Since I read this post on Saturday, I have been searching for something, anything, to write in response. Words just aren't adequate to describe the debt bloggers in Southern California owe to Cathy Seipp; she has been one of the prime movers (infiltrators?) within traditional media to open that institution up to bloggers, and the frequent seminars/parties/wine swigs that the LA Press Club hosts under her auspices (as well as Amy Alkon and Emmanuelle Richard) have enabled bloggers to network with those who write for a living, and vice versa. Everytime someone like myself, or Brady Westwater, or "Patterico", gets a piece published in the Sunday opinion section of the LA Times, it is the subtle influence of Ms. Seipp at work, playing a role behind the scenes to open up the Fourth Estate to freelancers, bloggers, and other miscreants throughout the Greater Los Angeles-Long Beach-Orange County metropolitan area.

She is loyal to her friends (and, as evidenced by the rollicking comments section to one of her typical blogposts, no collection of friends was ever so wildly divergent on the political spectrum as hers), a devoted mother to "Cecile", who has inherited her mother's literary gene, and is also wicked funny, both in print and in person. There aren't many websites that have this humble endeavor on its blogroll, much less websites whose politics are as politically dissimilar to mine as Cathy's World. But there is no website on which I'm prouder to be linked.