[close] Lee Siegel is a New York writer and cultural critic who has written for Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many other publications. Siegel is a senior editor at The New Republic and lives in New York City with his wife and son.

In September 2006, Siegel was temporarily suspended from The New Republic, after an internal investigation determined he was participating in misleading comments in the magazine's "Talkback" section, in response to anonymous attackers on his blog at The New Republic's website. The comments were made through the device of a "sock puppet" dubbed "sprezzatura", who, as one reader noted, was a consistently vigorous defender of Siegel, and who specifically denied being Siegel when challenged by an anonymous detractor in "Talkback." In response to readers who had criticized Siegel's negative comments about TV talk show host Jon Stewart, 'sprezzatura' wrote, "Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep." The New Republic posted an apology and shut down Siegel's blog. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Siegel dismissed the incident as a "prank." He resumed writing for The New Republic in April 2007. Siegel's critique of Web culture, entitled Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, was published in January 2008. [close]