Elliot Stein is a great fat lunatic who got into an internet feud with Cathy Seipp and her daughter. That in itself is understandable -- people feud on the internet -- but what turned him into a new internet verb ("to stein," meaning "to behave in such a way that Deborah Frisch says, 'Oh, that's just over the line'") was his choice to continue the feud by spoofing Cathy Seipp's final hours before death.

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...

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 had 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...

"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?"

He says:

“I’ve got an incredible sense of humor,” Stein said. “I’m an expert at Photoshop.”

The first is obvious. The second is debatable.

Were he an expert at Photoshop, he might have added something big in the background to create the illusion of slenderizing him. Like, I don't know, the Duchy of Luxembourg.

Well now comes the inevitable, quite necessary Elliot Smith parody blog.

I've been feeling pretty low today, so I did something to cheer myself up. I heard the ice cream man coming up the street, and it's like 90 degrees today, so I thought, "what an opportunity!"

I put on my underwear, grabbed $400 in cash, and went outside. There were at least twenty kids gathering on the hot sidewalk, eagerly waiting to cool off with some refreshing ice cream treats. So, when the truck pulled up, I pushed my way to the front of the line and bought every single item the guy had, then paid the guy two hundred-fifty dollars if he'd promise to not sell ice cream to any of the kids in my neighborhood from now on; only to me. Then I slapped the two nearest kids in the face and told them all to get fucked, and then went inside and took a nap. I feel better now.

Now that's the work of an incredible sense of humor.

Amy Alkon may or may not have something to do with this.

Thanks to PaulM.

BTW, CathySeipp.com was apparently pulled down by Smith's internet service provider on cybersquatting grounds. I'm almost certain I read this on Patterico, but I can't seem to find the post even after looking three times.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (26)
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