If anyone's reputation has been besmirched in the exchange, Kinsley said in an interview, it has been his. He said his mental powers and competence have been publicly questioned, despite his good-faith efforts to hire more women.
"I believe in diversity. I have written about this," Kinsley said. He said part of his struggle has been in simultaneously trying to increase the number of writers from several groups -- including Latinos, African Americans and conservatives, the last of whom, he said, "at this point have become sort of another affirmative action class."
"We want a diversity of viewpoints and of experiences in our editors and our writers," said Kinsley, comparing one new op-ed writer to Estrich. "Who brings more diversity of experience, [Latino author and columnist] Gregory Rodriguez, who is coming to work for us
Several veterans of The Times op-ed operation said Estrich has long campaigned, sometimes angrily, to get her syndicated column printed by the newspaper. But she insists that her principal focus has been on supporting other women and, secondarily, on getting more support for local writers. She charged that Kinsley -- who has homes in Los Angeles and Seattle -- pays too little attention to Southern California and favors pundits from the East.
"Don't hire me, hire others, left or right," she wrote in an online column in response to Allen's feminist critique, "women who know this community and are going to write about more important things ... than the silliness of [women's] shrunken minds."
As the controversy drags into a fourth week, Estrich continues to bounce from conciliation to confrontation. She seemed near tears in an interview, saying she never intended the fight to get so personal. She blamed the operators of her website for improperly posting comments about Kinsley's mental health and contended she didn't think e-mails to Drudge and others in the media would get into the public domain.
But she also accused Kinsley of "playing small and petty" by, among other things, ignoring her demands and then recently publishing two columns by her ex-husband. (Martin Kaplan is associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication.) And she said the newspaper continues to dwell on her comments about Kinsley as a tactic -- to avoid talking about the failure to give a larger platform to women.
"What do you do when you don't have a defense?" she said. "You play this card."
