Beating Around the Bushes

Kitty Kelly's Bush family bio is due out today. I'm an avid reader of her stuff, though I consider her a fabulist more than a biographer. I don't mean that as a put-down, either. Her Nancy Reagan tome alone--which among other things painted Mommie Poo Pants as an offscreen Hollywood legend and as spreading the news with Sinatra on Dutch's watch--was more inventive and sexed-up than any dozen Almodovar films (would we expect any less from a First Lady who gave Mr. T. the most famous pre-Monica lap dance at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave?). It's just that I wouldn't trust her the way, say, I trust CBS News. Or maybe I trust her just the same.

From the p.r. build up, the big revelation is that Dubya snorted some blow at Camp David back when Poppy was prez. Not a bad tale to tell, even if the source, the ex-wife of Fredo Neil Bush, denies she ever said anything like that. But god, as a disinterested observer who will not be voting for Bush or Kerry, let's hope there's something more recent--and scarifying--than that. In a post-Clinton age, that's about as scandalous as an indiscretion in a Henry James novel.

Get the dish (literally) on Kelly in this Wash Post story (spoiler alert: she skips the veal).

Whatever the book says--and however quickly it is discredited--the real loser is once again John Kerry, who just can't seem to buy a straight-up top-of-the-fold story since the Dem convention a hundred years ago. That as much as anything else about the guy may indicate he deserves to lose. After all, if he can't control the liberal-dominated media, how the hell is he going kick France's ass?