Literary Lion Obama Will Roar No More

American Thinker ^ | September 28, 2009 | Jack Cashill

[neverdem]

The major media will not likely tackle the emerging evidence of Obama's stunning literary fraud, but the days of Obama's boasting about his writing skills are just as likely over.

The immediate cause of concern at the White House is Christopher Andersen's largely benign new book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage.

Andersen contends that the ambitious Obama, unaware of JFK's own literary fraud, hoped to launch his own political career with a book as did John Kennedy with the discreetly ghost-written Profiles In Courage. 

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," she being the more pragmatic half of the couple.

What attracted the Obamas were "Ayers's proven abilities as a writer." Barack particularly liked the fluid novelistic style of To Teach, a 1993 book by Ayers.  This he hoped to emulate for his own family history.  In fact, he had already taped interviews with many of his relatives, both African and American.  The key sentence in Andersen's account is the one that follows:

"These oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers." Adds Andersen, "Thanks to help from veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Book."  The manuscript in question would become Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, what Joe Klein of Time Magazine called "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

From textual sleuthing, I had come to a comparable conclusion more than a year ago, namely that Obama had "turned the framework of his life over to terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers who roughed it in with his own darker sentiments and experiences."  Embedded here is a visual summary of this research, produced by Chris Kusnell.  (Part I) (Part II)

As one example of Ayers' involvement, I had argued that Dreams' tale of Obama's year-long relationship with a rich, green-eyed lovely seemed to have mined the details of Ayers' own relationship to the late Weatherwoman Diana Oughton.  From a close reading, I doubted there was such a girl in Obama's life.  So does Andersen.  "No one," he writes, "including his roommate and closest friend at the time, Siddiqi, knew of this mysterious lover's existence."

It did not matter, however, how accurate was my analysis.  From the perspective of Obama's literary defenders, I was a barbarian who could effectively be kept in check outside the gates.

Andersen writes from within the gates.  He has no agenda.  His book is dispassionate, softly liberal and largely sympathetic to the Obamas, particularly to Michelle and her family.  A popular celebrity journalist, he interviewed some 200 people for the book, many of them close to the Obama family. The Obamas had likely given at least their tacit blessing to the project.  Given that the natural audience for his book skews female and left, Andersen had no reason to invent facts that would alienate his base.  He has no track record of doing the same.

Although Andersen cites me on textual comparisons, I was clearly not the source for the personal details of Obama's life.  His retelling of the story was based on what he had been told by someone very close to the action. He had access to people who would never have talked to me, quite possibly Michelle herself or even Bill Ayers.

Clearly shaken, the Obama-centric media find themselves in a fix not unlike that of medieval astronomers upon discovery of a new planet.  Every time this happened, these geocentrists had to figure out a convoluted new loop to describe the planet's rotation around the earth.  So it is with challenges to the Obama myth, even unwitting ones like Andersen's.  Obama's acolytes must find some convoluted new explanation to account for each unexpected deviance from the mythic overview.

Defenses mustered in the last few days include a lack of attribution by Andersen, his ignorance of an imagined "computerized analysis" by an Oxford professor, the citation of me as source and/or a reliance upon me as source.  Each of these explanations implies that Andersen is a fraud and a liar and that he contrived the story he told. Andersen's highly successful career as a celebrity journalist argues strongly against such an interpretation.

What impresses the reader about these defenses is how easily their architects satisfy themselves and presumably the Obama faithful with their soundness.  The Washington Independent's David Weigel, for instance, is among those who dismiss Andersen's claim because he credits me as a source. 

To trivialize my contribution, Weigel cites one point of comparison between Obama and Ayers -- their mutual use of the phrase "behind enemy lines" to establish their place in capitalist America -- as though I had not also listed hundreds of other such comparisons, many much more compelling.

Had he read Andersen's book, which he does not appear to have, Weigel would have seen that Andersen's retelling of the story was based not on what I had written but on what Andersen had been told by someone who was on the scene.   A close reading of the book, however, might have shaken Weigel's faith in his Milli Vanilli of messiahs.

"I've written two books," Obama told a crowd of students and teachers in Virginia last year.  "I actually wrote them myself."

The media should be able to protect his reputation among the willfully blind but don't expect to hear Obama make comparable boasts in the near future.

[skr]

The Audacity of Hype

[MHGinTN]

“The media should be able to protect his reputation among the willfully blind but don’t expect to hear Obama make comparable boasts in the near future.” Jack under estimates the ‘audacity of dope’ ...

[truthguy]

I heard this guy on a local radio talk show and he made for an interesting segment. He has made a tremendously strong case that Obama lied about the book he wrote. That Obama lies is not a great revelation on FR. But this guy really nails it. He also reveals that Obama would have had to have a fairly close working relationship with Bill Ayers in order for Ayers to ghost write this book. This is contrary to what Obama has said about his relationship with Ayers.

