Lee Siegel, an American cultural critic was fired for commenting on his own work pseudonymously by using a so-called sock puppet.

• Lee Siegel, writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments using the user name “sprezzatura“.

More: International Herald Tribune

Lee Siegel in other blogs:

In the most recent issue of The Nation, Lee Siegel laid into Camille Paglia’s newest barnstormer, Break, Blow, Burn. His article, Look at Me, is a magnificent blast of snark against the self-maligning agitation that Paglia seems to fall more & more victim to. —Poetry Snark, 2005

And the final sentence of Lee Siegel’s review (which also features a very good analysis of Paglia’s zeitgeist and work) of Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn:

To invoke two other writers from the past, Paglia used to come on like Byron; now she is like some cynical version of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, trampling on her very own standards, stooping as low as she can go in order to get a second helping of attention from the public that has forgotten her. But bullies always end up being reduced to their inner weakling. It’s called poetic justice. –Lee Siegel in Look at Me [June 13, 2005 ]