How snarked off is onetime publishing giant Judith Regan about her depiction in Michael Wolff's book  about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News?

She took time to send ME an e-mail.

Why the woman who once ran Murdoch's highest-profile book publishing projects would take time to float an e-mail to a lowly scribe like yours truly I'm not quite sure. But I had no trouble understanding why she's snarked off -- not when passages describing her in the book include words such as "reviled" and phrases saying she unleashed "a level of vulgarity and fury perhaps never before seen in the book world" dot Wolff's tome.

Regan was fired in 2006, after efforts to build a TV special and book around a non-confession confessional from O.J. Simpson, If I Did It, exploded into a full-on media scandal (Wolff suggests what really sunk Regan was that Murdoch was wooing the skittish family that owned the Wall Street Journal, and didn't need the salacious publicity). She has since said she plans to sue Wolff over what he says about her in the book, and after my piece reviewing the book and mentioning her ran, she sent me this e-mail (reprinted with permission):   

"Michael Wolff hasn’t touched a nerve. He out and out fabricates. I have not seen nor spoken to him in decades yet he claims to have insight? His insight is ridiculous. Don’t mistake his haughty tone for wisdom. He knows nothing about me. He has never interviewed me and his sources are extremely suspect. Michael Wolff is what my mother would simply call “a liar”.

Happy New Year

Judith Regan"

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Photo: Sirius