Ayers 'confesses' he wrote Obama's 'Dreams'
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112270
Was ex-Weatherman terrorist merely mocking reporters or leaking the truth?
October 08, 2009
By Art Moore
This much is clear: The unrepentant Weather Underground co-founder
who bombed federal buildings in his effort to overthrow the U.S. with
a Marxist regime decided not to give a straightforward, irony-free
answer to a reporter and to a blogger who wanted to know if he was
the true author of the highly acclaimed memoir President Obama
insists was a solo effort.
To a National Journal reporter at a book conference who posed the
question, Ayers declared, "Yes, I wrote 'Dreams from My Father.'" And
to a conservative blogger he encountered Monday at Reagan National
Airport who didn't even ask the question he offered, "I wrote
'Dreams from My Father' … Michelle asked me to."
The easy explanation is that Ayers simply was mocking anyone with the
audacity to suggest he was the genius behind "Dreams from My Father,"
the book that won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album and drew
praise from Time magazine as "the best-written memoir ever produced
by an American politician."
Get "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage" from
WND's Superstore
But the WND columnist whose investigative work first raised the
possibility of Ayers' significant role in Obama's book, Jack Cashill,
suspects Ayers may have been employing a "double level of irony" in
his chance airport meeting Monday with blogger Anne Leary.
"He says what is true as a way of throwing doubt on what is, in fact,
true," Cashill writes in a column published today.
Cashill continues: "Then it dawned on me that Ayers and I may share
the same fantasy: that is walking through an airport and being mobbed
by reporters celebrating our respective genius: he for writing
'Dreams' and me for discovering his role."
The two encounters with Ayers followed the release of a major new
book that reported a desperate Obama in the mid-1990s, facing a
second canceled book contract, sought the help of Ayers.
Christopher Andersen, in "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of a
Marriage," acknowledged the groundbreaking work of Cashill, who has
written more than two dozen columns since June 2008, summarized here,
making the case that Ayers dismissed by Obama during the campaign
as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" at the very least,
shaped and refined "Dreams" with his exceptional writing skill and
radical ideas.
Andersen advances the theory, citing two sources in a six-page
narrative that led him to write that, ultimately, "Ayers'
contribution to Barack's 'Dreams from My Father' would be significant
so much so that the book's language, oddly specific references,
literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to
Ayers' own writing."
Andersen concluded, "Thanks to help from the veteran writer Ayers,
Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Books."
'And now I would like the royalties'
TalkingPointsMemo.com posted last Friday National Journal's brief
account of Ayers' reply to a reporter at a recent book festival.
"Here's what I'm going to say. This is my quote. Be sure to write it
down: 'Yes, I wrote Dreams From My Father. I ghostwrote the whole
thing. I met with the president three or four times, and then I wrote
the entire book.'" He released National Journal's arm, and beamed in
Marxist triumph. "And now I would like the royalties."
Meanwhile, Chicago-based blogger Anne Leary wrote she was drinking
coffee near the United Airlines counter Monday at Reagan National
Airport near Washington before going through security when she spotted Ayers.
She asked what he was doing in D.C.
"He gave me an uneasy cheesy smile when he realized I was taking his
picture. He … was trying to decide if I was a fan, then said he was
giving a lecture in Arlington to a Renaissance group on education
that's what I do, education you shouldn't believe everything you
hear about me, you know nothing about me."
Leary replied that as a conservative blogger from Chicago, she knew
plenty about him and planned to post something about their conversation.
Then, unprompted he said I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said,
oh, so you admit it. He said Michelle asked me to. I looked at him.
He seemed eager. He's about my height, short. He went on to say and
if you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop
pulling my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again I really wrote
it, the wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily
edited it. He said I wrote it. I said why would I believe you,
you're a liar.
He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and
walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting
the proceeds.
Cashill observed, in a column last week, that scores of major media
organs have reviewed Andersen's book, including CBS News, USA Today,
the Chicago Sun Times, the Seattle Times, the Atlanta Journal
Constitution, the Chicago Tribune and the Telegraph of London. Yet
none have mentioned the author's detailed narrative about Ayers'
collaboration with his Hyde Park, Chicago, neighbor Obama.
The New York Times was among many news outlets during the
presidential campaign last year that sought to minimize or ignore
Obama's relationship with Ayers when questions were raised by
opponents, including the Republican ticket of Sen. John McCain and
Gov. Sarah Palin.
In 1995, a year before "Dreams" was published, Obama became chairman
of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform organization
Ayers helped establish. Obama also served on the board of the liberal
non-profit Woods Fund alongside Ayers from 1999 to 2002, according to
the Fund's website.
Also in 1995, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state
senatorial campaign was held at Ayers' home. Ayers, who still serves
on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial
campaign fund and served on panels with Obama at numerous public
speaking engagements.
