Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a three-part analysis of Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father."
"I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city." Bill Ayers, "Fugitive Days."
"Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds." Barack Obama, "Dreams From My Father."
Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write "Dreams From My Father," he had written very close to nothing.
As an undergraduate, Obama had written what he justifiably calls some "very bad poetry." He published nothing under his own name in The Harvard Law Review, where he served as an editor and as president. And after leaving Harvard, he published nothing in its review or in any law journal.
Then, in 1995, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time magazine has called – with a straight face – "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."
The public is asked to believe Obama wrote this on his own. I do not buy this canard for a minute, not at all. In writing a book on intellectual fraud, "Hoodwinked," I developed an eye for literary humbug, and "Dreams" serves up an eyeful.
In writing an earlier article about "Dreams'" dubious authorship, I had questioned whether the influential Muslim crackpot who paved Obama's way into Harvard, Khalid al-Mansour, might have greased his way into the world of publishing as well. If so, he remains well behind the scenes.
On closer examination, the path to publication appears more straightforward than I anticipated. There are two sources here to consider.
One, a surprising 2006 article by liberal publisher Peter Osnos for the American Century Foundation offers some hard evidence on what Osnos describes as the "ruthlessness" of Obama's literary ascent.
The second, more speculative source – Bill Ayers' 2001 memoir "Fugitive Days" – may very well answer the questions that Osnos cannot.
As Osnos relates, a 1990 New York Times profile on Harvard's first black editor caught the eye of a hustling young literary agent named Jane Dystel.
Dystel persuaded Obama to put a book proposal together, and she submitted it. Poseidon, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster, signed on and authorized a roughly $125,000 advance for Obama's proposed memoir.
With advance in hand, Obama repaired to Chicago where the University of Chicago offered him an office and stipend to help him write. Obama dithered.
At one point, in order to finish without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. He was surely in way over his head.
According to Osnos, Simon & Schuster canceled the contract and likely asked that Obama return at least some of the advance.
Dystel did not give up. She solicited Times Book, the division of Random House at which Osnos was publisher. He met with Obama, took his word that he could finish the book and authorized a new advance of $40,000.
Then suddenly, somehow, the muse descended on Obama and transformed him from a struggling, unschooled wannabe into a literary superstar.
As the New York Times gushed, again with a straight face, Obama was "that rare politician who can write ... and write movingly and genuinely about himself."
Osnos offhandedly notes that the writing of "Dreams" was "all Obama's," which means only that someone had fixed the book before he had seen it. Two questions demand answers: who and why.
I have attempted to contact Dystel without success, but it is highly unlikely she re-wrote the book. Whoever did almost assuredly shared many of Obama's sentiments, spoke his language and spent considerable time reworking the text.
I had never even thought of Bill Ayers as a likely ghostwriter until I ordered his memoir, "Fugitive Days," and began to read it. He writes very well and very much like "Obama."
Unlike "Dreams," however, where the high style is intermittent, "Fugitive Days" is infused with the authorial voice in every sentence. That voice is surely Ayers'.
"What makes 'Fugitive Days' unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity," writes left-wing literary guru and Obama pal, Edward Said.
Said adds that Ayers' "family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement ... all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia." He could have said very much the same about "Dreams From My Father."
Obama's memoir was published in June 1995. In January 1995, Ayers had chosen Obama, then a junior lawyer at a minor law firm, to chair the multi-million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge grants.
In the fall of that same year, 1995, Ayers and his wife, Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn, launched Obama's ascent to political stardom with a fundraiser in their Chicago home.
In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama's career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama's belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.
Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a three-part analysis of Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father." Read Part 1, "Bill Ayers' motive for penning memoir."
Bill Ayers and Barack Obama have a good deal in common. Indeed, their respective memoirs, "Fugitive Days" and "Dreams From My Father," read like they could have been written by the same person – and, in fact, they may very well have been.
All the cited quotes that follow come from these two books. On the subject of content, I will refer to the author of "Dreams" as "Obama." On the subject of style, I will refer to him as the "'Dreams' author."
"Dreams" melds two styles: one, a long-winded accounting of conversations and events, polished just well enough to pass muster; the second, a fierce, succinct and tightly coiled analysis of the events that have been related.
