Jack Shafer notes that writer Jane Smiley’s anti-Bush letters to the New York Times tend to get published more than the average reader’s, and then subjects the letters to “literary assessments”:

Nobody would call Smiley’s letters to the editor writerly. Cliched references to leopards changing their spots and flatfooted instructions to a somnambulant America to wake up betray her reputation as a stylist.

Perhaps in the future Ms. Smiley will announce her concerns in sestina format.