More than one week after the 29th Annual Daytime Emmys, some fans are still smarting over what they perceived to be an egregious flub on the CBS telecast--one they say humiliated La Lucci.

And not only are they smarting, they're petitioning.

It's called the "An Apology for Susan Lucci Petition" and through Saturday it had amassed 657 online "signatures."

"I started the petition about 4 a.m. [the morning after the Emmys]," organizer Nadine Larsen said this week in an email interview. "Guess I personally took action because the chat rooms and message boards were in an uproar over the cruel (even if unintentional) way [Lucci] was handled."

Susan Lucci handled cruelly? On national TV, no less?

A quick recap: The next-to-last category of the May 17 Emmys telecast was Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. This category is also known as The One Susan Lucci Lost 18 Times Before Finally Winning in 1999.

Anyway, Lucci, per usual, was nominated for doing God's work on All My Children as drama-queen Erica Kane. Also nominated was an actress named Susan Flannery (known to soapies as Stephanie on The Bold and the Beautiful).

When the envelope was ripped open, by two of Flannery's Bold and the Beautiful castmates, no less, the presenters called out the name Susan Flannery. TV viewers, though, heard the All My Children theme music cued up and saw the camera cut to Lucci, who was standing backstage. Lucci looked surprised--and confused. She clearly could be seen asking, "Me? Me?" before apparently being convinced by her fellow backstagers that she had won. The camera stayed with Lucci as she began her walk to the podium, mercifully cutting away just in time to show Flannery accepting the actual award.

"These things happen on live television," said Al Schwartz of Dick Clark Productions, which produced the Daytime Emmys telecast. "It happens on all kinds of award shows, and it's not unusual and not unique."

According to Schwartz and others, the presenters of the award, in screaming Flannery's name, made themselves unintelligible after the "Susan" part. (Even if it sounded clear on TV, it's been said it sounded anything but at New York's Madison Square Garden, where the show was held.)

As for the encouragement Lucci got backstage from others who also thought she'd won? Rosie O'Donnell used her waning hours as a talk-show hostess last week to take the blame for that one. O'Donnell, standing near Lucci in the wings that night, said it was she who convinced her friend to begin the ill-timed victory walk.

But backers of the "Apology for Susan Lucci Petition" aren't mollified by explanations of "Live TV happens..." They want--nay, demand--a formal apology on Lucci's behalf from "everyone from Dick Clark on down."

"Susan Lucci is a class act and didn't deserve to be humiliated like that," writes one signer.

Offers another: "[Lucci] was done a grand disservice by what happened last night. I felt so bad for her that I cried myself to sleep."

Larsen said she has sent a hard copy of the petition's cover letter, as well as a link to its online home to Dick Clark Productions, CBS and, for good measure, The Other Half (Dick Clark's daytime talk show). She has yet to make contact with Lucci.

"I just wanted the people that screwed this up so badly to know that her fans love her and take offense to what was done," Larsen said.

Larsen said she hoped to gather the "signatures" of at least 1,000 pro-Lucci Netizens before sending a snail-mail version of the petition to Clark. But she conceded that "the fury is dying down," and the rate of new signatures slowing. "There are new soap issues to deal with, I guess," she said, tagging on a "laughing out loud" rejoinder.

As for Lucci? There's no comment on the matter from ABC Daytime. But, according to Schwartz, the diva is fine.

"She got an apology, and she said forget about it, 'It's okay," Schwartz said.

No word, though, on how Erica's taking it.