As Cathy Seipp Lay Dying, Her Nemesis Took His Parting Shot on the Web
Richard
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.
"He's a genuinely weird dude [who wrote] a rambling, odd, mean,
totally cruel series of posts ... designed to trick well-wishers, as
Cathy lay dying, into reading a torrent of rage and bitterness against
her," Rob Long, an L.A. television writer and longtime friend of
Seipp's, wrote in an e-mail. "Just immensely cruel. It was easy to
ignore when she was alive, but as she died it became intolerable -
thousands and thousands of people wanted to reach out to Cathy and her
family in the days surrounding her death, and this guy tricked,
perverted and deeply hurt them. And for what? A years-old grudge?"
There was perhaps one silver lining, Seipp's friends said. They first
found Stein's letter on March 20. Seipp died in the afternoon of March
21, never having known what Stein was saying in her name.
Legal observers say that the Seipp-Stein spat demonstrates how the
Internet-using public still hasn't figured out the boundaries of good
taste and what the reasonable expectations of privacy are in a world
where seemingly every other person keeps his personal thoughts in
online journals that can be accessed by anyone with a computer.
"The expectation of privacy on the Internet is ludicrous from one
point of view, but I don't think there's any bright-line rule about
what you can and cannot say in a blog," said Richard Idell, of Idell &
Seitel, a San Francisco firm specializing in media and Internet law.
"Whatever socially acceptable rules that may exist are still
developing. You're going to get some sharp words - that's what's going
to happen - but when does it cross the line?"
And we can only expect to hear about more nasty feuds like Seipp's and
Stein's being played out on Web browsers around the nation, according
to Rebecca Jeschke, spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to maintaining free-speech
and privacy rights in digital media.
"We're definitely hearing more about these kinds of online arguments
with public figures," Jeschke said. "It does seem to be a place where
people are using blogs to express themselves. They're a reasonably new
mode of communication, and people are feeling where their comfort
level is."
Even Seipp's friends and supporters debate the meaning of Stein's
parting shot against Seipp.
"There's no law against being a jerk," said London-based Internet
consultant Jacki Danicki. "But it's the way in which you do it, like
taking someone's domain name to do that. And from a human-decency
level, it's not right."
"If he truly felt he was wronged and Cathy had harmed him, then why
didn't he stand up and grow a pair and say it, instead of trying to
adopt her voice?" said Mediabistro and Fishbowl L.A. blogger Kate Coe.
"Most people who disagreed with Cathy had the balls to do it to her
face and with their own name."
But Luke Ford, blogger and onetime columnist on the porn business,
defended Stein's actions - even though Ford has himself been a
frequent target of Stein's attacks.
"It's not nice, but since when was the First Amendment nice to
people?" he said.
Stein is absolutely unapologetic.
And though both would be loath to admit it, he shares with Seipp at
least one trait that may have led him to this point - an unwillingness
to back down in the face of perceived injustice. He's also endlessly
self-aggrandizing, obviously bitter and easily worked into a frothy
fury over issues that seem piddling by mainstream standards (for
example, not many L.A. high-school teachers would be shocked into
speechlessness by profanity). He gets especially worked up by what he
sees as his persecution by Maia Lazar and Cathy Seipp.
How it Began
It started in September 2004.
Stein had just started as a journalism professor at a private school
in Los Angeles called the Ribet Academy, where Maia was in 10th grade.
Maia, he said, was undeniably bright and an excellent writer, and he
made her editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. But things quickly
went sour, and Stein ended up leaving the school in October after a
dispute with Maia and her mother. According to him, he quit because of
a tangential issue - the administration wanted to suspend Stein for a
single day for responding to Maia on her blog before the school had
formulated its official statement. (Ribet Academy said it would not
comment on a former student or a former employee.) On his last day,
Stein came to school dressed in a tuxedo and, class by class, told all
of his students that his leaving was the fault of one particular 10th-
grade girl. By all accounts, Maia became an outcast at school.
