Letters to the Editor
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A contrarian who craves adulation
The most cogent assessment of Siegel's self-indulgent antipathy is Ezra Klien's post about his firing from TNR.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=09&year=2006&base_name=coda_on_siegel
Here's the key part:
"I don't think change is easy. I don't imagine that watching the influence of the sector you spent your whole life competing in be eclipsed by some virtual Wild West doesn't rankle, or even enrage. Some in the older generations adapt seamlessly, others refuse to enter the new demimonde at all. That latter group includes some of my favorite writers and thinkers -- figures I'm honored to know and learn from, and who I sometimes want to shake until they agree to use this new megaphone so a new generation can hear their voice. But then there's a third group, whose entrance into the online world is fueled by resentment, who feel entitled to respect and preeminence and are stunned to learn they must build their reputations again. Some of them settle down and work at it, others take shortcuts, or simply attack, becoming ever more bitter as they futilely attempt to reject the very arena they're competing in. Siegel was one of these, and he fell between the cracks of the contradiction. You can't be a blogger who hates the blogosphere, nor a contrarian who craves adulation.
But at least he gave us "blogofascism.""
Another Salon reader wrote: "The only piece of writing I've read by Siegel is his review of Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut". It was a pleasure to read and I've revisited it several times, because his obvious passion for the film shone through, and because it genuinely expanded my understanding of Kubrick and his work."
I found it a hyperbolic rant in which Siegel claimed "Not a single critic, not even those few who claimed to like Eyes Wide Shut, made any attempt to understand the film on its own artistic terms." save himself and a few bold souls, of coures.
He also assaults The Mean Stupid Masses for not liking it because "Our official arbiters of culture ...have become afraid of genuine art."
He goes as far to say one it is so great one isn't permitted to merely dislike it, while other movies are beneath critical thought: "South Park...I can say that I dislike it..if I interpreted it, I would be ignoring the movie's simple, diverting nature...But I cannot just dismiss Hedda Gabler without interpreting it."
It is this sort of self-regarding pomposity, sincere though it may be, which got Seigel in trouble.