If Obama DID Use A Ghostwriter It Would Be Kennedyesque

Did Obama get extensive editorial assistance from Bill Ayers in putting together "Dreams of My Father" in 1994? That is the claim made in the recently published "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage" by Christopher Andersen. Ron Radosh at Pajamas Media has more, but the gist is that Barack had already failed to deliver a manuscript to one publisher (after spending half the advance), had re-sold the project to a second publisher, and was utterly blocked on turning his notes, outlines and taped interviews into a manuscript. 

Michelle knew Bill Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, from their time at Sidely Austin and she knew Bill himself from her time in Mayor Daley's office, when Bill was involved with education reform.  Worried about the money and the lagging book Michele exhorted her husband to take what he had to Bill Ayers, a published author himself, and get some help.  [How much help?  Andersen is very vague with Howard Kurtz.  Still the 1994 timeline is important.]

The 1994 timeline suggests (yet again) that Obama and his team spent the 2008 campaign willfully lying about the Obama/Ayers relationship, which struck me as the lead when I saw the Andersen story.  Dave Weigel obfuscates and agrees, but since Andersen called Ayers' wife Bernadette instead of Bernardine he dismissed the whole thing.  From Weigel:

That, if true, is interesting and reveals that Obama misrepresented his friendship with Ayers last year.

Well, that's Andersen's story, and Obama should be proud - the idea of having a ghostwriter is all very Kennedyesque.  Kennedy spent years claiming credit for a book he had conceived and directed but not actually written.  If it's good enough for JFK it is good enough for BHO!

The lefty response to all of this has been predictable. We are essentially in a fact-free situation - Andersen has published a report based on whomever his sources may have been, Jack Cashill has published numerous articles noting literary similarities between "Dreams" and Bill Ayers other published works (not convincing, IMHO), so what do we do?

The ReliaPundit suggests we look for more evidence, and points out that Obama's former literary agent, Jane Dystel, might have a story to tell.

Lefties, on the other hand, don't think facts would help them here in defending Their One so they are passing notes in the middle school cafeteria about the ugly shoes righty bloggers are wearing.  Oh, and making stuff up.  Bill Ayers made a joke about his role in developing the book, so anybody who discusses it at all is a dupe of Bill Ayers.  The Andersen book?  What's that?  Let me toss in links to the Huffington Post, Alex Koppelman at Salon (with Gabriel Winant), Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, and Dave Weigel, who wins a Dowdification Award for his selective excerpting.

I will be back with more but let me single out for special praise this bit from Ron Chusid:

The gullibility of conservatives, or more precisely their willingness to believe without bothering to fact check anything which confirms their biases, is amazing.

Mr. Chusid presents no facts at all in support of his biases, but he does deliver this howler:

When I first saw the headlines claiming Ayers admitted to writing Obama’s book, my thought was that even if this was not a joke it really would not  be that earth shattering. While Obama is the rare exception, it is very common for politicians and celebrities to use ghost writers. The choice of a ghost writer does not necessarily mean agreement on any issues or political tactics.

Politicians and celebrities employ ghostwriters?  No kidding, and so do professional athletes.  But how often do aspiring authors employ them?  "Dreams" was cobbled together in 1994; Obama was an unknown lawyer (except for his star turn at the Harvard Law Review) who only entered the prominent Illinois State Senate in 1997.  So which was he in 1994, a celebrity or a politician?  Or a professional athlete?

I will be back with More and Dumber...

THIS JUST IN:  Dr. Chusid explains in an UPDATE that

If anything, his lack of celebrity at the time the book was written makes it even less important.

The Ranger laughs out loud in the JOM comments:

Yeah, cause when your only real claim to fame is having written a book, the that that you didn't actually write it is irrelevant.

WHILE I DITHER:  Jonah Goldberg took two bites of the apple yesterday, mentioning Ayer's tomfoolery and the Cashill stuff but never the Andersen book.  What kind of a broken down Right Wing Noise Machine are we running here?

As to the Cashill stuff - I can't even find that I posted on it last fall, but I recall (Google notwithstanding) discussing it in the comments to some post or other, where it was a recurring theme.  My objection then, like my objection in June, is that Cashill never establishes a baseline.  Maybe there are 50 commonalities between "Dreams" and other Ayers' writing in terms of language usage, themes, metaphors, and so on.  Maybe there are 500.  Maybe there are 5,000.  Is that a lot?  Well, compared to what?

Not being a literary detective I can only guess, but if I had to do some detective work demonstrating common authorship between Ayers and "Dreams" I would tackle this like any proper conservative and sit down with the classic texts.  In this case, the classics would include "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac, "Catcher In The Rye" by J. D. Salinger, and a few other widely read books about wandering, disaffected youths (it's an easy bet that Ayers and Obama read the two cited). 

