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

[Janet]

Yeah MayBee - another great point. We conservatives need our own "fishy" email site!
Who the hell is this guy?

[MayBee]

Sue- I think in Jakarta. What year did they go to Bali? I don't believe Stanley ever had a home in Bali.

[MayBee]

Did they go before they were married?
According to Wiki, University of Chicago had even given Obama an office to write his book in. She would have had to leave a job for this.

Yet Michelle and Barack, deeply in debt, take off for Bali?

[Sue]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/politics/18memoirs.html?ei=5124&en=06380c5da09c3c80&ex=1368849600&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=all>Try this written in May 2008. Before anyone, including Cashill, had mentioned Obama might not be the author.

[Sue]

In the fall of 1995, the article says, Obama wanted a book reviewer to review his newly published book.

[Porchlight]

The six months' leave from their jobs is curious. According to Wiki Barry would have been a lecturer at UC and an associate at Davis, Miner. Michelle would have been Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies. If the leave wasn't paid by their jobs, how did they afford the Bali trip plus their rent or mortgage? The remains of the advance?

[bgates]

I think its weird that two people who are about to spend the next 12 3 years complaining about crushing debt went to Bali, Indonesia Chicago for a long weekend, Denver for a speech, New York for date night, Copenhagen....

[bgates]

OT, Dr Win-The-Good-War is ready to welcome the Taliban with open arms, as fellow members of the umma.

[Porchlight]

Wouldn't you love to give Obama an in-depth quiz on his own book? How well do you think he knows it? I'm betting pretty well by now, but it would still be fun.

It reminds me a little of one of my favorite mysteries that I've brought up here before, a very intricate impostor story. The main character has to learn all about the person he's impersonating, and then go live among his family, who thought he was dead until he showed up out of the blue. They are full of questions and reminiscences. He could be tripped up at any time by the tiniest thing which he couldn't possibly have forgotten, had he really been who he said he was.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Maybe he thought he was Anastasia.

[Elliott]

Porchlight,

That sounds similar to a scheme David Yallop claims was perpetrated on him in his book Tracking the Jackal (non-US title: To the Ends of the Earth).

[JM Hanes]

MayBee:

Interesting observation. Somehow, I suspect there is no record of whether they remained exclusively in Bali for what could certainly have begun to feel like a long 6 months living the simple exurban life.

[JM Hanes]

Someone should check out the Passport Office records.....

[Extraneus]

Well it's not like we don't have *any* pictures from his college days.

[Extraneus]

closed?

[JM Hanes]

Valerie Jarrett probably took the cottage next door.

[Extraneus]

Before the practiced smile.

[PeterUK]

"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."

So Obama was a late developer?

[PeterUK]

"Maybe he thought he was Anastasia."

Anaesthesia.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Why does his mouth/lips look so different in the "before the practiced smile" pic than they do now? Is it just me?

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vjnjagvet]

Extraneus's pics suggest that Teh Once might actually be OJ's cousin.

I wonder if he could be the "real killer"?

[bad]

Why does his mouth/lips look so different in the "before the practiced smile" pic than they do now?

All those years of kissing Rolo....

[MayBee]

Someone should check out the Passport Office records.....

Oh wait! Someone already did!

LOL at Valerie Jarrett in the next villa.

With Barack and Michelle, the fact that they never talk about this 6 months in Indonesia together makes me suspicious.

[macphisto]

putting on a bit of the Richard Pryor, wasn't he?

[bad]

The article Sue linked to has him professing to be undecided about a career in politics yet he told his brother=in=law and the Ayers' mailman that he wanted to be president.

I wonder how he expected to be president without getting into politics...

[MayBee]

This paragraph from the article Porch linked is cracking me up:

He finished his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” 18 months into his first term in the Senate, edited the proofs late at night on a Congressional fact-finding trip to Africa, plunged into campaigning for colleagues in the midterm elections, took time out for a 12-city book tour, appeared on programs like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Charlie Rose,” then announced four months later that he was running for president.

I think that is supposed to make him sound good.

[MayBee]

Oh sorry! Sue's article.

[Jane]

So who wrote The Audacity of Hope?

