Vanity Fair gives Judith Regan—the publisher who brought Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Jenna Jameson, and Wally Lamb to airport bookstores everywhere—the old kiss-kiss/slap-slap treatment this month with a profile by Judith Newman called "The Devil and Miss Regan."

We get the usual flattery:—she had 13 books on the best-seller list this year," says Michael J. Wolf, the managing partner of McKinsey & Company's media and entertainment practice.
Followed by the usual smears:

Her enemies, who are legion, say she is (as one former friend put it) "the highest-functioning deranged person I've ever known."


But the most exciting part of the article (to us anyway) is this compliment (at least we think it's a compliment) from Bush's nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security (and ReganBooks author), Bernard Kerik:

"She is brash, very assertive, extremely demanding, and talks like a man But you know what? I've run the largest police departments in the country, I've run the largest jail. Sometimes it takes a person like that to get things done."


Holy crap! Will Judith Regan replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense?

Breaking...? (No, probably not.)
The Devil and Miss Regan [VF]