Okay, off politics for a minute here . . . .
Would someone please explain to me what the hell the Times Book Review is doing hiring Sprezzatura to review Norman Mailer’s latest? And, worse, giving him cover placement?
For those of you unfamiliar with Sprezz, his name is Lee Siegel, and like so many pompous, humorless narcissists, once worked for TNR. He no longer does, owing to the fact that he was outed as his own sockpuppet, posting self-fellating comments under the name Sprezzatura and rabidly attacking commenters who criticized his pieces. [Obsidian Wings has a good summary of the whole mess.]
The Times even ran a Q&A with Siegel about the scandal, in which he showed himself to be as whiny and self-pitying as any politican caught with his hand in the corporate cookie jar [or the congressional page’s cookie jar]. So what the hell are they doing hiring The Ultimate Sockpuppet to review real writing? Worse, they’ve given eight - count ‘em, eight - freakin’ pages (Web pages) to do it! And, of course, Sprezz spends most of it sucking up to The Great Man.
Sweet Jeebus, somebody get this guy an editor.