"Fugitive Days" is fierce, succinct and tightly coiled throughout. It lacks the sometimes tedious fluff of "Dreams" and is the better book.
In the way of background, Ayers and Obama both grew up in comfortable white households and have struggled to find an identity as righteous black men ever since.
Just as Obama resisted "the pure and heady breeze of privilege" to which he was exposed as a child, Ayers, too, resisted "white skin privilege" or at least tried to.
"I also thought I was black," says Ayers only half-jokingly. He read all the books Obama did – James Baldwin, Leroi Jones, Richard Wright, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."
As proof of his righteousness, Ayers named his first son "Malik" after the newly Islamic Malcolm X and the second son "Zayd" after Zayd Shakur, a Black Panther killed in a shootout that claimed the life of a New Jersey state trooper.
Tellingly, Ayers, like Obama, began his careers as a self-described "community organizer," Ayers in inner-city Cleveland, Obama in inner-city Chicago.
"They talked into the night about children, welfare, schools, crime, rent, gangs, the problems and the life of a neighborhood," Ayers tells us of the poor black folks he tried to organize. "Dreams" is filled with such encounters.
In short, Ayers was fully capable of crawling inside Obama's head and relating in superior prose what the "Dreams" author calls a "rage at the white world [that] needed no object."
Indeed, in "Dreams," it is on the subject of black rage that the author writes most eloquently. Phrases like "full of inarticulate resentments," "knotted, howling assertion of self," "unruly maleness," "unadorned insistence on respect" and "withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage" lace the book.
In "Fugitive Days," "rage" rules and in high style as well. Ayers tells of how his "rage got started" and how it evolved into an "uncontrollable rage – fierce frenzy of fire and lava."
Indeed, the Weathermen's inaugural act of mass violence was the "Days of Rage" in 1969 Chicago.
As in Chicago, that rage led Ayers to a sentiment with which Obama was altogether familiar. Ah, yes, "audacity!"
Ayers writes, "I felt the warrior rising up inside of me – audacity and courage, righteousness, of course, and more audacity." This is one of several references.
The combination of audacity and rage has produced two memoirs that follow oddly similar rules. Ayers describes his as "a memory book," one that deliberately blurs facts and changes identities and makes no claims at history.
Obama says much the same. In "Dreams," some characters are composites. Some appear out of precise chronology. Names have been changed.
"Is this then the truth?" writes Ayers of "Fugitive Days." "Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me."
"What I've tried to do," says Obama in the same spirit, "is write an honest account of a particular province of my life."
The reader knows that Ayers – with some justification – has much to hide. He senses that Obama does too, but he is never quite sure why.
This presumed poetic license leads to the frequent manipulation of dates to make a political point.
"I saw a dead body once, as I said, when I was 10, during the Korean War," writes Ayers. This correlation is important enough that Ayers mentions it twice. The only problem is that Ayers was eight when the Korean War ended.
Obama tells us that when he was 10, he and his family visited the mainland. On the trip, back in their motel room, they watched the Watergate Hearings on TV. The problem, of course, is that those hearing started just before Obama turned 12.
One could forgive a single missed date, but inconsistent dates and numbers appear frequently in both books and often reinforce some moment of lost innocence.
In the same spirit, both books abound in detail too closely remembered and conversations too well recorded. These moments in both books occasionally lead to an awareness of ugly and unrelenting racism.
In 1970, for instance, the 9-year-old Obama alleges to be visiting the American Embassy in Indonesia. While waiting, he chances upon "a collection of Life magazines neatly displayed in clear plastic binders."
In one magazine, he reads a story about a black man with an "uneven, ghostly hue," who has been rendered grotesque by a chemical treatment.
"There were thousands of people like him," Obama learned, "black men and women back in America who'd undergone the same treatment in response to advertisements that promised happiness as a white person."
Obama's attention to detail is a ruse. Life never ran such an article. When challenged, Obama claimed it was Ebony. Ebony ran no such article either. Besides, black was beautiful in 1970.
In a similar vein, Ayers tells of hitching a ride in Missouri with "Bud," the driver of a "brand-new Peterbilt truck." The man proceeds to regale Ayers with a string of dirty jokes – at least two of them retold word for word – before reaching under his seat and pulling out a large pistol, his "Nigger neutralizer."