The two appeared together as speakers at several public events,
including a 1997 University of Chicago panel titled "Should a child
ever be called a 'super predator?'" and another panel for the
University of Illinois in April 2002 titled "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?"
Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has
admitted to involvement in the bombing of U.S. government buildings
in the 1970s as a member of the Weathermen.
"I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers
told the New York Times in an interview released Sept. 11, 2001.
"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,"
Ayers wrote in his memoir "Fugitive Days." Ayers lived for 10 years
as a fugitive from the law, but charges were dropped in 1974 due to
prosecutorial misconduct.
While many defenders of Ayers and his Weatherman colleagues have
sought to minimize the bomb attacks because they purportedly did not
target people, a former FBI informant who penetrated the group
claimed he witnessed a meeting in which members discussed a future
communist takeover of America in which some 25 million "diehard
capitalists" would need to be killed.
Ayers is married to another former Weather Underground leader,
Bernardine Dohrn, who also has served on panels with Obama. Dohrn was
once on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List and was described by J.
Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America."
.
--------
Bill Ayers, still enjoying it
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1009/Bill_Ayers_still_enjoying_it.html
October 07, 2009
The Corner at National Review today has been abuzz with Bill Ayers
"confession" (reported by a conservative blogger who met Ayers at an
airport) to his role in a grand unified conspiracy theory favored in
some conservative circles, which is that he secretly wrote Dreams
from My Father.
Jonah Goldberg pulls back from the brink with the revelation that
Ayers was joking, per a National Journal report:
[W]e put the authorship question right to him. For a split second,
Ayers was nonplussed. Then an Abbie Hoffmanish,
steal-this-book-sort-of-smile lit up his face. He gently took
National Journal by the arm. "Here's what I'm going to say. This is
my quote. Be sure to write it down: 'Yes, I wrote Dreams From My
Father. I ghostwrote the whole thing. I met with the president three
or four times, and then I wrote the entire book.'" He released
National Journal's arm, and beamed in Marxist triumph. "And now I
would like the royalties."
--------
Bill Ayers Book Comment Sets Blogs Abuzz
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/07/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5370165.shtml
October 7, 2009
Conservative author Jack Cashill has long argued that former
Weatherman Bill Ayers wrote President Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My
Father." Today, he got what many sympathetic parties took as proof:
An admission from Ayers himself to a conservative blogger that he was
behind the book.
A blogger named "BackyardConservative" said she was sitting in Reagan
National Monday when she spotted Ayers and struck up a conversation.
Here's how she recounts part of it:
Then, unprompted he said--I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh,
so you admit it. He said--Michelle asked me to. I looked at him. He
seemed eager. He's about my height, short. He went on to say--and if
you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop pulling
my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again--I really wrote it, the
wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily edited it.
He said--I wrote it.
The blog post immediately bounced around the conservative
blogosphere, generating links and discussion that propelled it to the
top of blog buzz site memeorandum.
It appears, however, that Ayers, aware of the claims, was simply
joking around. As Jonah Goldberg noted, National Journal spoke to
Ayers about the issue in a piece that ran Saturday, and he said much
the same thing though his tone implies he was less than serious.
"When he finished speaking, we put the authorship question right to
him," Will Englund wrote. "For a split second, Ayers was nonplussed.
Then an Abbie Hoffmanish, steal-this-book-sort-of-smile lit up his
face. He gently took National Journal by the arm. 'Here's what I'm
going to say. This is my quote. Be sure to write it down: "Yes, I
wrote Dreams From My Father. I ghostwrote the whole thing. I met with
the president three or four times, and then I wrote the entire
book."' He released National Journal's arm, and beamed in Marxist
triumph. 'And now I would like the royalties.'"
That certainly makes Ayers' ostensible admission appear to be less of
a smoking gun than Cashill and others might hope. Yet the
Ayers-as-author claims seem likely to endure: Goldberg said he is
taking them somewhat seriously despite the National Journal piece,
while other conservatives are using Ayers comments to fuel their own
theories, like the fact that "Ayers is frustrated with Obama" and is
offering "a shot across his bow from the radical left."
Noting skepticism from some conservative quarters,
BackyardConservative updated her post with her current thinking.
"Of course Ayers is messing with us," she writes. "He's messing with
Obama too. I think he wanted plausible deniability. But I think he
wants credit. Whether he wrote it or not, I think he wants credit.
And I actually do now think he wrote it. But if no one believes him
now that would be funny too--because he's cried wolf all these years
and has no credibility left. Now that he's ratting out Obama it could
be all bets are off. Maybe some of Ayers old partners in crime will
be persuaded by Rahmbo to rat him out. Whatever. You decide, but I
don't think this is the end of it."
.
No comments:
Post a Comment