BATTLE OF THE BABES

Maureen Dowd [Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times]Judy Miller [Reuters] Maureen Dowd got personal with Judy Miller in her column headlined, "Woman of Mass Destruction," on Saturday. We'd rather call it the battle of the babes. Dowd, left, began by declaring, "I've always liked Judy Miller" -- which made us think uh-oh -- and ended by declaring:

Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover "the same thing I've always covered -- threats to our country." If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.

In between the start and the finish, a nicely sketched anecdote showed that Dowd was back in the sort of form so lacking in her columns ever since she returned from book leave or vacation or whatever:

Once when I was covering the first Bush White House, I was in The Times's seat in the crowded White House press room, listening to an administration official's background briefing. Judy had moved on from her tempestuous tenure as a Washington editor to be a reporter based in New York, but she showed up at this national security affairs briefing.

At first she leaned against the wall near where I was sitting, but I noticed that she seemed agitated about something. Midway through the briefing, she came over and whispered to me, "I think I should be sitting in the Times seat." It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. I got up and stood in the back of the room, while Judy claimed what she felt was her rightful power perch.

Because Dowd's columns are now hidden behind a subscription curtain, we thought we'd quote it to illustrate the flavor of her nasty, personal best. Coincidentally, the moral she drew -- that Miller's return would be, uhm, not so good for The Times -- neatly dovetailed with Bill Keller's guilty plea, issued in a memo late Friday afternoon, which made it a fair assumption that Miss Run Amuck is unlikely to be allowed back to cover anything at all. Then we got to thinking, was Dowd's column actually a coincidence? Gee, hmmm, etc.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: Jim Romenesko writes: "Dowd column is
here. I suspect this is a case where the Times won't threaten the webmaster for running the column."

October 23, 2005 9:13 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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