The hope would be to answer some baseline questions, such as, how many points of literary commonality exist between "Dreams" and "On The Road" or  between Ayers' work and "Catcher", and how does that compare to the overlap between Ayers and "Dreams"?

If all the overlaps are high that would either discredit the conclusion or suggest that Ayers (or someone) really got around as a collaborator.  On the other hand, if the only two books showing a high level of overlap were the Ayers and Obama book, well, we would have a plausible baseline to support the claim of shared authorship.  That is still not proof, obviously, but it would be a stronger circumstantial case.

Obviously, since people have a tendency to see what they hope to see (I saw the Yankees win last night!) this cumbersome comparison project would need to be performed by disinterested researchers.  I can imagine myself becoming disinterested pretty quickly, but seriously - who is going to be trusted to do this work?  A righty blogger?  A lefty hack? 

I could imagine hiring some bored grad students, putting them to work separately evaluating five or six novels, and comparing their results.  But I can't imagine myself paying for it, or organizing it.

It would be a long walk down a lonely road ending in an inconclusive swamp - any volunteers?!? 

BUT THEN AGAIN... Did someone say "Kindle"?  I bet text searches and phrase searches could be done pretty painlessly that way (I was thinking of caveman papyrus and stone drawings.)  Picking out metaphors is still tricky.

AND FOR THE DEEPLY COMMITTED:  Don Foster busted Joe Klein and many others; he could crack this, and has street cred.  Hire him as a consultant, or hope he is looking for the article to end all articles?  Foster did seem to tie the White House lawyers to the Lewinsky "talking points", which would have undermined the White House cover-up.  On the other hand, the press was all over that story (unlike the current Cone of Silence on all things Obama), so who knows?  [Apparently an Oxford Don was solicited before the election but the project faded; his preliminary evaluation was that the charges were “very implausible”.]

DR. CHUSID RESPONDS:

While some conservatives are showing some sense on this matter, others such as Tom Maguire demonstrate the lack of thinking skills which I’m talking about here, beyond soaking up multiple previously debunked conservative  talking points as fact.

The good doctor is confused - I don't read the talking points, I write them.  He links to a Fact Check article on the Obama/Ayers relationship so incomplete and one-sided as to be comical (but I doubt he knows enough about it to laugh).

From FactCheck:

In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false.

I assume the good doctor can't follow links, so here we go - a sampling of the shifting sands of the Obama campaign's version of the Ayers/Obama relationship:

In February of 2008 the theme was "nothing to see".  Here is Ben Smith of The Politico:

I didn't get to ask Obama about his relationship with Bill Ayers today, but did ask his chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago's political tribes), David Axelrod, about the two men.

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," he said. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

That barely survived the day; from an UPDATE:

UPDATE: There's been a bit of confusion about Axelrod's line on the kids, who -- as the Guardian's Daniel Nasaw noted -- aren't the same age. Obama's kids went go the the University of Chicago Lab Schools, where Ayers kids, who are much older, had gone. However, Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection.

The "kids in school" was dropped.  Obama kinda sorta discussed it at a debate in April and in May the NY Times took a stab:

Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Can't trust those aides!  This response came before the mainstream press was reporting on the Challenge, although bloggers were discussing it.  The first board meeting of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was in March of 1995, with Bill Ayers and Barack Obama in attendance.  The Politico has reported that the 1995 meet-and-greet was in the second half of 1995.

Yet FactCheck manages to claim that "Obama" never lied.  Hmm, his staff sure did.  And why we should believe the current story on offer after the multiple false ones is a puzzle to me.  But not to the good doctor, who is seemingly unaware of Team Obama's credibility problem here.

THE READERS RESPOND:  Dr. Chusid's UPDATE is not being treated kindly here.  The Ranger:

Chusid has an update that he thinks directly addresses this post. He actually concludes it this way:

If anything, his lack of celebrity at the time the book was written makes it even less important.

Yeah, cause when your only real claim to fame is having written a book, the that that you didn't actually write it is irrelevant.

Yet I'm arguing against an empty head about an empty suit, so who is the real fool?

Comments

[daddy]

Well I don't know if he used a ghost writer to write the darn thing, but I sure used a ghost reader to read it.

[peter]

OT, I see that idiot Bob Dole is now supporting the Dems plans to nationalize health care.

[Slaves don't ask questions.]

So Obama lied about it. Why? Why does he not show his birth certificate? So many questions, so few answers.
=================================

[bgates]

Bob Dole is now supporting the Dems

You'd think he'd done enough for them in 96.

[sbw]

-- Politicians and celebrities employ ghostwriters? No kidding. But how often do aspiring authors employ them?

