Siegel! Sounds to me like you’re an envious young writer. [...] Every young write [sic] in NYC has it in for poor Siegel it seems. They all write like middle-aged hacks. He has the fire and guts of a young man (I assume he’s middle-aged himself, or somewhere near there.) Who am I? Someone who knows who you are.
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You're a fraud, and a liar. And a wincingly pretentious writer. You couldn't tie Siegel's shoelaces.
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I'm a huge fan of Siegel, been reading him since he started writing for TNR almost ten years ago. [...] And I ask myself: why is it the young guys who go after Siegel? Must be because he writes the way young guys should be writing: angry, independent, not afraid of offending powerful people. They on the other hand write like aging careerists: timid, ingratiating, careful not to offend people who are powerful. They hate him because they want to write like him but can't.

Siegel so disgraced himself and TNR that the editor had to write the following:

An Apology to Our Readers

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

How can Siegel show his face after this? Oh, yes... I forgot, shameless people have no shame...