What nasty people these are.
That was what I thought reading Howard Kurtz’s column today on in-fighting at the New York Times.
First, there was an item over the fallout from Judy Miller’s ouster:
“Miller tells New Yorker writer Ken Auletta that she had threatened to sue her executive editor, Bill Keller, and the paper for defamation if Keller did not retract his comment questioning her ‘entanglement’ with indicted former White House aide Scooter Libby. A Keller letter, saying he did not mean to suggest an improper relationship, paved the way for Miller’s resignation last month. …
“The Auletta article reveals bad blood between Keller and Raines, who beat Keller out for the top job in 2001 but was later forced out in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal.
“‘Of all the things Howell bequeathed to me, somewhere high on that list — maybe higher than Judy Miller — is his claim that the newsroom had become fat and complacent,’ Keller says. ‘That plays into what business sides of newspapers tend to believe. I think that was wrong. . . . I don’t think he really believed it. I think he thought it would make him popular on the business side. . . . Howell campaigned for the job with the political skills we admire in Karl Rove.'”
In an item immediately below, New York Times prima donna Maureen Dowd complains that her vastly-overrated book was reviewed by somebody she (Dowd) had been mean to.