Tom exposes the current generation as the time bigots they are. Absent a sense of history and their place in it, yesterday happened today and tomorrow will never come. Yes, history begins at dawn.

[Porchlight]

I seem to remember Ayers describing his Hyde Park circle as including the "writer" Barack Obama. And didn't Obama blurb one of Ayers' books? Logrolling in our time, indeed.

[Porchlight]

Amend that: Obama, by then a state senator, blurbed the *same* book where he was described as a "writer" by Ayers. What friendly neighbors they were.

[narciso]

Chusid is fuming, because the Gramscian infiltration scheme has been identified, I hate it when that happens, (sarc) he also makes the category error of confusing a ghost with a collaborator.

[Pagar]

"Bob Dole is now supporting the Dems"

A simple phone call from a member of his death panel telling him that the vote could go either way depending on his thoughts on the Obama healthcare fraud bill could be the reason.

[Janet]

Powerline has another post up LUN

Heaven forbid any reporter ASK Obama about Mr. Ayers, Mr. Andersen, and Mr. Cashill's allegations.
Perhaps Obama could name the girlfriend in the book.

[Ranger]

Perhaps Obama could name the girlfriend in the book.

Posted by: Janet | October 08, 2009 at 08:37 AM

You mean the one he broke up with because she was white and he feared he was losing his "blackness"?

I think she got edited out of the current edition of the book.

[Ouch.]

Chusid is dissonant; claiming that Ayers didn't write it out of one side of his mouth and that it wouldn't make any difference even if he had out of the other. In his world, you have to break a brain before you can scramble reality.
========================

[your mama]

Odmmbo,huffpo,nyt,fiction at it's best.

[Ranger]

Chusid has an update that he thinks directly addresses this post. He actually concludes it this way:

If anything, his lack of celebrity at the time the book was written makes it even less important.

Yeah, cause when your only real claim to fame is having written a book, the that that you didn't actually write it is irrelivent.

Talk about doubling down

Like I said last night, Obama is the guy who got to home plate on four straight walks, and told everyone he hit a game winning home run.

[Janet]

Ranger - I just printed off your post from the Still Hope for Hope...thread about the housing bubble. So good. I really appreciate the great posting here at JOM. It makes me less tolerant of the old media bloviators.

[Steve Diamond]

My take on this is at LUN.

I would only add that I have not ever seen Ayers, straight up, say "I did not write the book or have any role in the writing of the book and I confirm the NY Times story that I only first met Obama in the spring of 1995 after he was appointed by two other non-profits to run the new non-profit I founded, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge."

In other words, Ayers dissembles on these issues but does not outright lie. As far as I can tell all of his responses allow for the eventual admission that he did have a role in the book and of course a much deeper link to Obama than has been admitted to date.

I presume that he and Axelrod have crafted a strategy to let many of the facets of the relationship leak out and then die slowly well in advance of 2012. Thus, the carefully staged interview with The New Yorker the day of the election; the revelation that the Obamas were "family friends" of the Ayers family which appears in the new edition of Ayers' memoir published after the election; and now the Christopher Andersen book with two (unfortunately off the record) sources for his description of Ayers role in the drafting of Dreams.

[Ranger]

Yes, this does seem to be the "throw every defense against the wall and see which ones stick" phase of the process.

Some time after the 2010 elections, it will come out that, yes, Ayers did "help" Obama write the book, and yes, that does me they knew each other better than Obama may have led people to believe, but, as even people on the right have said, all that is really old news and not important now.

[PaulL]

I saw a little video some months back in which Ayers did indeed state that he did not write the book.

He may have been engaging in Clintonesque parsing. He didn't write it, meaning write it out in longhand, he keyed it on his computer.

[Rick Ballard]

Steve,

Thank you for the lucid and succinct summary. I concur with your assessment of Axelrod's plans - by '12, the fact that Obama's claim to intellectual superiority is based upon his commie terrorist mentor's work will be "old news". The other side of the coin, the fact that Obama personifies intellectual mediocrity (at best) will be more difficult to cover up. His apologists have a very hard row ahead - and a very dull hoe.

[Ron Chusid is a pitiful joke.]

I like that, defending freedom and enlightened thought by censoring comments. I posted something much like my 8:44 comment above, and it is not appearing.
================================

[rse]

Thanks Steve.

I checked your site this AM to see if you had a reaction.

Most here seem to have discovered JOM during the Plame affair. I discovered it while researching the social justice movement and its influence on K-12 education. Bill Ayers was a big part of that story.

Lately that story has led me into how SEIU, ACORN, Tides, and some of Soros' entities are pushing the "close the achievement gap" mantra to impose their leveling vision on America.

Education is the revolution indeed.

