[thecodont]

...as recounted by bill Ayers, constructing Obama’s life narrative and “remembered” conversations from whole cloth to protect Obama? That is what Dreams appears to me to be. I find Jack Cashill's take persuasive and don't believe most of what is in Dreams, absent independent documentation.

I don't have a copy of Dreams at my side, but isn't there a disclaimer in the front to the effect that the contents are sort of half-remembered and semi-fictionalized, and that some characters are composites of real people?

The problem with that book is that so many people (present company excepted) are treating it as a straight biography [BO/Ayers left enough "wiggle room" for interpretation of what was real and what was not] when it really is not.

[Fred Nerks]

...but isn't there a disclaimer in the front to the effect that the contents are sort of half-remembered and semi-fictionalized, and that some characters are composites of real people?

EXACTLY! And there's enough 'wiggle' room for a truck to drive through!

Although much of this book is based on contemporaneous journals or the oral histories of my family, the dialogue is necessarily an approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me. For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known, and some events appear out of precise chronology. With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures, the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of their privacy.