Ah, it was to be expected:


Susan Estrich’s bizarre e-mail assault on Los Angeles Times editorial and opinion editor Michael Kinsley has generated, not a round of wonderment over why it is that the same feminist ideologues who berate men for not taking them seriously act in ways that prevent anyone from taking them seriously, but a round of breast-beating by liberal newspapers over their failure to run women columnists like Susan Estrich.


Yes, here’s Kinsley (as reported by the Washington Post’s media writer Howard Kurtz);


“‘There should be more women’ on op-ed pages, he says, and he is adding more, including Time’s Margaret Carlson.”


And here’s Gail Collins, who runs the New York Times editorial page (also quoted by Kurtz):


“‘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.'”


And here’s the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt:


“‘There ought to be more women on op-ed pages in general. Over time, I intend to make that happen.'”


So, Susan, it’s paid off for ya. Tell Kinsley that his Parkinson’s disease has gone to his head, call him a “[expletive]” (I’m quoting Kurtz, who got hold of some of the zillions of e-mails with which Estrich has bombarded Kinsley over the last month), and send him messages saying “ONE LAST CHANCE BEFORE I GO PUBLIC”–and your tactics will work! You’ll have editorial-page editors all over the country donning the hairshirt and murmuring mea culpas. Sigh.


Estrich’s outrage began, ironically, on Feb. 13 when Kinsley actually published an opinion piece  written by a woman–me. But my message in Feminist Fatale wasn’t to Estrich’s liking (I argue that female intellectuals’ myopic focus on feminist ideology has cost them a broad public audience), so she doesn’t think I’m really a woman.