Those Smoking Boots Belong to Susan Estrich

Man, did Avi Klein take gasoline-gargler Susan Estrich down in this piece:

Actually, scratch that last sentence. She isn't entirely consistent. Only with the Times did she actually follow through on her threat to go to the press with her complaints. When her bete noire was just mild-mannered Kinsley, a man at whom she felt comfortable tossing out insults such as "your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do [your] job," she felt comfortable mau-mauing him within an inch of his life. (Kinsley was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.) "How's your health? Are you enjoying this?" she teased in a different email. Kinsley, ill health or not, refused to submit to such shabby treatment and so Estrich took it to the streets -- er...Internet -- with a very public attack on his character.

But when up against Al Gore and Bill Clinton, two men with real power who could cause her professional harm, who invited her to their parties, she caught the vapors. All of a sudden she forgot her sworn "obligation to make a contribution during the brief time we have here on this earth." She didn't just bury the lede: she spiked the piece and refused all public comment until she'd had time to publish the story in Sex and Power with the facts sanded and stained until she gleamed like those painted mahogany saints one finds in typical Los Angeles bodegas. In truth, she seems to have killed the piece in exchange for the watery pottage of a White house sleepover invitation. And it didn't hurt that Al Gore threatened her right back; as they say in the mean Compton streets that surround USC, "you can't play a player."

Couldn't happen to a nicer person, in my opinion.