Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Publishers Lunch reported yesterday:

She’s Back: Sharon Bush (former wife of President Bush’s younger brother Neil) is reported to be once again working away with a co-author on her potential tell-all family memoir, which is being readied for submission to publishers in hopes of a rushed pre-election publication.

The last time we heard about Bush shopping her book was in a September 2003 NY Post column. In April 2003, the NY Daily News reported that New Millennium Press had reached a deal "in principle" was withdrawn when Ms. Bush indicated "she wanted to do a spiritual book, not a tell-all."


Gossip about the Bush family has never made it to the front burner in America. That can't last, and the Bushies don't understand that. Americans are going to want this family brought down to earth -- maybe not by an electoral defeat this year, but soon. Americans want both royalty and equality. We want to regard some of our fellow citizens as royals, but then we want to hear about their flaws in painstaking detail. Look how we crave unsavory tales about Elvis and the Kennedys.

We do allow one category of elites to pass their days untouched by this desire: as a rule, we leave plutocrats alone. It's only when plutocrats are public figures, like Martha Stewart, that we want to drag them down to our level.

After royals are exposed, we're willing to regard them as still royal (see, again, the Kennedys and Elvis) -- but I don't think the Bushes will stand for that. They want to be public figures, yet they want to be treated like CEOs. They can't have that in America ... as they'll discover before long.

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