Posted on 11/12/2005 4:50:55 PM PST by blam
'Woman of Mass Destruction' jibe turns into catfight
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 13/11/2005)
It has erupted into one of the great catfights of American journalism: Judith Miller, the veteran reporter who went to jail because she refused to reveal a source's name, and Maureen Dowd, her equally outspoken long-term colleague on the New York Times.
The pencil-thin Miller, who quit the newspaper last week after being criticised by her editors, has launched a fightback after being denounced by Dowd.
Veteran reporter Judith Miller: 'My conscience is clear'
In an article entitled "Woman of Mass Destruction", the flame-haired columnist flayed Miller for inaccurate reports on Iraq's pre-war weapons programmes and said she was known on the newspaper as "Miss Run Amok".
Miller, 57, has now delivered her riposte. In an interview with the New York Post she repeatedly referred to Dowd, 53, as having once been a great reporter. "She used to combine brilliant reporting with her rapier wit," Miller said. "Now you just get her rapier wit. She was brilliant. I really do think that. That's what made it worse." She added that her former colleague "has a book to sell", a reference to Dowd's Are Men Necessary?
Miller, who has been touring American television studios and newspaper offices to put her case, also spoke of her anger when Bill Keller, the newspaper's editor, wrote about her "entanglement" with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the source she said she was protecting.
The word is commonly seen as suggesting that Miller had become personally involved with Mr Libby, who resigned last month as a senior White House aide after being indicted in a CIA leak investigation. Miller, who is married to Jason Epstein, 77, a founder of the New York Review of Books, said: "My poor husband! He was stunned and even angrier than I was - and he doesn't get angry."
Newsroom colleagues say that Miller has a history of romances with public officials - she has lived with a former Democrat congressman and a senior State Department official. Miller is furious when asked about this. "What male reporter would be asked whom he went out with 25 years ago?" she said.
The bitter exchanges are all the more extraordinary as they involve the ultra-serious New York Times (nickname: The Grey Lady; motto: "All the News That's Fit to Print"). The newspaper stood by Miller when she refused to testify before a grand jury and went to prison for 85 days until Mr Libby personally assured her that she could identify him as a source.
Former colleagues question whether Miller went to jail on a matter of principle, as she said, or did so rather to rehabilitate her reputation after her pre-war reports on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction turned out to be flawed.
She angrily denies this. "I really don't know what brought about this 40-day tsunami on me, these attacks after I came out of jail. I am very comfortable with the decision that I made. My conscience is clear."
Much as i have a lot of contempt for Mo, I trust this Miller infobabe about as much as I do Mary Mapes....
... Which is to say not at all.
Call it "The Dead Lady"
isn't this kinda like one whore calling another whore a 'slut'?
I just don't have the feeling that I have a dog in this fight, no insult intended to dogs.
"Infoslut," to be more accurate.
- Stevey Wonder
That these stupid and incompetent and greedy, self absorbed maroons call themselves journalists and have the ability to influence our policies would be laughable if it weren't so tragic!
"Come on out, you gutter lily, you!
Come show your legs, and let us see how pretty!
We always want to admire a beauty -
They're the thickest ankles in the city!"
- Threepenny Opera
If Maureen Dowd has a rapier wit, I'm a monkey's uncle. She has no style, no humor, no ideas, and no facts in any of her columns.
First of all...I don't understand why the "journalist" that wrote this article felt the need to describe Judith Miller as "pencil thin"....what did it add to the story???
Then, when she is reacting to the rumors that she and Libby might have been having a "thing"...even with her history, she cries that it wouldn't have been brought up if it were a male reporter....WRONG...it would have been brought up for sure, if the situation was reversed...and she knows it.
She is just crying for sympathy...
A POX on both of their houses, I say!
I saw Miller and Mapes on the same day. What a contrast. Miller is handling herself well, and Mapes.....(You know) Dowd ... they pay her for what?
I don't know...maybe she has "dirt" on someone...I know Imus likes her...
I think she is just one of the New York "elites"...but, she is a bitter, hateful, person.
I still haven't figured Judith Miller out yet.. I think there is stuff we don't know at play here...
And Mapes...she had to have slept her way to the top of CBS producer's job...she is one dim bulb.
Only a liberal would take the Prozacked mumblings of Dowd seriously. I tried to read a Dowd column once, just to be 'fair.' Couldn't finish it. Under 'drivel' in the dictionary it says "read Dowd."
Har! First I heard this!
How can one hateful bitchy lying skank from the NYT have any more credibility than another hateful bitchy lying skank from the NYT? CAT FIGHT!!! Maybe they'll kill each other.
The bottom line of Dowd's objection to Miller is that Judy wrote articles before the war concerning Saddam's possession of WMD. Dowd can't forgive her for that, i.e., being in bed with the Bush view of the world.
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