Any parent should know what happened next: Cathy Seipp fought back.
And as a blogger, she naturally did it online with her trademark acid
tongue, writing columns that detailed her daughter's travails and
mocked Stein as a "fat sweaty loser ... who used to have ambitions of
being some kind of Internet personality."
"I think he got off kind of lightly," Coe said.
But Stein said some of Seipp's comments disparaged his fitness to be a
teacher and implied that his fixation on her daughter was less than
wholesome.
"I am a teacher. I'm very successful as a teacher," Stein said. "If I
had a woman implying I should not be near children, you think that
doesn't deserve some sort of response?"
The blogging brawl escalated. In December 2004, Stein found out the
domain name www.cathyseipp.com hadn't been bought, so he purchased it
himself under an obviously assumed name and began to fill it with anti-
Seipp parodies - amateurish montages that stuck her head on the
Beatles' "Abbey Road" album cover or floating alongside other
Republicans in a cartoon hell, for example.
"I've got an incredible sense of humor," Stein said. "I'm an expert at
Photoshop."
When Seipp found out, she was frustrated by the bureaucratic hoops
she'd have to jump to take www.cathyseipp.com from Stein under
California law, which is considered to have relatively strong
protections against cybersquatting. Seipp, who'd been diagnosed with
lung cancer in 2002, resigned herself to Stein's ownership of the Web
site and blogged via www.cathyseipp.net instead.
"[It] means, if I remember well, paying several hundred dollars
upfront to start the procedure and have a panel of experts review the
claim and rule," journalist Emmanuelle Richard, a close friend of
Seipp's, wrote in an e-mail. "It was very frustrating. She felt
powerless and felt that she had to dedicate her energy and resources
to her daughter and her health first."
Seipp wasn't alone: Stein had done it before. In 1997, a business deal
with conservative radio preacher Roy Masters involving between $300
and $500 went awry, and Stein bought www.roymasters.com and turned it
into a parody site with more examples of the Stein sense of humor -
Masters done up as Dr. Evil from "Austin Powers," for example. Wanting
to avoid a potential long-term legal battle and bad publicity,
Masters, now 79, decided to ignore Stein's site.
"I'm not surprised at what he did this time," Masters said. "It's a
hate addiction - once he starts he never stops. That's how long he
holds onto a grudge that doesn't exist."
For his part, Stein said that he made several bona fide efforts to end
the feud with Seipp, but that whenever he took his site down, Seipp
would begin the conflict again with comments about him in her blog.
Seipp's friends said that if anything, the reverse was true, and that
Seipp was a deathly ill woman focusing on her cancer and her daughter,
and never took Stein very seriously. In 2006, Seipp wrote a column in
which she lightheartedly referred to Stein as a cyberstalker and
compared him to the Star Wars figure Jabba the Hutt. That, Stein said,
was the last straw. He later crafted his fake Seipp letter and posted
it on his Web site, knowing full well that she was dying but still
alive.
"They thought that because this is the Internet they could say
whatever they want whenever they want, but they met someone with an
expansive education, a pioneer of the Internet with an incredible
sense of humor," Stein said. "They picked the wrong person to mess
with."
When asked if he himself might be accused of abusing the freedoms and
power of the Internet to attack someone, Stein said his actions were
justified by Seipp's history of "character assassination."
In the wake of Seipp's friends' actions to take his site down,
however, Stein has gotten no responses to letters or phone calls from
his Internet host. He said he's willing to turn the site over to Maia
Lazar, on the condition that they both sign an agreement to never
write about each other publicly again.
"Hopefully, it's over and done with," Stein said. "We all go our own
ways. The ball's in their court."
Maia's lawyers noted that Stein's only correspondence with them has
been two terse and hostile e-mails, one of which was simply: "Go to
Hell."