[Ranger]

I wonder if there might also be some legal issues here. Obama was contracted to write the book. If he turned in the manuscript without acknoledging Ayers' considerable participation in the process, that might be a violation of the ethics rules for lawyers:

ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4,... states that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.

Presenting Dreams From My Father as his own work, when it was also substantially Ayers' work would seem to be a violation of that rule.

[Sue]

The choice of a ghost writer does not necessarily mean agreement on any issues or political tactics.

Unless your name is Sarah Palin and your ghost writer is an evangelical Christian.

[mg]

What matters is the cover-up that has been perpetuated that Ayers was merely a casual accquaintance. So who was it that helped him get into Harvard? The media has let us all down and has been complicit in the scamming of America by not questioning. It was 5 days before the election when Brokow and Rose commented that they really didn't know much about Obama... gee, I wonder why?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I'm guessing this means no more complaints that Sarah Palin didn't write her own speeches.

[Captain Hate]

If Obama's intellectual submediocrity isn't evident to everybody with a functioning cortex already then we're in worse shape than my most pessimistic outlook. What this whole book flap illustrates is how he leverages sham situations to his benefit. He got elected to editor of the Harvard Law Review despite having contributed no erudite articles. He then used that position to scam a publisher to give him a hefty advance on what was initially to have been about race relations; God knows what howlers the guy could "stupidly" have come up with on that topic. What would be interesting is finding out what the discussions were like at the publishers when Odummy said he was going to write about his favorite person instead of the agreed upon subject.

[syn]

The only place dumber and dumbest than either California's Pelosified-idiots or Illinois prime-time criminal slime-growers are the Darwinian apes living in Massachusetts who attend Catholic-aborted-the-body-of-Christ-mass to worship the Kennedy-Klans dirty-filthy money.

Give it up Catholics liars in Massachusetts; do not pass purgatory, go straight to Hades where you belong.

[peter]

I would only add that I have not ever seen Ayers, straight up, say "I did not write the book or have any role in the writing of the book and I confirm the NY Times story that I only first met Obama in the spring of 1995 after he was appointed by two other non-profits to run the new non-profit I founded, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge."

In other words, Ayers dissembles on these issues but does not outright lie.

Look, Ayers is a guy who made nail bombs, got off forcing white girls with black guys while he watched, and didn't bat an eye when his girlfriend got blown up. Do you think he really gives a rat's ass about lying?

[Jane]

OT: and apologies if this has been linked:

VDH is a must read today.

A taste:

Nemesis Was Watching, watching…

Nemesis has caught up with him in oh so many ways. From what we can tell, he was not a serious student, but rather a glib and politically astute observer, who rode affirmative action, identity politics, and campus trends (I am now gleaning this from his own autobiography) right through Occidental and Columbia to Harvard Law—without much scholarship. He was given much more attention at Chicago Law School for what he represented than what he accomplished. He arrogantly thought he could glide into the racist cauldron of Trinity Church, and glide out as an authentic African-American organizer of the Jesse Jackson sort.

His Senate career was similar—long on soaring rhetoric, in perpetual campaign mode, predicated on white liberal guilt and ease with a charismatic “other”—and short on actual accomplishment.

LUN

[Uncle BigBad]

OT - Sibel Edmonds is back, and she is pointing fingers, mostly at Jews and Republican congressmen.

I know some in our JOM community are knowledgeable about State Department and congressional intrigues (from the Plame era), and I would like everyone to read the linked article and comment.

My BS meter is on high, but it all sounds so plausible.

[Mike Myers]

Hey, I hardly knew him. He was just a ghost writer in the neighborhood.

[Rob Crawford]

I'm guessing this means no more complaints that Sarah Palin didn't write her own speeches.

You're an optimist.

[JM Hanes]

TM:

I believe Cashill did establish an inofrmal baseline of sorts when he compared the incidence of words and phrasing in other works, including some of his own. HIs argument didn't just concern specific words themselves though, but the commonality of marine metaphors and descriptions of faces, which are harder to quantify, but certainly relevant.

Obama didn't just use a ghostwriter, he used pieces of his ghostwriter's life and claimed his ghostwriter's experience of the world as his own.

Getting help from an unacknowledged ghostwriter is, indeed, a common practice. Getting elected President of the U.S. on the basis of someone else's "memoir" is not.

[Der Hahn]

After asking for an interview with a neighbor on the topic of Barry and Michelle's involvement in the local community assocation, at the end Anderson asked final question, "Did you know that Jack Cashill thinks Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams from My Father?"

Obama's neighbor responded, "I heard that, too."

[fdcol63]

Bill Ayers and his ilk succeeded in getting their Manchurian Candidate elected as POTUS, with the active assistance of their comrades in the MSM.

