L.A. Woman (vs. LAT Man)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misidentified the women's group with which Charlotte Allen is affiliated. It is the Independent Women's Forum.

Commentator Susan Estrich says she's just trying to get more columns by women into the Los Angeles Times.

Michael Kinsley, who runs the newspaper's opinion pages, agrees that's a worthy goal.

But the battle between the two longtime acquaintances has escalated to bitter warfare, with Estrich bombarding Kinsley with e-mails assailing him for "arrogance," "audacity," being a "jerk" and warning him before a charity event: "You want me to work that dinner about what an [expletive] you are?" Kinsley, in turn, accused Estrich of "blackmail."

The testosterone-laden nature of many newspaper op-ed pages is nothing new. In the first two months of this year, about 19.5 percent of op-ed pieces at the California paper were by women, 16.9 percent at the New York Times and 10.4 percent at The Washington Post. Only a handful of female columnists -- Maureen Dowd, Ellen Goodman, Molly Ivins -- are nationally known.

Gail Collins, the first woman to run the New York Times editorial page, says, "The pool of available people doing opinion writing is still tilted toward men. There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff, and they're less comfortable hearing something on the news and batting something out."

Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt says: "There ought to be more women on op-ed pages in general. Over time, I intend to make that happen." Hiatt notes that death has claimed two of his columnists in the past year, Mary McGrory and Marjorie Williams, leaving Anne Applebaum as the only regularly published woman. He says 80 to 90 percent of submissions, especially from such male-dominated bastions as Congress and academia, come from men.

When Kinsley joined the L.A. Times last year, replacing a woman, Estrich started pressing her old Harvard Law "friend" to run more pieces by women -- including her syndicated column -- over dinner and through a series of letters. "ONE LAST CHANCE BEFORE I GO PUBLIC," she warned in early February.

What really pressed Estrich's buttons was a Feb. 13 Times opinion piece by Charlotte Allen of the conservative Independent Women's Forum headlined "Feminist Fatale: Where are the great women thinkers? Thinking so much about women has shrunk their minds." Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California and wrote the book "Sex and Power," called Allen "a feminist-hater I have never heard of."

When the correspondence leaked to Washington's new Examiner newspaper, Kinsley, a former editor of Slate and the New Republic, told the paper: "I think it may be possible to be a woman even if Susan Estrich has never heard of you. . . . If Susan wants to boycott media institutions that don't adequately reflect her progressive feminist values, maybe she should start by resigning from Fox News, where she is a commentator."

But the rhetoric started escalating even before the leak. On Feb. 14, Estrich told Kinsley she was surprised at his "rudeness" and "blatant hostility" in not getting back to her. On Feb. 15, Estrich wrote that "for a smart guy, you seem to have a real Larry Summers problem," referring to the Harvard president who questioned whether women are less adept at math and science.

Kinsley, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, wrote Estrich on Feb. 17 that her "mischaracterizations" of his position were "farcical" and her supposed concern for his health, expressed in one letter, was "disgusting." Her response: "You are being a bigger fool than I thought. . . . You are digging a grave for yourself. . . . People are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment and your ability to do this job." She copied Internet gossip Matt Drudge on a similar letter.

That same day, Estrich sent Kinsley a letter signed by dozens of other women, and said if it didn't run she would launch a Web site, LATimesBias.org, the next day. Kinsley wrote back: "We don't run letters from 50 people, and we don't succumb to blackmail." He said she could submit her own letter in two or three weeks. Instead, Estrich told women in a mass mailing to urge advertisers to complain about the paucity of female columnists.

On Feb. 18, Times Editor John Carroll wrote Estrich to complain about "the extravagant malice of your comments about Mike Kinsley." Estrich responded by accusing him of "constitutionally impermissible libel" and said her attorney would contact him.

Kinsley says in an interview that "she is the one firing rockets" and he has sent few e-mails. "There should be more women" on op-ed pages, he says, and he is adding more, including Time's Margaret Carlson. But, he says, "this counting is a little silly. We've already gotten into Talmudic discussions about whether a co-byline counts as one or two. . . . If you're looking for women, blacks, Latinos, people from Southern California, it's a familiar argument that this discriminates against white males. The unfamiliar argument is that every time you add a category, it hurts the other categories, even the ones you're trying to help."

