Dreams of Laura

[Beacool]

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: July 9, 2008

The headline on the conservative blog, Townhall, stormed: “Book to Smear First Lady’s Sex Life.”

Radar magazine proclaimed: “On the gossip front, the novel doesn’t disappoint,” adding that its steamy and lurid scenes were “sure to send the White House into a fury.”

MSNBC.com called the sex scenes “too graphic to reprint.”

The cover of this fantasy version of Laura Bush’s life, “American Wife,” is alluring, a woman’s shapely figure in a white gown, with white opera gloves and a diamond ring.

The author is not Anonymous, or Eponymous or Pseudonymous, yet there is the air of a “Primary Colors” stunt about this political roman à clef, which is timed to come out during the Republican convention.

Still, it’s not a salacious tell-all, and words like “smear” and “gossip” are misplaced. It’s a well-researched book that imagines what lies behind that placid facade of the first lady, a women’s book-club novel by a young woman named Curtis Sittenfeld who has written two best sellers, including “Prep.”

It’s the sort of novel Laura Bush might curl up with in the White House solarium if it were not about Laura Bush. It would be interesting to hear how that lover of fiction feels about being the subject of fiction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/opinion/09dowd.html?ref=opinion

Mo is at it again. Even though this time she's not disemboweling Hillary, just praising stepford wife Laura Bush.