|
October 09, 2008
Barack Obama could easily clear this up!
Might Bill Ayers have ghost-written Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father"? It's an intriguing question, and Jack Cashill offers a fascinating analysis. It's long, but here's an excerpt: To add a little science to the analysis, I identified two similar "nature" passages in Obama's and Ayers' respective memoirs, the first from Fugitive Days:(Via Roger L. Simon, a writer himself, who finds the Cashill analysis "jaw-dropping.")"I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city."The second from Dreams:"Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds." While the possibility of Ayers ghost-writing Obama's book certainly is astounding, there is nothing illegal (or even unethical) in using or hiring ghostwriters. Busy and successful people do it all the time, and if Obama had help from Ayers, there's no crime in that. But it would be tough to continue to paint him as just "a guy in the neighborhood." But speaking of the guy in the neighborhood, why would Ayers refer to Obama (a state legislator) as "a writer" in his book? In his 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent, Bill Ayers walks the reader through his Hyde Park neighborhood and identifies the notable residents therein. Among them are Muhammad Ali, "Minister" Louis Farrakhan (of whom he writes fondly), "former mayor" Eugene Sawyer, "poets" Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and "writer" Barack Obama.It certainly does seem forced. Downright peculiar, I'd say. (Read the page in question here.) And especially if they barely knew each other, wouldn't Ayers have known Obama more as a state legislator -- whose career-launching event was held in his home -- than as a "writer"? Something does not make sense about that. (At the very least, it begs the question of whether Ayers and Obama knew each other well before 1995.) And something else does not make sense. In the New York Times account of the Obama book's background, Mr. Obama's story first surfaced publicly in February 1990, when he was elected as the first black president of The Harvard Law Review. An initial wire service report described him simply as a 28-year-old, second-year student from Hawaii who had "not ruled out a future in politics"; but in the days that followed, newspaper reporters grew interested and produced long, detailed profiles of Mr. Obama.That a literary agent would contact an unknown young law student with a book proposal struck Robert Stacy McCain as peculiar: A 28-year-old law student gets written up in the newspapers, then gets a call from a literary agent? She calls him?How did he do it? Beats me. For whatever reason, he had help in high places, and I think it's quite possible that he had help in the neighborhood. (Ayers was then a professor, editor and author with a number of published books.) Cashill concludes with a call for transparency: The Obama camp could put all such speculation to rest by producing some intermediary sign of impending greatness -- a school paper, an article, a notebook, his Columbia thesis, his LSAT scores -- but Obama guards these more zealously than Saddam did his nuclear secrets. And I suspect, at the end of the day, we will pay an equally high price for Obama's concealment as Saddam's.I believe in being fair, so once again, I say let's invoke the Sullivan standard of DNA testing. Barack Obama could easily clear this up. All he needs to do if provide access to the original manuscript, which can be checked for signs of Ayers DNA. posted by Eric on 10.09.08 at 01:15 PM
Comments
It would not surprise me if Obama used a ghostwriter, that's par for the course. It would interest me if that ghostwritter were Ayers, but nothing more than that. It appears more and more evident that Obama and Ayers are joined at the hip and have been for over 20 years. Ayers' cessation of bombing, robbery, and murder might be signs of his rehabilitation in leftist eyes, but his continued hatred of America and avowed interest in revolution is disqualifying in my mind. He is not "just some guy" on the block. Obama knows damn well who and what that despicable creature is, and has allied himself with him for two decades. A man who associates with the likes of Ayers and Dohrn, and who won't bother to vist wounded soldiers when overseas, is not whom I want to see as Commander in Chief. So the minutia of Obama's day to day relationship with Ayers is not as significant as the fact of that continued relationship. Steve Skubinna · October 10, 2008 01:19 AM The saying goes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The proposition that Obama used a ghost writer for Dreams is not particularly unbelievable, and the claim that it was Ayers is extraordinary only in its specificity, not in its plausibility. Yet Cashill's evidence fails even this lowly barrier. I mean, come on. Running passages through MS Word's built-in "statistics" function and searching for key-words relating to nautical themes does not exactly constitute "evidence." I read Dreams. I rather find it more extraordinary that a vulgar sociopath like Ayers, who as recently as 2001 stood on an American flag to crow that he "did not do enough," could write for hundreds of pages as an earnest, well-intentioned young activist without letting the mask slip. This guy's got nothing. ArtD0dger · October 12, 2008 12:41 AM Post a comment
You may use basic HTML for formatting.
|
|
October 2008
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR
Search the Site
E-mail
Classics To Go
Archives
October 2008
September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 May 2002 AB 1634 MBAPBSAAGOP Skepticism See more archives here Old (Blogspot) archives
Recent Entries
Economy bad! Change good!
Who Is Barack Obama? Ohio Voter Registers Multiple Times - For My Country Would anyone cheer the defeat of capitalism? Failure of empathy Radically different values Dark Ambition the proper functioning of a republic If you don't like the cameras, stay at home! the road to serfdom is paved with "rights"
Links
Site Credits
|
|
Why would he? I don't even understand what traction you expect to get from claiming he ought to. The idea is silly on its face. Not because there's no reason to believe this dopey, evidence free allegation. Why would a Presidential candidate respond to this sort of thing? Why would a bunch of minor bloggers (no offense intended, you're all doing better than I am in in that regard) think there was anything to gain by claiming he should? Tactically, pounding on the primary Ayers meme seems, at least, to have a chance of getting some traction - though the evidence seems to indicate that it won't - this silly tertiary fantasy just makes you guys look silly.