Estrich says that she never intended for the correspondence to become public and that "it's not personal" against Kinsley: "This isn't about egos. My only concern is that the L.A. Times opinion pages, unfortunately like too many in this country, are dominated by men, and I'd like to see that change." Saying that there aren't enough good female opinion writers is, she says, "a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Some papers have made things work. Keven Ann Willey, who runs the Dallas Morning News editorial page, says 41 percent of her contributors last year were women, and that she gets a monthly report broken down by gender, race, ethnicity and age, -- because "we want lots of diversity on our op-ed page."

The Boston Globe was often at odds with John Kerry during the presidential campaign. And one Globe reporter, it turns out, was no Kerry fan.

Hiawatha Bray reported on the campaign's technological aspects, such as a hackers' attack on an online bookstore selling an assault on Kerry by a leader of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The liberal group Media Matters found that Bray also criticized the senator in postings on blogs and Web sites.

In one, Bray wrote of Kerry's "moronic strategy" of basing his campaign on his Vietnam service: "But now we find that of the hundreds of men who served with him, nearly all hated his guts." As for Kerry's postwar behavior, Bray wrote: "From his own lips, we hear him claim that his comrades were little better than the Waffen SS. He even claims to have committed atrocities himself. Either he's telling the truth about this -- and should have been put in the cell next to William Calley -- or he's lying, and shouldn't be allowed to serve as commander in chief of the soldiers he so casually lied about."

After the election, Bray, who did not return calls last week, posted a note describing himself as a "Bush supporter" and telling Kerry backers to "suck it up."

Globe Editor Martin Baron says Bray "is a technology reporter and did not cover the presidential campaign, other than a minor technology-related story on very rare occasions. That said, his blog postings were inappropriate and in violation of our standards, and he was informed of that when we learned of them in November. Mr. Bray was instructed to discontinue any such postings, and to our knowledge he complied." Baron called the Globe's coverage of Kerry fair and accurate.

Newsweek has been taking a beating over its cover shot of a smiling Martha Stewart that looks to the casual reader like the real thing -- until you pause to notice that she happens to be pulling back some orange curtains when, at the time, she was in jail.

It's not even Stewart's real body. Inside, a tiny credit line says it's a "photo illustration."

Editor Mark Whitaker says he thought the "Martha's Last Laugh" cover was "clearly over the top enough that nobody would think it was the real Martha. It was never our intention to produce something anyone would mistake for the real Martha. But if it was too subtle at the end of the day, we regret that."

Speaking of Newsweek, it must have some sociological significance when the magazine and Time carry upbeat reports on Bush's foreign policy acumen. Fareed Zakaria writes that the man who has been "vindicated in recent weeks is George W. Bush. Across New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- and probably Europe and Asia as well -- people are nervously asking themselves a question: 'Could he possibly have been right?' The short answer is yes. Whether or not Bush deserves credit for everything that is happening in the Middle East, he has been fundamentally right about some big things."

Time's Michael Duffy: "Ever since George W. Bush came into office in 2001, he has talked off and on about bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East -- a goal regarded by many as completely laudable but utterly unrealistic.

"The region has long been a card catalog of repressive, hereditary kleptocracies...But as Bush's second term opened, he was blessed with rare opportunities to throw U.S. weight and prestige behind signs of reform. So Washington turned up the rhetoric about democracy to lean on longtime Middle East recalcitrants.

"The sudden upheaval in Lebanon, set in motion last month by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, in itself might have been enough to permit the Bush team to issue a whispered "I told you so" to critics who thought the President's optimism was naive."

I wasn't exactly upbeat about Bush's Social Security prospects on Friday, but National Review's Byron York has a different view:

"In a January strategy memo, White House aide Peter Wehner wrote that the battle over Social Security had to begin with the president convincing Americans that there really is a problem -- Wehner did not use the word 'crisis,' but he meant an urgent, serious problem -- with the nation's retirement system.. 'We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course,' Wehner wrote. 'That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness; it is the pre-condition to authentic reform.'

"Now, two months later, it appears the White House is making significant progress toward that goal. The latest indication comes in a new New York Times/CBS poll which -- although it has been interpreted as providing overwhelmingly bad news for the president -- provides solid evidence that the public is increasingly viewing Social Security as a problem that requires action.

"Reporting the poll's results, the Times said the survey showed that Americans 'are increasingly resistant to [the president's] proposal to revamp Social Security and say they are uneasy with Mr. Bush's ability to make the right decisions about the retirement program.'...

"Yet deep inside the poll are numbers that are surely encouraging to the White House. Pollsters asked a series of questions about whether people believe that there is a serious problem with the Social Security system, and the results indicate that the strategy outlined by Wehner in January is working."