Of course the MSM will try to downplay this whole thing but I don't think it will work if we put the pressure on them. We have talk radio and Internet as well as Fox News. He are fast moving to the point that we no longer need the MSM. And that's a good thing.

[jeltz25]

Isn’t it funny how the media hasn’t been able to find anyone who knew him back in college?

Where is this guy Siddiqui who was his roommante and closest friend? I think he’s the guy who Barack went to Pakistan with over spring break in the early 80s when it was the HQ for the Mujahaddin and not one college student in his right mind would ever decide to go for any reason at all.

Where is this green eyed lovely who was his secret lover for over a year? Should be pretty easy to find.

It’s funny how there’s literally no one who seems to have known him at certain times in his ilfe. Or at least no one who has come forward.

[smoothsailing]

Literary Lion Obama Will Roar No More

Good, but he'll still never stop whining.

[FTJM]

Can an investor in the publisher sue for fraud? Someone needs to find a legal angle to go after this and get these people under oath.

[smokingfrog]

Since elected to the Senate in 2004, the Obamas’ have seen their income shoot up, almost all from books. In 2004 the Obamas’ reported $207,647 in taxable income; $1.6 million in 2005 (including the book advance); and $983,826 in 2006.

The couple reported total 2007 income of $4,238,165, of which $3,943,378 was profit from his best-sellers ''Dreams From My Father'' his memoir reissued in 2004 when his political career started to skyrocket and ''The Audacity of Hope,” published in 2006.

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama secured a $500,000 advance for a children's book project five days before taking office, a financial disclosure report revealed.

---

Nice income if you can get it, especially if someone else is doing the work.

[dagogo redux]

[calex59]

What's more telling than anything and, in my mind at least, worse than the fraudulent book writing is the fact that this showcases the lie he told about how well he knew Ayers during the campaign.

Didn't he say, "he was just a guy in the neighborhood, I was only 8 years old when he did all that stuff" and so on and so forth? Somebody(such as the Republican leadership, and I use the term loosely)should be pointing this stuff out, now, they should be calling Bozo on all the lies he is telling now and all the ones he has told.

Just because they can't call him a liar on the house floor doesn't apply outside chambers.

[Travis McGee]

AMEN X 1,000!!

[Recovering_Democrat]

JOE WAS RIGHT!

[Recovering_Democrat]

GOOD STUFF.

[snarks_when_bored]

"I've written two books," Obama told a crowd of students and teachers in Virginia last year. "I actually wrote them myself."

A man who takes credit for work he hasn't done is a man with few scruples and even less conscience. How unfortunate for our nation that President Barack Hussein Obama appears to be such a man.

[browardchad]

Where is this guy Siddiqui who was his roommante and closest friend?

He's safely tucked away in Seattle, singing his old friend's praises after a life-long drug dependency. The media did exactly one carefully-vetted interview with him back in the summer of '08 -- an AP story with no byline (I wouldn't be surprised if the interview came directly from O's campaign HQ, hence no one at AP wanted to sign their name to it.)

Hannity's crew tried to interview him a few weeks later, and he refused, so all they got was a shot of Siddiqui running away from the cameraman.

I think he’s the guy who Barack went to Pakistan with over spring break in the early 80s

No, Obama was referred to Siddiqi by his Occidental roommates -- wealthy Pakis from influential families with whom he traveled to Pakistan. Siddiqi was an illegal alien druggie with little or no money -- Obama's Occidental pals were quite a few rungs up in the pecking order.

[browardchad]

Clearly shaken, the Obama-centric media find themselves in a fix not unlike that of medieval astronomers upon discovery of a new planet. Every time this happened, these geocentrists had to figure out a convoluted new loop to describe the planet's rotation around the earth. So it is with challenges to the Obama myth, even unwitting ones like Andersen's. Obama's acolytes must find some convoluted new explanation to account for each unexpected deviance from the mythic overview.

Or, they simply ignore it. Witness the fact that they still repeat the official version of when Barack, Sr. left Hawaii -- when Jr. was "2 years old." Sr. left HI when Jr. was less than a year old -- in June, 1972, while Jr. and his mother were living not in Hawaii, but in Seattle -- another fact that contradicts the myth, and has thus been ignored by the mythmakers.

[zipper]

http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/yavelow.htm

http://www.wnd.com/files/FictionFixer-Obama-Ayers-3.pdf

[driftless2]

This brouhaha will come to nothing. JFK is cited as the author of “Profiles In Courage”, when in fact his speechwriter Ted Sorenson probably wrote most of the book. Libs are not concerned about “trivial” matters like plagiarism. Big Media certainly doesn’t care.

[carcraft]

You are correct, look at ACORN, Charlie Gibson dismissed it a “cable news”, and they wonder why they are going broke!

[Yaelle]

“William Ayers’s Fantasies of My Father”