So....is Cecil Adams really Ed Zotti?

[Balthisar]

@SeanArenas

Who is the lefty? Who’s wife is that? Who’s kitchen and backyard? Who’s car?

And what in God’s name happened to the “little researchers”? Did they grow up to be Colibri and Chronos?

[Dung_Beetle]

@MeDrewNotYou

Where’s everyone’s sense of child-like wonder?!

The fight against ignorance be damned, I choose to believe Cecil is a real individual who certainly isn’t Ed. A world without Unca’ Cecil is like a world without Santa Claus: a world none of us should want to live in.

That’s right. He’ll always be “Perfect Master” to me.

I also agree with the pronunciation seh-sul, on the grounds that see-sil just sucks.

[Una_Persson]

@Joey_P

And while we’re at it, do you pronounce it See-sill or Seh-sill?

Cecil himself has told me it’s “See-sill.”

[Gary_T]

@Chronos

Nor is it a collaborative pen name: Whenever content is contributed by any member of the staff (for instance, Una’s household electrical measurements in the latest column), it’s attributed.

@Gary_T

I don’t see how that precludes it being a collaborative pen name for others who don’t get attributed thus.

@Chronos

Well, OK, but who would those people be? What’s the point of having a separate category for “staff” or “science advisory board”, when the main name is itself a staff? Why not just invite those people to join the Cecil Collective, in that case?

@Colibri

I can confirm that, as someone who has provided information for Cecil’s columns, any significant information I have contributed to them has always been attributed to me by name. “Mailbag” columns I write as SDSAB are also attributed to me by name. To the best of my knowledge, that’s true for other Staff members as well.

@ZenBeam

Seems almost certain that Mike was the original Cecil, followed by Dave, but that Ed has been Cecil for some thirty years now.

I guess I was thinking along the lines of what ZenBeam described. Perhaps “serial” pen name would be a better description.

[Bluffcityguy]

FWIW, I’ll put in my €0.0147564.

A long time ago, though not in a galaxy far, far away (specifically, back in, oh, 1995 or so) I was a graduate student who was very assiduously neglecting his studies as often as he could get away with. A large portion of the time spent neglecting my studies was spent hanging around USENET. I spent a fair amount of time hanging out in alt.fan.cecil-adams, and the rest of it hanging around the various alt.sex.* newsgroups, because I’m a perv.

I forget which newsgroup it was, but one day Ed Zotti appeared on one of the alt.sex.* groups (maybe alt.sex; it’s been a while) saying he was researching for a syndicated newspaper columnist, and proceeded to ignite one of the permanent flamewars on circumcision that infested said newsgroup by asking about the pros/cons of circumcision.

Anyway, a few weeks later, IIRC, Ed appeared on alt.fan.cecil-adams to run a draft of Cecil’s column (which, I think, became the first part of this archived column: Slice of life: the circumcision debate - The Straight Dope ), where The Master says:

I say it doesn’t make much difference, on average. Which is not to say it doesn’t make much difference. It’s just that individual reactions to circumcision run the gamut and there’s no telling how things are going to turn out for your kid.

Cecil knows this because he has been inquiring once again on the Internet–not the most scientific technique in the world, but how else are you going to find out about things like this?

I don’t know if this column was edited before it was archived on the website; I seem to recall that originally it read “he has been inquiring once again on Usenet”. Since the only evidence I’d seen of any sort of presence of Straight Dope personnel on the 'net (either USE- or Inter-) was Little Ed, I jumped to the conclusion that “Ed Zotti” = “Cecil Adams”.

2. Some time after that, someone named Frank Hayes started posting on alt.fan.cecil-adams (I only remember the name because I was regularly reading a Computerworld columnist with the same name, and I was wondering if they were in fact the same person). Anyway, when the recurring “Is Cecil Adams really Ed Zotti” thread reoccurred there (what was that law of USENET? “Frequently Asked Questions are asked frequently. Deal with it.”) Mr. Hayes claimed that he could authoritatively tell us that Cecil Adams was NOT Ed Zotti, because he had at one time worked for The Reader, and when he was working there he had seen both Cecil and Ed, separately and together, many times.

That’s the point at which I just shrugged my shoulders and figured that there are some mysteries humankind was never meant to solve, and the True Identity of The Perfect Master is probably one of them.

Cheers,

bcg

[Bluffcityguy]

@SeanArenas

All I really want to know is: when Cecil mentions personal details about himself, who’s personal details are those?

When he says he’s a southpaw/lefty, when he talks about Mrs. Adams, when he talks about taking an experiment into his kitchen or his backyard, when he talks about driving down the road …

Who is the lefty? Who’s wife is that? Who’s kitchen and backyard? Who’s car?

The heck with them. In his classic column on the pig’s corkscrew shaped penis:

Does a pig have a corkscrew-shaped penis?

