Posted on 02/19/2005 12:47:00 PM PST by freespirited
On Thursday, The Examiner printed an e-mail by University of Southern California professor Susan Estrich accusing the Los Angeles Times of sexual discrimination against women writers. We also ran a rebuttal by Michael Kinsley, opinion and editorial editor at the Times. Since then, they have been e-mailing each other back and forth - CCing David Mastio, The Examiner's editorial page editor, in the process. We are running them virtually unedited.
Run my letter - or else
From: Susan Estrich
To: Kinsley, Michael
Subject: RE: my letter to the editor
I am sending over my letter this morning. It is very, very temperate. It is signed by approximately 50 women, among them some of the most powerful women in town, from Nancy Daly Riordan to Lynne Wasserman to Katherine Spillar to Carol Biondi to Dolores Robinson etc. etc. etc. ... Everyone is assuming it will be published on Sunday. I honestly think it will be a bigger deal if you don't publish it, and Drudge and Newsmax and the rest do, than if you simply publish it, and start adding more women from Southern California to your mix (today's tally, 3 men, 1 Washington woman late of Time, no women from Southern California...)
I really do hate to be doing this. I counted e-mail after e-mail that I sent and was totally ignored. I can't tell you how much I wanted to help quietly. If this is what it takes, so be it. My friend Barbara Howar told me she got a call yesterday from Bob Sipchen about writing for the Sunday section and I was delighted. How easy can it be ... That's all. You want thoughtful conservatives ... I have a great conservative former Harvard student who tells me she's been desperate to get a piece published and she gets consistently turned away. She lives in Pasadena ... I've got so many names for you of good women who live right here, care about this community; Carla Sanger, who created LA's BEST, tells me she can't get a piece in; I have women writing to me who have submitted four piece and not gotten the courtesy of a call - and they teach gender studies at UCLA ...
Anyway, the piece runs 500 words, and the signatures another 100. Since I have my own mimeograph machine, I can do a column today... but as I have every day, I would like nothing better than to work with you to declare victory. Otherwise we'll have a new website, www.latimesbias.org up by tomorrow...
Sincerely, Susan
ed. - The letter is below.
Don't try to push me around girlie
From: Kinsley, Michael
To: Susan Estrich
Susan - We don't run letters from 50 people, and we don't succumb to blackmail. So we won't be publishing your letter. I would actually like to run an essay by you in our Outside the Tent column (the one Mickey kicked off a few weeks ago), but even that would look like blackmail if we did it now. So that's out too, for the moment.
I don't want a fight any more than you say you do - and we are both pissed off today. So I suggest we wait a few weeks (say, three) and then let's talk about an Outside the Tent. (It would be subject to the usual editing, of course - but not to dull your point, since the whole purpose of this column is criticism of the Times.) Or if you'd rather write a letter to the editor in two or three weeks, please write it and sign it yourself. You can say in the text that it is endorsed by whatever number of others.
How dare you accuse me of blackmail
From: Susan Estrich
To: Kinsley, Michael
You owe me an apology. NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did - and you have the arrogance and audacity to say that you couldn't be bothered reading my emails, spending time in the city where all of us are raising our families ... and then we should stop our efforts because you're "pissed off."
I am not engaged in blackmail, and I find that Suggestion to be highly offensive and insulting, and I am certain the many prominent women who have signed the letter would also agree. Far from being "pissed off," I believe I have conducted myself with admirable restraint because of our past relationship and my honest concerns for your health. I am not aware of any policy against jointly signed letters, nor has one been pointed out to me. You were quite aware of what I was doing, and to spring the policy this morning is bad faith, short and simple.
I was told that in order to have a letter published Sunday, it had to be submitted by today. My suggestion that your publishing it would be better (for you too) than my having to go outside somehow constitutes me blackmailing you is so outlandish that it underscores the question I've been asked repeatedly in recent days, and that does worry me, and should worry you: people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job [emphasis added by FS]. The fact that you were not in Los Angeles all week hardly helps matters, nor does the fact that you don't return phone calls. You are making things worse for yourself.
My point wasn't blackmail, Michael, it was that if you prefer me to conduct this discussion outside your pages, and make it into an even bigger fight, that makes you look even more afraid and more foolish, and angers every woman who signed a temperate letter that you are now refusing to publish. So be it. I now have powerful businesswomen and community leaders, professors and developers and talent agents and managers and journalists, students at the high school, college and law school level, and teachers involved in this effort. For the young women, I hope it's a lesson in how you can make change happen if you're willing to stand up to people who call you names, and reach out to other women, and not get scared and back down. If you recall, I wrote a book about that, called Sex and Power. It's what I have spent my whole life doing. The older I get, the clearer I am about all of our obligations to make a contribution during the brief time we have on this earth. Add that to the commitment those of us who have signed this letter share towards the community that is our home, where we are raising our children, living our lives, trying to deal with the real problems this city faces (not shrunken female minds), and the idea that I would somehow say STOP now because Michael is pissed off and has offered me some onetime column down the road when he's not mad anymore is just absurd; it would make a mockery of everything I stand for.
Do the right thing for your sake ...
That's it I am taking my ball and going home
From: Kinsley, Michael
To: Susan Estrich
Susan - Your mischaracterizations of what I wrote to you are farcical, as anyone can plainly see from reading the whole string. But your references to "concern for [my] health" are disgusting. Consider my invitation to write for the Times when things calm down rescinded. John Carroll agrees.
BTW, if you want to see this letter that she is screeching about, just click on the link to the original site and scroll down. You can read the letter and see the list of signatories.
Lush vs Pinhead and the saga continues
I would like to see Michael Kinsley face off with nancy Pelosi, to see who blinks first..Now that would be a contest..
Hehe....can we get Slimes East to argue with Slimes West??
Actually, Estrich is probably the voice of sanity in this situation. Kinsley is a liberal toady, he really has no intellectaul weight, though he measures his feather as though it were a mountain.
Run my letter - or else
From: Susan Estrich
Don't try to push me around girlie
From: Kinsley, Michael
Susan - We don't run letters from 50 people, and we don't succumb to blackmail.
How dare you accuse me of blackmail
From: Susan Estrich
HA HA HA HA HA
IMO......Kinsley is a much bigger jack ass and wuss than Estrich any day....he is more the Boxer liberal while Estrich seems to have at least a sense of humor.....but of course, let them go at each other.....I forgot to buy popcorn today though
The exchange did have the distinct screech of a catfight, did it not?
I don't know what started this, but it'd be fun to see what Tammy Bruce had to say about it.
Har!
[quake . . . snort . . . giggle]
LOL
I'd even like to see her show up on Fox-News - replacing Chris Wallace of course. Am I completely crazy? (Go ahead, let me have it).
Revenge of the Screeching Fembots!
(Presented in VistaVision)
No one will be seated during the gripping "hair-pulling" scene.
Who do I root against?
[distant plaintive wail of wolves]
Apparently not. In the article, Susan threatens to create a web site, www.latimesbias.org. That website is now up and gasping.
The whois info for the site shows that it was created by Susan Estrich on 17-Feb-2005.
By the way, I am not sure where Susan gets off complaining about gender. I have evidence of Susan's questionable gender:
Kinsley suffers from Parkinson, if I am not mistaken.
LOL, just what am I to take from that comment?
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