internet%20is%20for%20cowboys.jpg

This is really cowboy territory, with very few boundaries. I think now that it was wrong. I assumed an alias, I guess, because I didn't want to stoop to their level, not realizing that I was stooping to their level.
The New Republic art critic and senior editor Lee Siegel, on why he used a commenter alias to defend himself on his TNR blog.
The larger problem, of course, is that we planted our flag over a piece of the Wild West known as the blogosphere.
Leon Wieseltier, TNR's literary editor, taking the metaphor and running that hoss right into the sagebrush. Because back in the Wild West, good men sometimes said crazy things, then put on a mask to tell other people that the those crazy things were actually brilliant, and that everyone else was stupid. Certainly didn't mean they were petulant hacks. That's just how the West was won, buckaroo. (And nope, still no photo of Bad Lee Siegel.)

New Republic Critic Tumbles in Blog-land: My 'Dumb Mistake' [NYO]