"White people can never quite remember the scope and scale of the slavocracy," Ayers reminds the reader again and again. He writes as though he were not one of them.
In Obama, alas, Ayers may have found a much more a lethal weapon to use against the "marauding monster" called America than any pipe bomb he could have ever built.
Editor's note: This is the final installment of a three-part analysis of Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father." Read Part 1, "Bill Ayers' motive for penning memoir." Read Part 2, "Deconstructing the text."
On several occasions I have gotten calls from publishers to rescue a book, almost always one written by a celebrity. They have a vested interest in seeing that the book come out on time and in good style, especially if it is a projected best-seller.
My job is to match the voice of the authors, capture their content and refine their style.
Whoever rescued Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" went much further. He invested considerable time to invent a distinctive voice and style for an unknown author. In essence, he created the "Barack Obama" we know and did so for reasons that defy any marketing imperative.
Obama, who had nothing in print until "Dreams" save for some awful undergraduate poetry, could no more write a book like this than I could paint the Mona Lisa. He has done nothing since, either spoken or written, to even hint at the eloquence of the memoir's authorial voice.
Lacking digitized, full text versions of "Dreams" or Bill Ayers' "Fugitive Days," I have been reduced to close readings and yellow highlighters.
That much said, a textual comparison of the two books and the additional circumstantial evidence of time, place, means and motive make Ayers a highly likely candidate for Obama's ghostwriter.
This is troubling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the character of Bill Ayers, the radical leftist who has made "unrepentant" a household word.
For Ayers, like so many on the left, hard and soft, facts are whatever he can get away with. "He was not interested in finding the truth but in proclaiming it," British historian Paul Johnson says of Karl Marx, but he might as well have been talking about Ayers.
In perfectly pitched post-modern patois, Ayers admits as much. "The truth we know now," he tells the reader, "is always complicated, layered, evasive, perspectival."
"The old gods failed and the old truths left the world," Ayers insists. "Clear conclusions," he elaborates, "were mainly delusional, a luxury of religious fanatics and fools."
Having declared truth obsolete, Ayers permits himself to lie, often and outrageously. To justify his bombing of the Pentagon, for instance, Ayers tells the reader that a century earlier, abolitionist John Brown had "shot all the members of the grand jury," which is easily disproved nonsense.
Ayers is particularly reckless with numbers. In the "rotten and unjustifiable" Vietnam War, he tells us, America was responsible for the "indiscriminate murder of millions of Vietnamese."
Our sanctions against Iraq killed "500,000 Iraqi children." The Clinton-era missile strike on a Sudanese chemical factory "caused tens of thousands of deaths."
Demographics don't stand in the way of a good story. During the American bombing along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, he insists, "perhaps three-quarters of a million peasants were murdered cleanly from the air."
This figure represents many more people than lived in the area that was bombed and more than 10 percent of the Cambodian population. In reality, fewer than 750,000 Cambodians died violently during that whole era from all causes, most in the civil war raging throughout the country.
The killing began in earnest only in 1975 after the bombing had stopped and the communists took over. In fact, Pol Pot is the only communist Ayers criticizes, but, of course, he blames his rise on America.
Not an ill word is said about the demonstrably murderous thugs Ayers holds up as heroes: Castro, Che, Ho Chi Minh, or even Mao, the greatest monster of the 20th century.
As to the three clowns who blew themselves up in 1970 in their Greenwich Village townhouse, Ayers wonders out loud how it will take before America "imagines their actions as heroic."
For the record, the three Weathermen, including Ayers' then girlfriend, Diana Oughton, were finishing up an anti-personnel bomb designed to kill non-coms and their dates at a dance that night at Fort Dix.
Ayers, by the way, is a "distinguished professor" in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He teaches our teachers how to teach our children.
That Obama had anything to do with this man should disqualify him for the presidency. At the end of the day, the only difference between Bill Ayers and Tim McVeigh is competence.
Obama dissembles lethally when he describes Ayers as "just some guy in my neighborhood." He is much more than that and quite possibly, as I have argued, the real author of "Dreams From My Father."
The publisher of "Dreams," the openly liberal Peter Osnos, tells how Obama dumped his devoted long time agent after "Dreams" took off and then signed a seven-figure deal with Crown, using only a by-the-hour attorney.
