My Kinda Broad
Coming from me, the term, "a great broad," as applied to a certain kind of east coast, power-with-wit-and-style sort of woman, is a high compliment. Newspaper columnist, Mary McGrory, who died this year, sounded like that kind of woman:

Mary always got her way -- one way or another. When her editor at The Washington Post -- where she moved after The Star folded -- told her he did not have an extra pass for her to get into the Clarence Thomas hearings, Mary was displeased. Shortly thereafter, the editor was watching the hearings on TV and suddenly saw Mary being escorted to a front-row seat by the committee chairman, Joe Biden.

Mary loved The Star and Rome and rogues and children and losers and underdogs and Jack Kennedy. ''He walked like a panther,'' she told me.

She did not love, as her nephew Brian McGrory, the Boston Globe columnist, said, pomposity or self-involvement or bullies or Richard Nixon. She was very proud of being on his enemies' list. She hated blowhards. Once she wanted to get away from John Volpe, who had been in the Nixon cabinet, when he was droning on at her during a party at the Shoreham Hotel. ''Hey,'' she interrupted him finally, ''you were the secretary of transportation. Where are the elevators?'' And away she went.'