literary douchebaggery.

Couple of quick hits, as I tend not to dive into book-like matters, but these are too good to resist:

1) Judith Regan got the pink slip a couple days ago after the whole O.J. "If I Did It Mess," taking the fall like a good Murdoch soldier, while the man himself and his company somehow manage to avoid acting as if they knew about the plan at all. What really must have done it is that Regan was also planning to publish an "inventive memoir" about Mickey Mantle. The woman invents new ways to say "evidence of libel." If you Google image her, she's not unattractive -- so why the hell did she stoop to fucking corrupt NYPD Commish and derailed Homeland Security Security nominee Bernie Kerik?

Ladies, please have standards. Not in the sense of being a prude or keeping it locked up until marriage or something like that, but cripes.

2) Apparently Michael Crichton didn't like a profile a New Republic writer did on him and his last book (which basically espouses his "global warming is a HOAX!" theories). So, it looks like he put said writer in his newest book as an incidental character, but a doozy: a child rapist with a small dick. Problem is, the TNR writer happened to notice.

Michael, buddy, I know your novels have sucked since the mid-90s (and arguably before that; when I re-read Rising Sun or Jurassic Park, for example, I can only chalk up my enthusiasm for his books to teenager-dom), but if you're going to get a dig at a political writer and Yale alum named Michael Crowley, it would do wonders for the writing (and probably your wallet) if you didn't name him "Mick Crowley" and changed a few other details. There are other Ivy League schools, and not all political writers are based in D.C. Call him "Mark Crawford," say he went to Dartmouth or Columbia, and lives in Manhattan. Perfect!

Then again, Crichton is in a league with Grisham and Tom Clancy -- I don't think editors are even assigned to their books; I think they get faxed or e-mailed straight to the printing plant.