[Ranger]

Totally off topic, but worthy of a read:

Health Care Speechwriter for Edwards, Obama & Clinton Without Insurance Now

My favorite graph:

What makes this a double blow is that my experience contradicts so much of what I wrote for political leaders over the last decade. That's a terrible feeling, too. I typed line after line that said everything Massachusetts did would make health insurance more affordable. If I had a dollar for every time I typed, "universal coverage will lower premiums," I could pay for my own health care at Massachusetts's rates.

[jimmyk]

Sibel Edmonds is back, and she is pointing fingers

It's hard to know how much of what she talks about is corruption vs. realpolitik, and it's hard to escape the feeling that she has an agenda of her own. But the end of the interview givers her some credibility:

Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing.... We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

And in this she seems especially perceptive:

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.

[MayBee]

Steve,

Thank you for the lucid and succinct summary.

Ditto.

It really does take your breath away when you realize how much candidate Obama got away with when it came to lying about Ayers.

They got caught in blatant lies, and it seems like people were really just too uncomfortable to talk about it.

Obama lied when he said Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood.
They lied when they used the excuse that the kids went to school together. They were allowed to weasel out of that by saying, well maybe he meant that Dohrn volunteered at the school.

Obama tried to hide- HIDE!- his participation in the CAC. He didn't use it in his bio. He would say he was on A board and refer to the Woods foundation.
He tried to get Stanley Kurtz hounded off the radio for even mentioning it. Then someone came up with the brilliant spin that Annenberg was a Republican, so somehow that became the bipartisan blessing for Obama's work there. Poof! Obama's lies about Ayers and the board magically disappeared.

The Obama people nit-picked about whether Ayers "launched" Obama's political career, ignoring that they'd previously pretended Obama only knew him from school. They kept Ryan Lizza off the campaign plane for reporting the mere existence of a get-together in Ayers's living room.

I'm not even saying there is anything sinister in knowing Ayers, but the blatant lying should have raised red flags then, and it makes it absolutely logical to discount whatever Obama decides to present as the "truth" now.

Sorry. Kinda ranty, I know.

[peter]

The good doctor is confused - I don't read the talking points, I write them.

Very funny, Tom. You the man.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

I could imagine hiring some bored grad students, putting them to work separately evaluating five or six novels, and comparing their results.

Complete waste of time. Statistical probability eliminates the Oughton family estate appearing in 'Dreams'. Unless Obama can give the name of his green-eyed, dark haired, white girl friend, and the location of her family's estate where we will find a mansion built by her grandfather, a carriage house/library, a lake surrounded by hills and trees, the issue is resolved in favor of Cashill.

The odds are millions to one against Obama being able to do that one thing. All the other coincidences are just gravy.

[Jane]

Maybee,

Therein reveals the current problems. Unbeknown to Obama, politics is not policy. Campaigning is not working. Charisma is not statesmenship.

And scarier still is that he appears to be making no attempt to develop those skills.

[peter]

OT-- any of the brainy regular posters (Daddy, where are you, man) who can tell me the time to watch for the LCROSS impact on the moon, and what part of the moon should I be looking at? I live in the Eastern time zone.

[Janet]

MayBee - no sorry needed. That was great...and all true.

[MayBee]

We were very interested to learn of your four-hour deposition in the case involving allegations that Congresswoman Jean Schmidt accepted money from the Turkish government in return for political favors.

Without having gone much further in the article to see if she explains this....Jean Scmidt took office in 2005. Sibel left as a translator in 2002.

[clarice]

Chusid, it's not TM who is too busy and disinterested to censor posts here. It's a bug in the system and it happens to all of us on occasion.

[clarice]

Big Bad--re Feith and Perle I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that that lunatic Szady was listening in to their every overseas conversation, none of which I assure you violated the law or he would have prosecuted them. Sibel, I think, got a lot of things half right--which is to say very wrong.

[PeterUK]

"If anything, his lack of celebrity at the time the book was written makes it even less important."

What is important, is how hard it is to get a publisher to read a synopsis,let alone get a publishing deal,advances are like hen's teeth.
Jane Dystel,one of the early candidates for automotive suspension inspection,must have been one hell of an agent to parlay a nobody into a literary genius.
She must really have believed in Obama.
There is something missing here,over night success is usually the result of years of work. Obama doesn't have that in him.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

OT, I see that idiot Bob Dole is now supporting the Dems plans to nationalize health care.

Dole(R-ADM/Cargill)

Keep an eye on Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, active GOP Senators that are the wind beneath the ADM/Cargill wings.

I'm short on time but I plan to read all of Tom's links for the full review. Ayers is still lying.

[RichatUF]

peter-

LCROSS impact.

