Today we're feeling sorry for Harriet, and maybe even a little tired of beating up on Judy. The two women would seem to have little else in common, beyond a really lousy last couple of weeks.
Mild Harriet Miers, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was withdrawn this morning, put the boss first until no one could say for sure there was a fully formed person underneath all that deference. She seemed genuinely grateful that the most brilliant man she'd ever met had taken "the time to visit in the office and on the plane back -- cool!'' she wrote, in what seems to have been a note thanking then-Gov. George W. Bush for talking to her.
Wild Judy Miller, on the other hand, who is reportedly working out a separation agreement with the New York Times, made fools of her nominal superiors there before finally out-foxing even herself. After spending 85 days in jail for reasons as murky as our casus belli in Iraq, she described her first meal as a free woman as "a third of a martini in a gorgeous glass'' and a fruit plate served by the publisher, presumably including some grapes he had peeled for her.
Fortunately, for every moment in life, there is Sondheim: "That's the sorrowful précis; it's very messy.If Judy and Harry could only com-bine, I could tell you someone who would finally feel just fine!''
But if they ever did get together -- for lunch maybe, or to go trick-or-treating as each other -- they might find there is a lesson as well as a lyric in all their troubles. Like that "Who's Your Daddy?'' is an important question--until it isn't.
In the end, both of these smart, capable women were undone not by powerful men but by their own over-reliance on their relationships with them. It is progress of a sort that, not at all unlike the boys, we will sometimes take a wrong turn just because we can. But let's at least refrain from thinking the Big Guy, whoever he is, will show up to save us from ourselves when we do. He might be too busy saving his own derrier.
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