Think before hitting 'send'

As a service to our readers who lack a Wall Street Journal subscription, just a brief post noting the juicy bits in their story about the expulsion from Murdoch World of Harper Collins publishing magnate Judith Regan. The Bush scandals have piled up so quickly that bit players in old scandals are long forgotten, so cast your mind back to George Bush's nomination of former NYPD Commish Bernie Kerik as his secretary of homeland security -- whereupon the legal problems around Mr Kerik accumulated, including the use of an apartment near Ground Zero, which he was given for 9/11 related use only, for meetings of a romantic nature with Ms Regan.

Anyway, it was believed that Murdoch had given her a reprieve over the most recent imbroglio, a book detailing a "hypothetical" confession by O.J. Simpson, until --

... Ms. Regan stirred up resentment inside HarperCollins a week earlier, on Dec.8, when she sent an internal email to the publisher's staff. It read: "Congratulations to the amazing and talented staff of ReganBooks. 'Century Girl' has been chosen by several organizations including Slate as the book of the year. We are also the proud recipients of a National Book Award finalist award for 'The Zero' a novel by Jess Walter. Both of these books were acquired by Judith Regan."

Some viewed the email as not only ill-timed but self-congratulatory. "It was viewed as a poke in the eye, a reminder of how important she was," says one HarperCollins executive. "Nobody was happy with it because everybody was already offended by the O.J. matter."

Part of the email was also inaccurate. The online publication Slate cited "Century Girl," a book built around Ziegfeld Follies star Doris Eaton Travis and written by Lauren Redniss, as one of the year's best books -- not the book of the year. "It was a total exaggeration," says this HarperCollins executive.

It is some kind of benchmark that Slate has enough visibility to figure in a high profile firing.

UPDATE: A self-aggrandising e-mail might be a more favourable story for getting fired than allegations of an anti-Semitic outburst. And Atrios reminds us of the extent to which Regan had been running with the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy from its Lewinsky days, which even extended to the standard disclaimer of many of its participants --

I come from a big Italian Irish Catholic family and I have to say that for the most part, they have not cheated on each other.

It's also important not to forget that the patron of Ms Regan's former paramour, Rudy Giuliani, has presidential ambitions.

FINAP UPDATE: The now disputed phone conversation (WSJ, subs. req'd), even in Ms Regan's version, does involve a self-aggrandising victimisation --

[lawyer] "What she said was that she was being destroyed in the press for something that wasn't her fault, and that the Jewish people should understand more than anybody else what it is to be the victim of a big lie."