"Mr. Stein's actions were unlawful ... there was no First Amendment
right for Mr. Stein to use the domain name to post a fraudulent and
defamatory letter purporting to be from Cathy Seipp," Maia's lawyer,
Kimberly L. Thigpen of Pfeiffer Thigpen & Fitzgibbon, wrote in an e-
mail.
When told of Stein's offer, Thigpen said that she would have to
consult with her client, but that Maia's primary goal has been to
regain her mother's domain name.
Most legal experts said Stein may have a strong case in defending his
actions as a parody, and that a defamation claim on behalf of Seipp
would have little effect after her death (Maia still has the potential
for a defamation suit, however, they said). Experts were in
disagreement about whether Seipp's possible status as a celebrity
might affect any legal action. Experts agreed that Stein almost
certainly violated state cybersquatting laws.
Both Maia's lawyer and Stein said they had strong cases against the
other, but both sides also said they had no foreseeable plans to file
legal action against the other. In the wake of an increasingly nasty
three-year-old feud that only ended with Seipp's death, there's a
exhausted calm on both sides.
"Maia's been through a lot," Thigpen said.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Richard <lcp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Legal observers say that the Seipp-Stein spat demonstrates how the
> Internet-using public still hasn't figured out the boundaries of
Whatever are they on about? Just because people choose to ignore the
boundaries of good taste doesn't mean they haven't been figured out.
> How it Began
Fascinating. Thanks for posting.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
weiss...@yahoo.com
Baldwin) wrote:
> In the previous article, Richard <lcp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Legal observers say that the Seipp-Stein spat demonstrates how the
> > Internet-using public still hasn't figured out the boundaries of
> > good taste and what the reasonable expectations of privacy are [...]
>
> Whatever are they on about? Just because people choose to ignore the
> boundaries of good taste doesn't mean they haven't been figured out.
>
> > How it Began
>
> Fascinating. Thanks for posting.
Despicable. Chris Matthews said last night that there were far-left
wing bloggers out there who were wishing for Tony Snow's death as
well. I supposed the right-wing bloggers were doing the same about
Mrs. Edwards. A pox on all concerned.
marilyn...@aol.com
her friend Sandra Tsing Loh in the LA Times
It's a blogged world; we just live in it
The blogosphere rumor, coverage, malice and celebration around writer
Cathy Seipp's death last week.
By Sandra Tsing Loh, SANDRA TSING LOH is a contributing editor to
Opinion. Her commentaries are heard on KPCC-FM (89.3) and American
Public Media's "Marketplace."
March 27, 2007
IT IS TRUE that I am an Old Media person, with slow-moving Old Media
ways. Less than a week ago, at the end of her battle with lung cancer,
I hugged my friend Cathy Seipp goodbye and walked heavily, in the soul-
shattering sunshine, to my car in its far-flung parking lot, lost in a
Cedars-Sinai maze of gray concrete , feeling betrayed by even George
Burns and Gracie Allen, whose sparkling comedic names grace such grim
boulevards....
And then the phone began to ring.
It was time to snap out of it. In New Media terms, on the Cathy Seipp
story, I was already way, way behind.
Understand that Cathy was a blogger. For the remaining two people who
don't know what that means, for the last five years, Cathy had been
regularly posting her views on culture, politics and life on her
website, Cathy's World. Although she did mention her cancer on her
blog, particularly as an impetus to rail against Blue Cross (as she
also did effectively on this page), Cathy stopped far short of Timothy
Leary, who webcasted his own death. However, when her daughter posted
a short note on the website the weekend before last explaining that
her mother had been moved to Cedars-Sinai, into the silence of Cathy's
World the bloggers stepped.
The first tsunami of Seipp-inspired blog posts was rousing. As early
as March 19, premature announcements of Cathy's death began appearing,
but the bloggers did seem sincere, and sad. Cathy, a longtime
contrarian member of the local and national commentariat (at the
National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Salon and more), was perhaps
the only Republican living in Silver Lake. She was well liked, not
just by those she praised but by those she had not always written
about kindly. (P.S. Did you see the lovely tribute to Cathy written by
... Susan Estrich?)