More here. Handy map on the left side of the screen, NASA TV feed, and countdown clock.

Lunar Impact Locations
Centaur: -84.675, 311.275 E
Spacecraft: -84.729, 310.64 E

Lunar Impact Times
Centaur: 4:31:19 a.m. PDT
Spacecraft: 4:35:45 a.m. PDT

[Rob Crawford]

I'm not even saying there is anything sinister in knowing Ayers...

I'll say it -- anyone who treats Ayers, knowing who he is and his background, with the least bit of friendliness is a monster. Ayers should have been imprisoned for life for his crimes, that he is somehow considered "respectable" on the left should tell us just what the left thinks about law and order, violence, and politics.

[Tom Maguire]

From

TM:

I believe Cashill did establish an inofrmal baseline of sorts when he compared the incidence of words and phrasing in other works, including some of his own. HIs argument didn't just concern specific words themselves though, but the commonality of marine metaphors and descriptions of faces, which are harder to quantify, but certainly relevant.

OK, I ought to re-read it. My memory is that Cashill took themes common to Obama and Ayers and then said, gee, very few of these themes also appear in my work despite my overlap of age and nautical interests with Ayers; therefore, my work is distinctive.

In my view, Cashill would need to take a fresh start and see how many themes directly overlapped between Ayers and Cashill. By using the Obama/Ayers overlaps as a starting point he is guaranteed not to have *more * Ayers/Cashill overlaps than Ayers/Obama overlaps, and will almost surely have less.

For example, maybe both Ayers and Cashill use baseball metaphors but Obama never does. Since the Ayers/Obama filter does not pass any baseball stuff, Cashill never notices that particular Ayers/Cashill commonality.

Well, that is how I remember reading it.

[Joan]

Tom Maguire: The lefty response to all of this has been predictable. We are essentially in a fact-free situation....

This is stunning in its genius and simplicity. :) Wish I could write like this.

[MayBee]

Rob- I agree with you that Ayers should not be considered "respectable" in any way.
But I know plenty of people who are willing to excuse him. So, when the conversation is focused on the evilness of Ayers, the duplicitousness of Obama is ignored.

Obama supporters who should have been called to explain their guy's lies were instead able to change the subject to "those were different times, and the war was divisive...". They shifted the subject to Ayers, and Obama's lies vanished.

[rse]

Maybee-

It didn't help that one of the few talking about this last fall was Sean Hannity.

With his monotone delivery he can make hard, documented facts sound like fantasies.

[PaulL]

The way I remember the video was some amateur interviewer/camera wielder approached Ayers at a book signing or something like that. Ayers was sitting behind a table. The interviewer, I think female, said something in the wind-up to a question about him writing or helping to write "Dreams," and Ayers interrupted and said he didn't write it. And then the interviewer kind of stumbled and accepted that and went on.

[Extraneus]

that he is somehow considered "respectable" on the left should tell us just what the left thinks about law and order, violence, and politics.

The author who pondered whether Mary Jo Kopechne might have felt her sacrifice worthwhile in retrospect, considering Ted's towering Senate career, told us about this, too.

[Janet]

PaulL - I've seen that video too.

rse - I am sure there are lots of reasons this story has not broken through the MSM bubble, but I don't think Sean Hannity is to blame.

[Rick Ballard]

A comparison of dissimilarities between Sperm Donor Dreams and A Dope's Audacity might prove to be dispositive. My understanding is that the level of dissonance between the two is rather high, with Audacity being much the inferior 'work'.

As I have always said, Obama sans TOTUS brings a stale vibrancy to well worn cliches.

[clarice]

Or compare it with O's incomparable figs and apes poem, one of the few extant literary works indisputably authored by The One.

[Janet]

Here it is PaulL

LUN

[Sue]

Yet I'm arguing against an empty head about an empty suit, so who is the real fool?

Mwahahahaha!!! Score! I love our dear leader.

[Janet]

In the video Ayers says it is a myth that he collaborated with Obama on the book "Dreams..."

[Extraneus]

I thought that poem was his best work, myself. Much better than that creepy one about Pop.

Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and
Makes me smell his smell

Eeew.

[PeterUK]

"In the video Ayers says it is a myth that he collaborated with Obama on the book "Dreams..."

Which isn't the same as saying he,Ayers,did not write it.

[Uncle BigBad]

Thanks Jim, Maybee, Clarice re Sibel Edmonds

I'm beginning to think that a whistleblower with an agenda is worse than no whistleblower at all.

[jummy]

Chusid is a fool of course. He can't even get his facts straight when dropping the guilt-by-association-by-association-by-speculation attack lefties are applying against Palin for using a ghostwriter.

