Jonathan Bush, the president's uncle (and ex-president's brother), has written a letter to The New York Times Book Review expressing dismay at the Book Review's kind words about Kitty Kelley's new book. The letter is, in an odd way, charming -- it's written in a prose style that seems to have been kept in a closet with a straw boater and a celluloid dickey, and for just as many decades:

Might one assume that, by giving this trash such a prominent review, the editors of the Book Review could have been trying to give a slight boost to the candidacy of J. F. Kerry?

Bush's letter is not Coulteresque invective. Quite the contrary -- it could be set to music and sung to the accompaniment of a parlor piano:

The matriarch of the family, our mother, Dorothy W. Bush, was as kind and generous as any mother, ever, in this great country.

But there's one bit of news in the letter: Jonathan Bush came upon this review because he reads The New York Times Book Review regularly:

I read The Times Book Review regularly; thus, I was truly surprised and deeply offended to see your review, which treats this rotten book seriously.

...you, editors of my beloved Book Review, without which no weekend would be complete, should be ashamed, deeply so, for giving this mountebank such unwarranted attention.

Yes, red-staters, it's true: A blood relation of God's President reads Satan's Newspaper. And calls it (or one section of it, at least) "beloved"! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!