Another frenzied wave of posts and hits and "Cathy Seipp" began
climbing the Technorati search ratings, past Paris Hilton, MySpace,
YouTube and "American Idol." She eventually reached No. 1, meaning
"Cathy Seipp" was the most-searched-for entity in Technorati's index
of about 80 million blogs. Even her grieving friends were forced to
admit that she would have loved that.
Into this heartfelt swaying and singing of "We Are Cathy's World"
entered the cyber-squatter. This is the disgruntled blogger who years
ago bought the domain name cathyseipp.com; as a result, Cathy blogged
from cathyseipp.net. What he did on cathyseipp.com varied - first he
posted as Cathy, and then he merely posted disparaging comments about
Cathy, Photoshopping her and her daughter's heads atop various bodies.
On the one hand, it would be hard to confuse cathyseipp.com with her
actual site. On the other hand, when the cyber-squatter last week
reverted to his earlier ways, posting a "last blog entry" signed
"Cathy Seipp" in which Cathy supposedly begged final forgiveness for
her politics, her friends and her parenting ... this seemed to cross a
new line.
By week's end, Cathy's family and friends were debating whether to
take legal action. Everyone was offended, exhausted and still
staggered with grief. The public expression of which - Cathy's funeral
- was, of course, recorded without our knowledge and posted by another
blogger. Yep, it's all out there on the Web, just start Googling -
you'll see snot pouring out of my nose as I wail helplessly through my
eulogy, which, along with everything else involving the ceremony, has
all already been critiqued online.
"It's like Cathy was the only thing that kept these people civilized!"
was the horrified comment of friend Andrew Breitbart who, one should
note, edits the Drudge Report. Even he!
And yet, I suppose the whole carnival is fitting. In the high-water
days of Old Media, a writer's passing involved a duly-agreed-upon
period of reverence, reticence and literary self-restraint. Our grief
over a lost talent would dictate a certain vague lionization, and a
certain dullness. Not so in this brave new Cathy's World of New Media,
in which, as fishbowlLA calls it, Cathy's "funeral rites in Blogistan"
have involved a verbal flaming pyre. That's right, highly searched
Technorati entities literally have little flames next to them, and the
initials WTF - "Where's The Fire?"
Which leads me to think that, for bloggers, death is not proud. How
could it be, when no one is searching it.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, <weiss...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Despicable. Chris Matthews said last night that there were far-left
> wing bloggers out there who were wishing for Tony Snow's death as
> well. I supposed the right-wing bloggers were doing the same about
> Mrs. Edwards.
Why would you suppose that?
islanders
wrote:
> Why would you suppose that?
> --
Because left wingers believe that everyone is as full of hate as they
are.
weiss...@yahoo.com
Baldwin) wrote:
> In the previous article, <weiss.sl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Despicable. Chris Matthews said last night that there were far-left
> > wing bloggers out there who were wishing for Tony Snow's death as
> > well. I supposed the right-wing bloggers were doing the same about
> > Mrs. Edwards.
>
> Why would you suppose that?
Probably because I find the far left wing bloggers and far right
bloggers to be about equal in the hate department. But, you are right,
I shouldn't assume that. It was reported that left winger bloggers
were foaming at the mouth hoping for Snow's death yesterday. I should
have left it at that fact being reported and not assumed the last
sentence above. "My bad" as they say.
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, <weiss...@yahoo.com> wrote, quoting me:
> > > Despicable. Chris Matthews said last night that there were far-left
> > > wing bloggers out there who were wishing for Tony Snow's death as
> > > well. I supposed the right-wing bloggers were doing the same about
> > > Mrs. Edwards.
> >
> > Why would you suppose that?
>
> Probably because I find the far left wing bloggers and far right
> bloggers to be about equal in the hate department.
