From "Don't Mess With the Bushes," Salon's Kitty Kelley interview:

So your method is to leave it to the reader to make up their minds?

Right. And to tell you how far I went.

That falls short of the standards of the New York Times, say, or the Washington Post. Why do you feel it's legitimate to fall short of that standard?

I don't think that falls short of the standards of the New York Times or the Washington Post in every single instance. I think that especially the Washington Post has pushed things in the past, far beyond where I would go.

What's an example of that?

Janet Cooke.

Well, that was exposed as a work of fiction!

Jayson Blair ...

But the Times and the Post were both humiliated by those scandals.

And I would be too if you find something in my books that didn't stand the test of time. I honestly would.

Kitty Kelley Cheat Sheet
We Read The Reviews So You Don't Have To

Source	Salon	Boston Herald	USA Today	NY Times
Article Type	summary interview review news	summary news	summary news	review
Scale of Scandal	"Hurricane Kitty," a "Category 5 storm"	"hot allegations revealed" in "Bombshell book"	"the eye of a political hurricane"	"some spicy allegations about drugs and sex, but ... little to say about national security"
Dominant Themes	"the family's weakness for liquor and drugs," and an "all-American family image [maintained] by scrubbing government files ... and terrorizing critics"	N/A	"public image" v. "private reality"	"[Kelley's] tireless focus on sex, drugs and alcohol"
Character- ization of H. W. Bush	"a weak yes man, driven not by political vision but a savage preppy spirit of competition"	see "Exclusive Family Details," below	N/A	"opportunistic, secretive, duplicitous, elitist and often just plain nasty"
Quotes on H. W. Bush's Adultery	"... Jennifer Fitzgerald ... 'served President-elect George Bush in a variety of positions.'"	"'Jennifer was a fact of life in George's life. Period. End of discussion.'"	N/A	see "Exclusive Family Details," below
Quotes on Barbara Bush	"'bull-dyke tough'"	'"'I don't think she has a good heart ... she's not a nice woman. To dogs maybe, but not to people.'"	N/A	"'Behind her grandmotherly facade was a pearl-wearing mugger the equal of Ma Barker.'"
Exclusive Family Details	"Mentally retarded children" and "ex-wives" were erased from the Bush family tree.	Bush Sr. kept a "three-foot-high anatomically correct male fertility statue in the Oval Office bathroom," with a roll of toilet paper on its "extended male organ." He liked to send young women into the bathroom and watch their reaction.	Barbara Bush stopped speaking to George Jr. for a year because of his drinking.	George H. W. Bush may have had an affair in the early 1960's with "an Italian beauty named Rosemarie."

Kitty Kelley's The Family hit bookstores today, and GC looked forward to finally reading reviews -- forgetting that, even though the Bush Administration has urged reporters to treat the book as "fiction," newspapers would only judge The Family by one standard: was it as shocking as other newspapers had suggested?

Ultimately, the answers read as diagnoses of exhaustion -- a narrative sunstroke, brought on by overexposure to sensationalism, or a world-weary dissmissiveness ... that may or may not mask prurient avoidance. And, since the reviews are really just summaries, it becomes hard to tell if plot elements were excluded based on their lack of entertainment value, or their negative, and political, implications.

The New York Daily News, for example, describes Kelley's book as "more catty than explosive," with a lack of big surprises. According to the Boston Herald, however, the book 's replete with "hot allegations" and telling detail (for examples, see Post III, up later today). The NY Times and Salon amplify the two positions, presenting more serious, and divergent, assessments of Kelley's work. The Times' Michiko Kakutani blasts The Family as a sign of troubled times -- a "tacky, voyeuristic and petty-seeming narrative" that "lavishes ... too much ... energy on trying to ferret out personal peccadilloes" instead of coming "to terms with politics and policy." Salon, meanwhile, has a very different read (or, as we suspect, has accidentally read a different book). "While Kelley is being savagely attacked as a tabloid sleaze queen," David Talbot writes,

her book is more heavily researched and documented than Bush advocates allege ... Despite her flaws, Kelley has vigorously pursued leads about the powerful American dynasty -- from Bush senior's shady CIA past to W.'s missing National Guard records -- that the rest of the media should have.

With each new self-publishing success story, reality recedes a little farther. And the GalleyCat wonders: if the Telegraph and others are printing headlines like "Ignore rejection slips - DIY is the new route to a bestseller," what will bad writers have left to know themselves by?