You won't be shocked to learn that Josh Marshall disagrees--and sees the president pursuing a more revolutionary goal:

"I've said probably too many times over the last couple days that however they choose to dress it up and whatever sort of compromise they want to present it as, the president's goal is still phase-out. That's why he's invested so much in this politically. And if you want to grasp the stakes of all this -- both politically and in terms of policy -- just look at the fact that the White House is now redoubling its efforts to push privatization in the face of public opinion which appears to be congealing against them. They understand the consequences of defeat.

"Now, you'll hear from me and others over the coming weeks and months all sorts of different jargon and policy particulars about caps and private accounts and add-on accounts and Trust Funds and rates of return and all the rest of it.

"But the terms of this debate are actually pretty straightforward. The president and his supporters want to get the government out of the Social Security business by ending guaranteed benefits. It's really as simple as that. Not complicated. They'll put in its place some system of private accounts where you can save money on your own. And if it works out, great. If it doesn't, it's your problem."

The media are treating Martha Stewart's release like Nelson Mandela getting out of jail, and Slate's Henry Blodget, who's been barred from investment banking for hyping bad stocks but is a pretty good writer, defends the diva:

"Her detractors are incensed that she's getting out of jail, free -- that she gets to go back to being rich, powerful, and famous. They seethe that the jailbird has made no groveling apologies or pleas for forgiveness. Perhaps, once her appeal is finished, Stewart will provide them. Based on her comments so far, however -- don't hold your breath.

"In the oceans of Martha coverage, it would be nice to see some acknowledgement that Stewart has not only paid dearly for her mistakes, but proved that she has learned from them. It would also be nice to see acknowledgement that Stewart might not, in fact, have much to apologize for. Given the extraordinary risks and costs of defending oneself, most (sane) criminal defendants don't go to trial just to try to 'beat the rap.' Instead, they fight when A) they have nothing to lose, or B) they believe they have been falsely charged and would rather get convicted than confess to something they didn't do. In some cases, including this one, the belief may be based on denial, but only the defendant knows for sure. Normally, we admire those who remain true to themselves no matter the cost, and perhaps Stewart will someday get some credit for doing so. Or at least a grudging admission that, apology or no, she's paid her dues.

"In any event, Stewart's prison sentence has provided another opportunity for her to apply her true gift, one that infuriates those who lack it: the determination to forever make lemons into lemonade. Turning a jail sentence into a public-relations asset is no mean feat, but Stewart has done it."

Maybe, but the media have made it easy for her by gushing and rushing to give her two new TV shows.

Here's how the mayor of Philadelphia speaks privately:

"Three days after the City Hall scandal broke, FBI wiretaps captured a phone call in which Mayor John Street agreed with Ronald A. White's advice that Street should use the 'race thing' to galvanize his voters," reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"'We don't have much choice but to go with it,' Street told White on Oct. 10, 2003, less than a month before the mayor was reelected.

"At the time, White was a key fund-raiser for Street - and was the target of intense FBI scrutiny. On the phone, he told Street that the two men needed to discuss 'how we're going to do this from a black thing.'

"'We can do both,' Street replied, without elaborating."

Robert Greenwald, the guy who made the anti-Fox film "Outfoxed," isn't happy with how his movie figures in a new TV plot (and doesn't bother with capital letters):

"so the brilliant david kelly has written an episode of boston legal abut fox news and outfoxed,,,, a terrific story line i wont give away, it is set to air march l3th,, but, get this,, abc has refused mentioning fox news by name!! fortunately they have kept outfoxed by name, but not fox news! i can only imagine the battles that have gone on, and are going on internally at abc over this.if you feel motivated, send the folks at abc a note, asking why they would refuse to mention fox news by name? cant be corporate bias??"

An update on the quest of Media Bistro gossip site Fishbowl DC to pull a Gannon and get a White House day pass:

"We got an emailfrom Knight Ridder's Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents Association, who said that, without prompting, he'd raised the issue with the White House Press Office. USA Today's media reporter Mark Memmott was interested in writing a story about the saga and he started making calls. Late yesterday, he spoke to a spokesperson who said that that the Press Office had gone ahead and cleared us in.

"While we still haven't heard back from Media Affairs, we did get an email from someone who handles credentials for the Press Office last evening (our first communication back from the White House all week) that seemed to imply we'd be able to attend a briefing this week as long as we provided vitals."

Lesson: It helps for small media guys to get big media guys involved.