The New Republic's blogging efforts seemed to start off much like those of other print commentary magazines afraid of a lessening relevance with the advent of consumer media - they started a series of blogs, some of which seemed, well, a bit petulant. TNR suspended house blogger Lee Siegel late last week for allegedly "sock puppeting," or creating a fake user identity to defend himself and attack his critics on the blog.

TNR hasn't been editorially friendly to the blogosphere of late. It was Siegel himself who coined the term "blogofascism" in reference to the editorial pig-pile that helped get CT senate incumbent Joseph Lieberman disinvited to the general election under the banner of his own party.

Allegedly using the name "Sprezzatura" in the comment fields, Siegel insulted critics of one of his own posts - in reference to The Daily Show's Jon Stewart - and referred to his alter ego as "brave, brilliant and wittier than Stewart will ever be."

Bravery would have been required to create the Sprezzatura character as an alias, as had the author been reading blogs, he likely would have known that just a few months ago an LA Times reporter was put on ice for the very same reason.