It's not just chick lit books that get Maureen Dowd's goat: Her op-ed column in last Saturday's NYT was essentially devoted to undercutting George Tenet's memoirs. And while he's willing to let the former CIA chief's story stand on its own merits, HarperCollins executive editor David Hirshey couldn't let one of Dowd's swipes go unremarked, namely the jibe that "[Tenet] was paid a $4 million advance to settle scores."

The real number, Hirshey clarified to us yesterday afternoon, was half that. "Not that two million is a shabby advance," he said, "but four million dollars? C'mon. Who does she think he is, Andre Agassi?"