i got my first <u+201c>big<u+201d> story as a cub reporter at the miami herald in 1983, thanks to janet reno. or rather, thanks to her family<u+2019>s peacocks. a dozen of the raucous birds <u+2014> who had graced the reno household since 1947 (and were all named horace) <u+2014> had wandered off the rambling florida homestead that janet<u+2019>s mother, jane, had built with her own hands, and were rooting through the garbage and disrupting the slumbers of condo dwellers in the antiseptic adjacent precincts of gladewinds heights with their <u+201c>incessant screeching.<u+201d> the gladewindians were in an uproar <u+2014> <u+201c>the reno peacocks are dirty,<u+201d> one resident told me as she described how they pooped everywhere, and soothed her toy poodle, muffin. her husband vowed to catch one and wring its neck. a petition was filed, litigation threatened if the birds weren<u+2019>t immediately removed. janet reno, who was then state attorney, appointed a special prosecutor to handle l<u+2019>affaire aviaire and wrote each of the petition<u+2019>s signers a letter to assure that <u+201c>there would be no conflict of interest so far as this office is concerned.<u+201d> the condo dwellers ultimately backed off, one of the few times in ms. reno<u+2019>s career that her detractors would cut her a break. (a couple of years later, though, another round of townhouse habitu<u+00e9>s would have another fit over the birds roosting in trees.) more often in her decades of public service, she was cast as the noxious interloper herself, a peahen who<u+2019>d trespassed beyond her proper confinement and was making an indecorous mess. some 15 years after the peacock imbroglio, i was at a screening in los angeles of the documentary film <u+201c>waco: the rules of engagement,<u+201d> about the deadly federal siege in texas of the religious cult known as the branch davidians. the auditorium was packed that night with men in t-shirts emblazoned with gun-rights slogans. <u+201c>butcher reno!<u+201d> they bellowed at the screen, hissing and booing every time there was a reference to attorney general reno, who in the film (and wrongly) got most of the blame for the waco catastrophe. the waco debacle came only weeks into ms. reno<u+2019>s appointment <u+2014> and the standoff between the government and the davidians actually started before she was installed. but subsequent years were no less thorny. ms. reno<u+2019>s insistence on going her own way would win her catcalls and calumny throughout her tenure in washington, whether she was prosecuting international espionage, dealing with the republican drumbeat for impeachment, or trying to return a cuban child to his father. witnessing her achievements and the opprobrium they drew, along with the occasional accolade, i often thought back to that florida ranch house and its flock of wayward fowl, and the subdivision residents who wanted to wring the birds<u+2019> necks. <u+201c>many people, i have found, are congenitally unable to appreciate the sight of a peacock,<u+201d> flannery o<u+2019>connor wrote in her 1961 essay <u+201c>the king of the birds.<u+201d> <u+201c>some people are genuinely affected by the sight of a peacock, even with his tail lowered, but do not care to admit it; others appear to be incensed by it. perhaps they have the suspicion that the bird has formed some unfavorable opinion of them. the peacock himself is a careful and dignified investigator.<u+201d> ms. reno said of her own reception in the public eye: <u+201c>i<u+2019>ve been alternately described as the 800-pound gorilla, a sad, slightly mad old lady that should rock in her chair, the sponsor of a teeny-bopper dance club on a program called <u+2018>saturday night live.<u+2019><u+201d> she didn<u+2019>t know what to make of it. all she knew was: <u+201c>what you see, ladies and gentlemen, is what you get.<u+201d> janet reno<u+2019>s death, on monday , comes at a time when the pioneering victory of her appointment to attorney general is about to be writ large, or not, by the ambitions of a woman she knew well in those years, hillary clinton. while the two women were hardly close, it<u+2019>s a shame that ms. reno won<u+2019>t be around to savor the moment. should mrs. clinton win, how important it is to note ms. reno<u+2019>s contribution, as a groundbreaking woman who remained the careful and dignified investigator, withstanding the fury of her denouncers and never letting it stop her from trespassing false barriers and causing useful trouble in the world. susan faludi is the author of <u+201c>backlash: the undeclared war against american women<u+201d> and, most recently, <u+201c>in the darkroom.<u+201d> follow the new york times opinion section on facebook and twitter (@nytopinion) , and sign up for the opinion today newsletter .
if janet reno had lived to see tomorrow
susan faludi