I don't dispute that (much), but going after a fairly benign "nice
lady" personality like Elizabeth Edwards seems a little much even for
(most of) the Internet. Tony Snow, on the other hand, is an office-
holder in his own right and I can kind of see that inspiring the kind
of hatred that generates death wishes.
Louis Epstein
:
: As Cathy Seipp Lay Dying, Her Nemesis Took His Parting Shot on the
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.
weiss...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>.
>
> I don't dispute that (much), but going after a fairly benign "nice
> lady" personality like Elizabeth Edwards seems a little much even for
> (most of) the Internet. Tony Snow, on the other hand, is an office-
> holder in his own right and I can kind of see that inspiring the kind
> of hatred that generates death wishes.
First, Tony Snow is not an officer but an employee of the US
government. He's never been elected to anything. Second, I don't see
how that justifies -- in any way whatsoever -- death wishes or hatred
of any kind. I simply do not understand the kind of people who feel
that way about public servants doing the people's work yet alone who
feel that way about any human being.
Yep, just plugging along on the Good Ship Lollipop here.
Michael O'Connor
> On Mar 28, 5:50?pm, INVALID_SEE_...@example.com.invalid (J.D. Baldwin)
> wrote:
>
> >.
>
> > I don't dispute that (much), but going after a fairly benign "nice
> > lady" personality like Elizabeth Edwards seems a little much even for
> > holder in his own right and I can kind of see that inspiring the kind
> > of hatred that generates death wishes.
>
> First, Tony Snow is not an officer but an employee of the US
> government. He's never been elected to anything. Second, I don't see
> how that justifies -- in any way whatsoever -- death wishes or hatred
> of any kind. I simply do not understand the kind of people who feel
> that way about public servants doing the people's work yet alone who
> feel that way about any human being.
>
> Yep, just plugging along on the Good Ship Lollipop here.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54911
I think the people who are wishing for Tony Snow's death from Cancer
are just as sick as those who would wish it on Elizabeth Edwards, and
I think anybody who wishes death on somebody just because they're a
Republican and you are not, and vise versa, is a scumbag. I remember
when Bill Clinton had his heart attack a couple years ago I was the
first to wish him a speedy recovery, despite the fact that I
personally despise him and everything he stands for. Some things are
more important than politics.
Stacia
>And as a blogger, she naturally did it online with her trademark acid
>tongue, writing columns that detailed her daughter's travails and
>mocked Stein as a "fat sweaty loser ... who used to have ambitions of
>being some kind of Internet personality."
>In 2006, Seipp wrote a column in
>which she lightheartedly referred to Stein as a cyberstalker and
>compared him to the Star Wars figure Jabba the Hutt.
You know, I have a tough time feeling sorry for her. At some point
you have just got to let go. Seipp obviously never let go any more than
Stein did. These "I won't back down because they dishonored me"
Internet feuds are crap and both parties are always partly to blame.
I'm sorry she's dead, but she's not exactly innocent in this matter.
Stacia
Joe Pucillo
> You know, I have a tough time feeling sorry for her. At some point
> you have just got to let go. Seipp obviously never let go any more than
> Stein did. These "I won't back down because they dishonored me"
> Internet feuds are crap and both parties are always partly to blame.
Really? That sort of thing actually happens? I've never seen
that kind of behavior anywhere, especially in this creepy little
newsgroup.
JP
Bill Schenley
And hopelessly adrift on the Lemon Drop Sea ...
Mock 5
<marilyn...@aol.com> wrote:
>Very interesting -- and here's another take on that debacle from
>her friend Sandra Tsing Loh in the LA Times
>
>
>It's a blogged world; we just live in it
>Although she did mention her cancer on her blog, particularly as an
>impetus to rail against Blue Cross (as she also did effectively on this page),
>Cathy stopped far short of Timothy Leary, who webcasted his own death.
He videotaped it, but that's hardly "webcast[ing] his own death".
I hate journalists. I think I'll start a blog about this Tsing Loh, sweet
chariot woman.