See my post:
http://wristaction.blogspot.com/2009/10/liberal-values-broad-brush-never.html

[Rocco]

David Ruenzel wrote March 23, 2004, in his Education Week article Rebel">http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1994/03/23/26ayers.h13.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1994/03/23/26ayers.h13.html&levelId=2100">Rebel With a (New) Cause about unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers:

During Ayers’s high school years, about the only hints of his later radicalism were a fascination with the Beat writer Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road and a vague disenchantment with the conventionalities of suburban life. But something happened to him while at Ann Arbor in the mid-60’s. That something, says Ayers, was the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement. The former outraged him; the latter suffused him with a hopefulness that remains with him.

[peter]

thanks, Richatuf, looks like the east coast will not be the best viewing spot. I'll watch on the internet.

[fdcol63]

" .. disenchantment with the conventionalities of suburban life."

I always find it ironic that people like Ayers and Dohrn who loathe these "conventionalities" in fact find comfort of their own in the homogeneousness of "anarchists" and "revolutionaries".

There's irony, too, in the fact that the same people who fancy themselves as "independents" and who fetishize "diversity" are also the same people who then claim we're really just all the same deep down.

[PaulL]

Thanks, Janet! I didn't remember it being Washington Times at all, and I didn't remember Ayers's denial correctly either.

Gosh, that makes me as guilty as Scooter.

Interesting that Ayers denied collaboration, but not doing all the writing, as PeterUK also caught. Words should mean something to a writer, so I think "collaboration" was deliberately chosen.

[Jane]

OT:

Is Twitter working for everyone? I haven't got a tweet in 3 hours. Was there a party I wasn't invited to?

[Gregory Koster]

Way late, but Charlie, The Left can't be embarrassed enough to drop any attacks on Sarah for using ghost writers. Look at the constant record correcting and down the memory holing the press does every day. Why should the authorship of DREAMS bother these swine? This is for The Cause, man.

Ayers has managed to be untrustworthy even when he tells the truth. I disagree with the notion that this is an Axelrodian leakage of truth before it might matter. I think it is Billy jiggling the flask of nitroglycerin for a payoff. Similarly, trying to squeeze the literary agent is a long shot. She has to earn her dough not only this year but next. Rat out The Once, and her future is bleak, even if she's made whole for violating a nondisclosure agreement. What might work would be to get the truth from said agent's office staff at the time. Even if they can't give details of authorship, they could about how agent managed to blackjack $150K advance for an author with no track record at all. That would make interesting reading of a mileau.

Perhaps we could help by saying what is true:

DREAMS FROM MY FATHER by William Ayers with Barack Obama

[PeterUK]

You don't understand,Obama handed Ayers a sheet of paper with,I,me,mine,myself saying,"Flesh this out a bit for me Bill".

[fdcol63]

But Dreams From My Father was a total lie since Frank Marshall Davis was the sperm donor.

[Porchlight]

The way it was explained in Andersen's book, Ayers wouldn't have had to collaborate. He wouldn't have had to say one word to Obama. He received the rough draft, the notes and the oral bio tapes and took it from there. (Obama could always correct any factual errors once Ayers gave him the final draft.)

Meanwhile Barry and Michelle went to Bali for six months, ostensibly so that Barry could finish the book. How do the "it doesn't matter even if he did have a ghost writer" people square that? "I finished writing the book in Bali" would be a straight-up lie if, in fact, Ayers finished writing the book in Chicago.

I think they went to Bali in order to better hide the fact that Barry was *not* working on the book during that six-month period where he was supposed to be conquering writer's block.

[Rob Crawford]

" .. disenchantment with the conventionalities of suburban life."

I always find it ironic that people like Ayers and Dohrn who loathe these "conventionalities" in fact find comfort of their own in the homogeneousness of "anarchists" and "revolutionaries".

I always wonder what suburbs they're talking about. When you actually get to know the people living in the suburbs, you find out there's infinite variety.

(But, hey, the reality is that the people whining about the "conformity" of the suburbs are just bigots, and finding the truth would puncture their bigotry, causing them to reassess their estimation of their own superiority.)

[bad]

In case you missed this link in Steve Diamond's link earlier:

Barack Obama visited the house of Tom and Mary Ayers, parents of former Weather Underground activist turned education professor Bill Ayers, in the mid-1980s to thank the Ayers’ for their support of his education, according to Allen Hulton, the letter carrier who delivered mail to the Ayers’ Glen Ellyn home at that time. Glen Ellyn is a suburb of Chicago, southwest of the city

I wonder how the mailman knew why he was at the Ayers house? Did Obama actually discuss with the mailman his reason for being at the house?

[Porchlight]

Rob Crawford,

I noted that too. Hyde Park has its own "conventionalities," as does any left-wing urban enclave. (I live in one.)

