Dreams from Obama's ghostwriter
http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article136814.ece
Critics say he did not write his 1995 memoir alone
Oct 3, 2009
By TYMON SMITH
The right wing in the US has thrown the book at President Barack
Obama's literary ability.
They have been shouting for some time that he was not the sole author
of his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. Now another new book,
Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, has reignited
the rumour and given the right more ammunition for its incessant
attacks on the president.
Author Chris Andersen, who has written salacious gossip about the
Kennedys, Clintons and Princess Diana, drew on anecdotal evidence to
suggest that Dreams was written by Obama's neighbour and founder of a
radical left-wing group, Bill Ayers.
Andersen argued that Obama was under enormous pressure from his
publishers, Times Books, after his failure to deliver on an earlier
$125000 book deal with Simon & Schuster. According to Andersen, Obama
followed a suggestion from his wife and gave the tapes of interviews
he had made with his relatives, "along with a partial manuscript and
a truckload of notes", to Ayers.
This is a theory supported by conservative commentator Jack Cashill.
He wrote a series of righteously indignant articles for the
conservative website American Thinker last year, arguing that a
comparison of Obama's earlier writing with Dreams showed that he "did
not in any meaningful way" write the memoir, which was hailed around
the world as one of the greatest books ever written by a politician.
Obama has consistently maintained that he is the sole author of the
book and did not have the assistance of a ghostwriter. But Andersen
asserted: "In the end, Ayers's 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's own writing."
Cashill was excited by the news, writing on the American Thinker
website last week that Andersen had "blown a huge hole in the Obama
genius without intending to do so".
While admitting that he is unable to prove categorically that Ayers
was the author of Dreams, Cashill concluded: "There are only two real
possibilities: one is that Obama experienced a near miraculous
turnaround in his literary abilities; the second is that he had major
editorial help, up to and including a ghostwriter." Cashill claims he
has "reviewed the portfolios of a thousand professional writers, all
of them crowded with writing samples, but only a handful of these
writers would have been capable of having written a book as stylish
as Dreams".
Cashill uses two early examples of Obama's writing to support his
argument. Referring to Breaking the War Mentality, written in 1983
for Columbia University news magazine Sundial, Cashill cites "an
appalling five sentences in which the subject noun does not agree
with the verb".
Although he finds the second piece, Why Organize, an essay from 1988
published in 1990 as part of a collection, to be better edited,
Cashill maintains that "in neither of these two clunky essays does
Obama turn a single phrase that is clever, concise or even vaguely
memorable". Cashill adds "a little science" to his analysis,
identifying two similar passages from Ayers's and Obama's memoirs and
using the Flesch Reading Ease Score to show that the two passages
score almost identically and are therefore written by the same
person. He also uses another form of analysis that relies on sentence
length, which shows that Ayers's memoir "averaged 23.13 words a
sentence" while Obama's scored "23.36 words a sentence" - similar
sentence length is apparently used as another indicator of shared authorship.
When the rumours first began to circulate last year, Oxford don Dr
Peter Millican, who has developed software able to tell through the
comparison of recurring words and phrases whether two books are by
the same author, said that it was "very implausible" that Dreams was
written by Ayers. It is not known whether Millican used his software
to determine his opinion, but it was reported that he had offered to
run a comparison between Dreams and Ayers's memoir, Fugitive Days,
for a fee of $1000. No one, including Cashill, has taken up this offer.
--
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Media malpractice:
Ayers "Dreams" authorship suppressed
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/simpson/091001
October 1, 2009
By Jim Simpson
Perhaps one of the biggest political stories of the year is being
completely overlooked by the Obama-struck mass media. A new biography
by veteran author Christopher Andersen, "Barack and Michelle:
Portrait of a Marriage," reveals that former Weather Underground
terrorist Bill Ayers wrote most, if not all of President Obama's book
"Dreams From My Father."
In a series of American Thinker articles over the past year, PhD
author and columnist, Jack Cashill has been asserting just that. But
while he found striking similarities between the two men's writing
styles he could never conclusively prove Ayers' ghost authorship.
Andersen's book does.
Cashill relates: "relying on inside sources, quite possibly Michelle
Obama herself, Andersen describes how Dreams came to be published
just as I had envisioned it in my articles on the authorship of Dreams.
"With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek
advice from 'his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.' Despite a
large advance, Obama found himself 'hopelessly blocked.' After four
futile years of trying to finish, Obama 'sought advice from his
friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.' This he did 'at Michelle's urging.'"
Andersen explains their rationale: "Everyone knew they were friends
and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret.
Why would it be?"
I don't know, but it was certainly considered a secret by candidate
Obama, and the media bent over backwards to keep it that way.
This was not the first time Mr. Obama was "blocked" either. Shortly
after he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law
Review, an aggressive literary agent named Jane Dystel secured a
$125,000 advance from Simon & Schuster for him to write his book. An
astounding sum for a first-time author, he never delivered. After
years of waiting, the publisher dropped him.
Dystel then secured him a second advance for $40,000 from Random
House, and in 1995 "Dreams" was finally published. After gaining his
U.S. Senate seat, Mr. Obama summarily dumped Dystel in favor of
someone cheaper. She was understandibly infuriated. It is worth
noting that as editor of the Harvard Law Review, Mr. Obama wrote one
short article. For such a supposedly gifted writer this is truly odd.
And as Cashill has noted, Obama's few other writing samples are "sophomoric."
Andersen concludes: "In the end, Ayers's 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's own writing."
During his campaign, candidate Obama took great pains to distance
himself from Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the many other radicals
he knew. But investigation by many independent journalists overcame
the media blackout to reveal extensive connections between the two men.
It is old news now that Ayers and Obama served on the boards of the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund together, but in
total, Obama worked with Ayers and other radicals on least six
related non-profit boards and shared the same office for three years
with Ayers and fellow radicals, Susan and Mike Klonsky.
Now this latest revelation about Ayers' ghostwriting suggests that
not only did they work together, but Ayers essentially gave Obama his voice.
All this has somehow been lost on mass media's intrepid investigative
journalists. Nary a peep.
Barack Obama is no literary giant. Furthermore, his steadfast refusal
to provide any concrete information about any details of his past,
his college grades, past job performance, or even voting record in
the Illinois Senate, makes one wonder if Mr. Obama has any
qualifications besides a polished public persona at all.
He is looking more and more like a mere construct, a carefully
crafted mouthpiece for a cabal of anonymous radicals furiously
working to secure a permanent foothold in the halls of power.
Consider just a few of his "Czar" picks:
Kevin Jennings the openly homosexual "Safe Schools Czar" who
encouraged pedophilia;
Cass Sunstein, the "Regulatory Czar" who believes, among other
things, that animals should have the right to sue humans in court;
Van Jones, like Ayers, a self-described communist, fortunately
resigned under a cloud. As "Green Jobs Czar," Jones was to distribute
stimulus money based on formulas worked up by the Apollo Alliance,
run in NY by Jeff Jones. No relation to Van, Jeff is an old Weather
Underground friend of Bill Ayers;
Valerie Jarrett the "other side of Obama's brain," has spent a
lifetime working with and around the American Communist Party and is
thoroughly plugged-in to Chicago radical networks. Valerie is the one
who recruited Ron Jones.
The list goes on and on. The challenge is finding anyone even
remotely moderate.
Obama's early denial of Ayers is ringing ever hollower. Rather than
being just "some guy in my neighborhood," Ayers and Obama are fused
at the hip. And Ayers is typical of the rabid, anti-American lunatics
Barack has surrounded himself with.
Meanwhile, the media silence is deafening.
God help us.
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