The Master wrote:

Cecil is aware that in humans the penis doesn’t penetrate the cervix, but as should be obvious by now, there are many differences between human and porcine sexual practices, the principal exception being a girl I met in St. Louis in 1974. But I digress.

I want to know about that girl.

But that has to do with the fact that I’m a native St. Louisan, and I get back there regularly. I figure I can find that (now not so) young lady, and interview her about what it was like to have sexual congress with The World’s Smartest Human Being.

Once I’ve found out about that, I can die content.

Cheers,

bcg

[NineToTheSky]

@CookingWithGas

How do we know “Ed Zotti” is a real person? :dubious:

He’s on Facebook…

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

See this thread, in particular this post.

In addition to that, and any number of other indications, it is unlikely on it’s face IMHO, that anyone could be employing two people for this job. WADR this column is not a big enough deal to have a (nearly) full time editor of its own.

[mr.jp]

Yes he is.

As mentioned there are several cases where Ed Zotti has inquired someone about something, while in the coloumn Cecil says he did it. There are also more cases of this than has been mentioned so far.

There are also other details that point to the same.

The “evidence” pointing towards that Ed Zotti is not Cecil is all hearsay, and people making dubious claims.

[Polycarp]

@CookingWithGas

How do we know “Ed Zotti” is a real person? :dubious:

Actually, there used to be an interview with Ed Zotti available online in which his closing comment was something to the effect of “Why do people accept without question the idea that my real name is Ed Zotti?”

[pravnik]

@Polycarp

Actually, there used to be an interview with Ed Zotti available online in which his closing comment was something to the effect of “Why do people accept without question the idea that my real name is Ed Zotti?”

If that wasn’t your real name, would you call yourself Ed Zotti?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@mr.jp

The “evidence” pointing towards that Ed Zotti is not Cecil is all hearsay, and people making dubious claims.

It’s a dubious claim that there have been three editors of The Straight Dope?

[Giles]

@pravnik

If that wasn’t your real name, would you call yourself Ed Zotti?

You might if your real name was Cecil Adams and you were tired of always coming first in alphabetical lists

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Polycarp

Actually, there used to be an interview with Ed Zotti available online in which his closing comment was something to the effect of “Why do people accept without question the idea that my real name is Ed Zotti?”

Because nobody cares. Maybe his real name is not Ed Zotti. No difference.

The question that interests people is whether the guy in charge of this forum is the same guy who writes the columns, whatever his actual name is.

[yabob]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

It’s a dubious claim that there have been three editors of The Straight Dope?

That’s not inconsistent with the idea that the current columns are being penned by Zotti. It’s not uncommon for long running syndicated features to change hands while retaining the original feature name.

Whenever this comes up, I wonder if anybody has done a stylistic analysis of columns from different eras to see if there was an abrupt shift at some point indicating a change of authorship. Or, for that matter, if a column-by-column stylistic difference would support the contention of multiple authors (I’m guessing not).

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@CookingWithGas

How do we know “Ed Zotti” is a real person? :dubious:

I’ve been to a couple of modmeetings in or around Chicago. I’ve been introduced to a guy who was called (and answered to) Ed Zotti. I didn’t pinch him, but he IS a real person. I’ve also met various other mods at the same time.

Any guy who brings donuts to a morning meeting is a real person, not a hologram.

[ZenBeam]

The “Cecil Adams is a real person, and not Ed Zotti” meme might have been amusing might have been amusing back in the mid 80s when the first book came out. Even in 1998 (99?), when the board first moved here from AOL, and was young and carefree.

Now it’s just tired and lame. (IMHO)

On preview: yabob, see my post #15. That’s taken from the forward of the first Straight Dope book.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

The question that interests people is whether the guy in charge of this forum is the same guy who writes the columns, whatever his actual name is.

Ed is the same guy who’s in charge of the SDMB, and indirectly of the GQ forum, yes.

[mr.jp]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

It’s a dubious claim that there have been three editors of The Straight Dope?

Ah no, apart from that. I mean that I’m dubious to claims about people who have “seen” Cecil or such.

[yabob]

@ZenBeam

The “Cecil Adams is a real person, and not Ed Zotti” meme might have been amusing might have been amusing back in the mid 80s when the first book came out. Even in 1998 (99?), when the board first moved here from AOL, and was young and carefree.

Now it’s just tired and lame. (IMHO)

On preview: yabob, see my post #15. That’s taken from the forward of the first Straight Dope book.

Good supporting evidence, I’ll agree. I don’t think it’s as conclusive as you do. The authorship having changed hands doesn’t necessarily mean that the real author was always the person listed as editor, though if Lenehan started it that way, it might have established something of a tradition. That acknowledgement in the book is pretty much in keeping with maintaining the Adams persona, either way.