"I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me." --Barack Obama, 1990 interview

bad,

It is becoming more and more clear that Obama's first encounter with Bill Ayers (and the extended Ayers family) must have been at Columbia, before Obama ever came to Chicago.

[clarice]

"It is becoming more and more clear that Obama's first encounter with Bill Ayers (and the extended Ayers family) must have been at Columbia, before Obama ever came to Chicago."

Yes, it is.

[Rocco]

Not going there fd, but I do believe Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, had an influence on his decision to head for the streets of Chicago as a community organizer instead of seeking a prestigious law firm as a past president of the Harvard Law Review. In the 1940's, Davis was a member of the South Side Community Art Center, a hangout for communists and sympathisers. From New Zeal

Reminds me of the NEA.

[Rocco]

Notice Vernon Jarrett's name also listed as a member of the same Art Center?

[Extraneus]

Yeah, bad, and he supposedly told the mailman that he intended to be the President of the United States. (This in response to the mailman's question about his field of study.)

25-years-old, and I'm sure he was a nerd, but really. That's hard to believe.

[fdcol63]

" ... he supposedly told the mailman that he intended to be the President of the United States ..."

But I thought he and Michelle and all their Leftist pals thought America was so racist that a black man could never become POTUS.

Now that's real hubris. LOL

[bad]

The mailman's story is amazing.

[daddy]

I wanna' be known as a famous author.

So would one of you guys please ghost-write a blockbuster auto-biography for me? It needs to have stuff in it about airplanes, Chinese Beer and Moose poop. Other than that I'm pretty flexible. Oh, and BTW, I've got some daughters, so if one of them gets diagnosed with meningitis 10 years ago, please let me know.

[Janet]

That's what is odd about Obama's background too. It is almost ALL hidden. Childhood hidden, adolescence hidden, college years hidden, young adult hidden, Illinois senate years hidden.

If someone wrote my autobiography I'd want a few incidents in high school, and a few more in college left out, but not the whole time period.

He seems to include only a few incidents, and the time period is left out!

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Why hasn't the former white girlfriend ever come forward? If someone I was intimate with went on to become president, I'd want to tell everyone. In fact, if anyone I knew dated someone who went on the be president, I'd still mention it. Yet, no one seems to have any knowledge of the girlfriend. Surely someone saw them together or socialized with them. It is just very weird.

I find it hard to trust anyone who has no known personal friends.

[bad]

I've wondered that as well, Sara.

[PeterUK]

Sara,
She hasn't come forward because what goes under the bus,stays under the bus.

[JM Hanes]

PUK:

"Flesh this out..." That is every kind of funny!

[bgates]

Why hasn't the former white girlfriend ever come forward?

I'm pretty sure she'd still be white.

I was about to say that we don't know anybody W dated either, but it turns out the White House released a name from Alabama who vouched for W's Guard training.

Because it was important that the President have some kind of military service record.

Because we were at war in 2004.

[JM Hanes]

PUK part deux:

What goes under the bus pops back up at the White House with different title, like Czar or Senior Advisor.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

The only explanation that makes any sense to me is maybe her family would not be too excited about her dating a black man and she doesn't want it known. I know that sounds racist, but I'm sure we all know family that would be livid if we hooked up with someone of a different race. Shoot, my Dad didn't even want me to date someone of a different religion, I can't imagine what he would have done if I brought home a minority boyfriend.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

bgates: There are lots of stories and pictures of W socializing when he was a young man. Group pics, boys, girls, dates, whatever. The only non-political group pic of Obama that I've seen was a photo of him on the basketball team.

[JM Hanes]

Sara:

A great many of Obama's former associates were explicitly asked to keep their mouths shut till after the election, and I can imagine a potential array of carrots and whips which could be applied to the uncooperative.

A lot of people might not be inclined to own up to a notorious bomb designing boyfriend either, but recalcitrance is no defense from an inquisitive press. Alas. I suspect it most likely that the mythologized girlfriend has not shown up, because she never existed.

[bad]

That makes the most sense, JMH, because Obama was on the national stage before he ran for president (the 2004 dem convention speech) and the normal person would comment to someone, "Hey, I used to date him."

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

and the normal person would comment to someone, "Hey, I used to date him."

Exactly.

[MayBee]

I think its weird that two people who are about to spend the next 12 years complaining about crushing debt went to Bali, Indonesia to write. They didn't have any kids, so Chicago wasn't so pressing.
They had family in Hawaii they could have stayed with, to reduce costs.

Maybe he had to go take care of something in Indonesia?

[MayBee]

They both left their jobs for six months to go to Indonesia, then came back to begin complaining that they couldn't pay off their law school debts?

[Sue]

MayBee,

Where did his mother live?