Lynne Duke in the
Washington Post has a great long article up on Judy Miller.
She did a lot research and then interviewed her at a fancy Soho Restuarant:
So here we are last week in a SoHo brasserie called Balthazar, where a parade of Judys appears. Outraged Judy. Saddened Judy. Charming Judy. Wise Judy. Conspiratorial Judy. Judy, the star New York Times reporter turned beleaguered victim of the gossipmongers
Judy in her own words:
"I am so powerful and influential that I take over Army divisions? I run the New York Times newsroom single-handedly? And now I take the country to war? Wow! That must be one heck of a reporter. I've heard of pushy broads, but this brings the pushy broad to a new level."
It contains some of Judy's greatest hits including doing Lee Atwater's bidding:
Then the political editor based in New York, Clymer was awakened just after midnight one morning by a call from Miller, he says. She was demanding that a story about Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis be pulled from the paper.
The story was too soft, she complained -- and said Lee Atwater, the political strategist for Vice President George H.W. Bush, believed it was soft as well. Clymer said he was stunned to realize that Atwater apparently had either seen the story or been told about it before publication. He and Miller argued, he recalls, and he ultimately hung up on her, twice.
It adresses the delicate question of how do you call someone a bitch in major newspaper:
Her former colleagues use all manner of adjectives to describe Miller, but there is consensus among some two dozen people interviewed that she is, indeed, a volatile person.
Volcanic might be the better word. She erupts. She is known to holler at newsroom clerks, to berate hotel staff while on the road, several colleagues said.
Even in her social life, she is known as a charming hostess at dinner parties with her husband, publishing icon Jason Epstein, a founder of the New York Review of Books -- except when there's an eruption and they start sniping at each other.
It's a very enjoybable article, make sure you read all the way through so you can hear Judy deny she's a neocon.