:
: As Cathy Seipp Lay Dying, Her Nemesis Took His Parting Shot on the
: Web
:
:
: Wednesday, March 28, 2007
:
: By Michael Y. Park
:
:
: Cathy Seipp was dying.
:
: The 49-year-old newspaper columnist and conservative blogger, who had
: come from Manitoba, Canada, to become the sharp-tongued doyenne of the
: Los Angeles media scene, was only hours away from losing her years-
: long fight with cancer, leaving behind a 17-year-old daughter, a
: lifetime of work as a plucky and plain-speaking wordsmith, and the
: respect of colleagues from both sides of the political spectrum.
:
: But what was supposed to have been a dignified end for a long-
: suffering single mom instead turned into what friends called a
: disgustingly public travesty, an example of the current Wild West
: atmosphere of Internet privacy issues, and a sordid showcase of just
: how far a beef can go.
:
: Just hours before her death, "Cathy Seipp" suddenly seemed to undo
: decades of hard work with an oddly written letter posted on the Web
: site, www. cathyseipp.com. In what came off as more bizarre rant than
: heartfelt apology, her supposed "very last blog entry" called her
: years of journalism a "shoddy," "despicable" and "irresponsible"
: career as a "fourth-rate hack." Her political stance? All a mistake.
:
: The fiery, unwavering supporter of George W. Bush supposedly said
: she'd done a complete 180 in the past year and was now an implied
: supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. What was even more
: perplexing was that "Seipp" was taking mean-spirited potshots at her
: own daughter, Maia Lazar, whom she called an "obnoxious" and
: "arrogant" wanna-be "skank" who was "mentally ill." Throughout the
: letter, the one person whom "Seipp" seemed most sorry for ever having
: offended was Maia's 10th-grade journalism teacher, who had frequently
: clashed with mother and daughter. Finally, "Seipp" said she was
: probably to blame for her own illness - the "venom" she'd spewed for
: years was responsible for her terminal cancer.
:
: Friends were horrified. They quickly realized that the letter was the
: work of an infamous character known as "Troll Dolls" who'd positioned
: himself as the blogger's archenemy and bought the domain name www.cathyseipp.com
: years earlier (Seipp's real Web site is www.cathyseipp.net). Troll
: Dolls is really Eliot Stein, a 54-year-old former online talk-show
: host and stand-up comedian who hadd taught Maia in a journalism class
: for a brief period in 2004, and who blamed Maia and Seipp for his
: departure from the school after only five weeks. Seipp's friends
: marshaled their resources, creating an impromptu Internet chat room to
: make their plans, fingering Stein as the culprit, enlisting the help
: of a lawyer to serve him a cease-and-desist letter, and successfully
: lobbying Stein's Internet host to take the Web site down permanently.

Is this the Eliot Stein I used to work for on CompuServe?
The online-talkshow-host gig matches but his location is not
where I got my last check from in '93...

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.