Sock puppets and the people who love them

I just can't get enough of this, can I? The NY Times writes about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and his sock puppet tendencies. There's not a whole lot new, but I found this segment to be amusing:

In November, New Republic magazine suspended its culture critic Lee Siegel after it determined that he had been energetically defending himself in the discussion forums of his New Republic blog, under the name "sprezzatura" (Italian for "making the difficult look easy").

In an interview, Mr. Siegel said that it is only human to engage with critics, particularly in a medium like the Web that encourages self-expression. He still defends his actions, saying that he was having fun, playfully praising himself while combating some critics whom he saw as fierce and puerile. He thinks that much of the inflection of his online writing got lost on the computer screen.

"As for Mackey boosting his company and putting down his rivals, entrepreneurs will be entrepreneurs, and technology is an amplification of human nature, not a cure for it," Mr. Siegel said.

Looks like someone didn't learn his lesson while he was in time-out. I suppose it's good to know that there's a person out there the media can call on when they need a quote in defense of praising oneself while pretending to be somebody else. I'm not sure why they'd ever need such a quote - some things just don't deserve to be defended - but Siegel (and, no doubt, his alter ego) are standing by the phone just in case.

OK, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on Siegel. As Atrios notes, even sock puppets can have second acts. You can draw your own conclusions about that. Thanks to Dwight for the link.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on July 17, 2007 to Bidness