[clarice]

Jane, peJane. I think it was Cashill who said it sounded a great deal like the work of his present main speechwriter.

[Extraneus]

Practice makes perfect.

[Jane]

Those gloves make her look like a lizard.

[centralcal]

OT: Looks like one of the AA artist's works chosen for the White House is basically an exact rip off of a Matisse.

L'Escargot or Watusi?

(Ace has links to some fun animations showing both art pieces.)

[Rocco]

This article is about Tim Buck, a leader of the Communist Party of Canada. I use it to show the word "audacity" seemed to be a popular word among Communists.

Interviewed by the Toronto Star shortly after his release, he responded to a request for his personal political motto by (mis)quoting Georges Jacques Danton: "Audacity, audacity, still more audacity." (Ironically, the choice suggested caution and derivativeness rather than boldness; Buck had borrowed it from Lenin, who had borrowed it from Marx).

And this article is about John Jacobs aka JJ and founding member of the Weather Underground Organization. He also coined the phrase during the Columbia Riots.

During these events, J.J. became known for his commitment to the dictum "auda-city, audacity and more audacity." Rudd chuckles, recalling how Mathematics Hall, taken over by J.J. and his cohorts, became known as the Hall of Crazies.

[Porchlight]

Why does his mouth/lips look so different in the "before the practiced smile" pic than they do now?

I think his face and lips are more relaxed because he's really, really high.

Extraneus, in your top photo at 7:16 pm it looks like he has a bit of a cold sore just under his nose on the non-mole side. LOL.

[Porchlight]

I wonder how he expected to be president without getting into politics...

bad,

Give the man some credit. He's come as close as any president ever has to achieving that goal.

[MayBee]

Snort!

[Gregory Koster]

Sue, many thanks for linking the TIMES article. Note that it said that the original contract The Once got was for a book on race relations, which he couldn't write, so it morphed into a memoir which he still couldn't finish. Nor does the article mention what happened to the original $150,000 advance when the second publisher took it over. The Once paid it back? That chiseler? How Timmy Geithner would laugh! So the second publisher paid out $190,000, 150K to the first publisher 40K more to The Once.

Note too that Czar Cass Sunstein is sucking up, saying how polished the drafts seems, and that The Once, though no expert, only took a small minority of Sunstein's comments to heart and then used his own language to make the adjustments. Sunstein needs to be grilled on this involvement.

If this isn't enough proof of the liberal bigotry of the press, try this paragraph:

"Barack is worth millions now,” Mr. Osnos said. “It’s almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one’s life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it’s a stunning fact.”

As Daddy said, where are all the applicants to take my life story and make me a millionaire?

Muting the sarcasm, this does raise a question: The Once has had privileged treatment all his life, no question. How did he get the 150K book contract? Who was the guarantor if he didn't perform? He could holler raaaaacist! all he wanted in 1991, that much dough requires a guarantee of some sort. From whom? I might have been too quick to write that his first lit agent would clam up. She lost a lot of dough when The Once dumped her. Maybe some leaks would be in order. Where's Stacy McCain...

Daddy, your comment about The Once handing Billy a sheet of paper with: I, Me, Mine, My and saying "Flesh it out for me, willya?" was well up to your standard, but you forgot to mention that Billy handed it back to The Once, saying, "Rolo's better qualified at fleshing out than I am."

[I got one for cocina magica.]

clarice, I think the connection may have been about the Aparheit stuff and the blinding at Idlewild. There is the nexus of Columbia Obama and the Weatherones.

And here's a laugh, Chusid never posted my comment about 'breaking brains to scramble reality' in reference to his dissonance, and now he's trashing Tom for the Swift Boat stuff. It's an amazing performance of credulity chugging going on over there. Blue Ribbon at the County Fair grade.
=====================================

[Porchlight]

Who bought that POS book anyway? Honest question. I never heard a soul mention Barack Obama until 2004 and I actually subscribed to the NYT for almost the entire 1990s and read the literary supplement pretty religiously.

(Yeah, those were different times.)

[MayBee]

It sold 6,000 copies before he ran for Senate and they re-printed it.
All of the money he's made on that book came from his advance and his campaigning (on someone else's dime, natch).

