[Political Junkie Too]

It may be standard stuff to a writer, but it may not be to a novice who can't even get past "um... ahh" when speaking extemporaneously.

It's hard to prove ghost-writing, but the circumstantial evidence is strong. Obama has no history of high-quality writing other than the books that he wrote when he met Ayers. Even though Obama came from an island state and an island nation where you might expect a high amount of water exposure and experience, Obama has not offered up any history as a youth of engaging in boating, fishing, surfing, or any interest in the sea at all.

If, with that background, I'm asked to believe that he's exceptional in the use of nautical metaphors strictly from research alone, it's a leap that I need more convincing to take.

-PJ

[x]

I don't know who wrote the book, and I don't deny that a ghost writer would most likely have been involved. I just point out that a lot of the "sea metaphors" or "nautical imagery" was pretty standard stuff that one didn't have to be a merchant seaman or even a very good writer to come up with. It's a bum argument, so far as I can tell.

To get back to Shakespeare and Lanier, though: not all of Shakespeare's rich imagery comes from the field of music, does it? He drew from many fields, didn't he? And in some of those fields it would be hard for a woman to acquire first-hand knowledge in the 16th or 17th century.

I'm not saying a woman absolutely couldn't have written the plays, but it's at least as likely that "William Shakespeare" could have come to know something of music, farming, war, navigation and other fields as it is that Lanier could have. Also, the bawdy puns in the plays are, all things considered, less likely to come from a woman than from a man.