She's Real

LEGAL BRIEF The families of two hairdressers who were among those who died in Aaliyah's fatal plane crash in August are suing Virgin Records, among other defendants, in a wrongful death complaint. The lawsuits, filed in Los Angeles by the survivors of Eric Forman and Anthony Dodd allege that the small plane was overloaded with passengers, luggage and gear for the singer's ''Rock the Boat'' video shoot, and that the pilot was not approved to fly the aircraft. Also named in the suit were video director Hype Williams, the production companies associated with the shoot, the air charter service, and the plane's owner. Aaliyah's own family was not a plaintiff in the suit. Neither the family nor Virgin Records has commented on the suit.

TUBE TALK Now that ''Sex and the City'''s Miranda has a child, would she send the kid to a New York City public school? ''If Miranda were real, I would try to persuade her to send her son to a public school because I believe in them,'' said , a graduate of the city's school system, on Tuesday. She was speaking to New York state legislators in Albany, lobbying for an increase in funding for New York City schools. Even in her well-to-do neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Nixon's kindergarten-age daughter attends a school where jobs have been cut and parents have had to pony up to buy balls for gym class. ''How many bake sales can you have to try to keep after-school [programs] going?'' she said. Nixon is going to have a tough time in her quest; Gov. George Pataki is fighting a court ruling ordering the state to spend an additional $1 billion on New York City schools, and the whole state is in a revenue crunch since Sept. 11....

With the second season of HBO's ''Six Feet Under'' set to premiere on Sunday, series creator Alan Ball says that what he's learned in writing about characters who run a mortuary has given him some grave concerns about being buried. ''Anybody who knows what undertakers actually do to bodies will want to be cremated,'' he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. ''Once I'm dead, why do I need my body preserved and put in a box? 'Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.' Let's just speed up the process.''

COVER TO COVER Author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin continues to feel the fallout from her acknowledgement that her 1987 book ''The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys'' contained more ''accidental'' instances of passages copied from other writers than she had previously admitted. After owning up in January to having reached a confidential settlement with author Lynne McTaggart over three copied passages, the New York Times unearthed several other instances in the book of borrowings from other writers last week. Simon & Schuster said it would pulp its stock of paperback copies of the book and issue a corrected version with the disputed passages properly attributed. Since then, the University of Delaware has withdrawn its invitation for her to speak at commencement, the first time anyone at the school can recall such an incident. She's also taken leave from her regular contributor slot on PBS' ''NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.'' ''We have had a long relationship with Doris and continue to value her strength as a historian, and think she makes a great contribution to the program,'' said a ''NewsHour'' spokesman. ''But until she gets her situation resolved we made a mutual decision that we will take a break.''

Meanwhile, historian Stephen Ambrose, who started the current wave of plagiarism scandals with the revelation of numerous unattributed borrowings in at least six of his books, faced more scrutiny yesterday as passages in his current bestseller, ''The Wild Blue,'' were found to be derivative of parts of a memoir by George McGovern. The former senator and presidential nominee, a World War II bomber pilot mentioned in ''Wild Blue,'' had defended Ambrose on plagiarism charges; it's not clear what he thinks now that his own ''Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern'' may have been the source of some Ambrose copyings. Ambrose, whose WWII histories helped inspire the current ''Greatest Generation'' vogue, told the Associated Press that he saw some similarities between his writing and McGovern's, but ''it doesn't cause me any pain. I really have no problem with it.'' Simon & Schuster is his publisher as well; the company has not commented on the most recent allegation.

PASSING NOTES Connoisseurs of British comedy knew Spike Milligan from ''The Goons,'' the absurd 1950s radio sketch troupe with Peter Sellers that was an influence on wacky Brits from The Beatles to Monty Python. He died yesterday at 83 from kidney failure at his home in Sussex, England.