[daddy]

"Daddy, your comment about The Once handing Billy a sheet of paper with: I, Me, Mine, My and saying "Flesh it out for me, willya?" was well up to your standard, but you forgot to mention that Billy handed it back to The Once, saying, "Rolo's better qualified at fleshing out than I am."

Posted by: Gregory Koster"

Greg,

That very witty comment was actually by my ghostwriting autobiographer P'UK, but in the spirit of this excellent post I now claim credit for making it.

(Pssst, P'UK, great stuff---Can you make me look sexy in Chapter 3? Let's hold off worldly and sophisticated till Chapter 5 or so, just after your, errr, my audience with the Queen. And what's my opinion on Gordon Brown again? I forget.)

[clarice]

daddy, you want this:
http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Columnists/A_Time_For_Choosing/BILLIONAIRE_OBAMA_SUPPORTER_KEEPING_LEVI_JOHNSTON_IN_SPOTLIGHT/25081>Courtesy Patrick Sullivan

[PD]

OT, Dr Win-The-Good-War is ready to welcome the Taliban with open arms, as fellow members of the umma.

Perhaps he was watching Medea Benjamin on O'Reilly last night, claiming that most of the Taliban are "humble villagers" and that what we should be spending our money on over there is health care and education.

[clarice]

Surely so they can get their needs taken care off while skimming off graft for their ops against our troops.

[daddy]

Thanks Clarice,

That story is on the money, especially in light of continuing efforts by organs like ">http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/966061.html"> the ADN to continue the assault on Sarah, while remaining silent about Begich. Huffpost has a story from about 14 September from some film maker who is using "Republican" Andree' McLeod as a concerned American being treated unfairly by a corrupt State of Alaska Bureaucracy, as she innocently and without bias tries to get the goods on Sarah Palin. I'm standing by for that film.

I apologize about being delinquent on blogging Begich for the AT.I've half done it 3 times. With Fagan's "Alaska Standard"website having been banned for a bit, and due to having to rely on unreliable talk radio snippets, as opposed to concrete stories I can link to, it's difficult to do it with the established factuality I would like it to have before attaching my name to it.

I will keep trying. FWIW, the first report from the City Attorney investigating the Begich affair is supposed to be announced on about 10 November.

[PD]

clarice, exactly. When she came out with that howler, my immediate thought was, "Yeah, why not. Let's just push a bunch of money at those people. What could go wrong?"

[clarice]

daddy, I am sure the editor will be happy to get it whenever you're ready as I am sure it will be accurate and newsworthy.

[Elliott]

daddy,

I have some ideas about how you might be granted such an audience. If you'll be stopping over at SFO anytime soon maybe we could discuss them.

[daddy]

Elliott,

I arrive Emeryville about midnight of the 23d October for 26 hours (leaving about 2 am on the 25th), but am glad to get stupid up to about 5PM on the 24th. I have to run it thru my autobiographer, P'UK, but I think our task is how to figure out how I met and impressed the Queen 10 years ago, not how to do it in reality or in the future. Meeting her will come effortlessly, once I'm a famous author and all. However, if you pretend to be Tiger Woods, I am sure we can squeeze in a chapter about what advice I gave him/you 7 years back to help him re-find his stroke for the Open. And we probably talked it all over at The Raleigh tavern on telegraph about 2 PM, 24 October, when I walked in and sat at the bar wearing a torn up old New Zealand All Black's Rugby Jersey.
.

[narciso]

Daddy, that story about McLeod, would be funny, if it wasn't the total inverse as this blog post suggests

[daddy]

Narciso,

">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/a-culture-of-corruption_b_284726.html"> Here's that Huffpo story from last month I mentioned, from that left wing filmmaker Dunn, currently pumping out an anti-Sarah book as we speak. If you can wade through the thing, I think you'll see that Andree's going to be his new heroine. He's remaking her biography to make Andree' more a legendary figure than Ayer's did for Barrack. And don't miss the part about how we people up here in Anchorage weren't sophisticated enough to enjoy her spiced chickpea falafal stand, so she's the pure-hearted victim and it's our bigotry that done her in----right. Sarah remains under massive assault, but off the top I can't think of any decent Conservative who isn't under assault.