Obama pulled off the deal after his election but before being sworn in as senator, this way to avoid the disclosure and reporting requirements applicable to members of Congress.
To his credit, Osnos publicly scolds Obama for his "ruthlessness" and "his questionable judgment about using public service as a personal payday."
Our best hope, if Obama is elected, is that he will throw Ayers under the proverbial bus as he threw his agents and numerous others.
Our worst fear, however, is that a President Obama will prove to be the "Mansourian Candidate" and that he will continue to play the useful dummy to evil ventriloquists like Bill Ayers and Khalid Al-Mansour.
Fasten your seatbelts.
Copyright 2008 Jack Cashill
Walter Annenberg,a Reagan and Nixon Ambassador, was the foundation head. There was a Republican governor on the board as well.
Geoff,
Have you ever been on a board?
Many times you see the other people once a year.
Do you know someone that disagree with?
How do you deal with them?
I love the idea that Obama is someone's ventriloquist. Isn't that Bush he's talking about.
We have the opportunity to have a U of C constitutional law professor as President.
Any real conservative would jump at the chance to have someone in charge who has actually read and grappled with the Federalist Papers.
Geoff, McCain is toast and his ilk have trashed our country with poisoned arguments like the one you've made. Be a man and read something substantial like the Federalist Papers and maybe you'll learn something.
So in short.
"I can't bring myself to believe Obama wrote this book. Even though he's intelligent and well spoken he never published a major written work so the book was clearly written by someone else. It is well known that until you publish a good book you obviously can not publish a good book.... While i'm going to present zero facts that Ayers was involved, i'm going to say i see some weak similarities between books each one published and note that Obama met Ayers a few times. Clearly Obama is a terrorist."
If Rush Limbaugh went on the radio and announced that the sun rises in the west, I'm sure we'd soon see some dipshit troll repeating it here as if he's trying to save the world from some horrible pinko-leftist-commie-muslim-terrorist conspiracy.
just saw Chicago 10 yesterday there was one right wing conservative republican ex military guy in the audience he kept telling people on the panel and in the audience to 'SHUT UP'
As I've said on this forum before. I met Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow weatherman and Northwestern law professor, Bernadette Dohrn Amazingly, they did not stuff a pipebomb down my pants. This continual harping about Obama palling around with terrorists is a perfect example of the lack of the considerations of history demonstrated by the right wing and its lack of ideas for the future.
Of course, I realize the desperation of the right, which seems to be wandering as aimlessly as their candidate at a town forum. They feel the need to keep making this Obama/Terrorist connection despite the fact that the country seems to have plunged head first into a serious and prolonged credit crisis. Is this what the shallow slogan of CountryFirst is referring to? Country First into a recession fueled by greed, misjudgement and reregulation? When faced with a current crisis what do the Republicans do? They bring up the past. Of course, they bring it up in a manner that lacks all context. They speak of John McCain's prisoner of war status as though being captured is a heroic and selfless deed. Well, McCain certainly acted heroically as a prisoner, this has been documented and acknowledged. But his experience is viewed as the only valid experience of that time and presented in a manner that presupposes that America was in total support of his military activities. Perhaps we could remember the 1960's in a context that is a bit more serious than My Three Sons and The Monkees.
The United States was engaged in a dirty war and committing acts that make Abu Gharib seem like a Fraternity pledge hazing. And losing 50,000 young Americans in the process. Niether Kennedy nor Johnson wanted to be there nor did either see the situation as winnable. Somehow they both went against there better judgement and caved to a Pentagon that kept feeding the American working and underclass into an Indochine meat grinder. Over the course of this build up and faced with the prospect of mounting casualites and prolonged strategic quagmire, opposition to this "police action" grew here at home and hundreds of thousands of citizens both young and old put their country first by vocalizing and demonstrating opposition to the war.
The Weather Underground which split from the SDS was fed up and attempted to do something more militant and pointed about their frustation with American policy. Opposed to imperialism, racism, sexism and classism they took extreme measures and bombed selected targets. In retrospect, and in a post 9/11 world, one may question this violent action, but for America at the time it is surprising that more groups didn't take up the mantel.
This country was viewed by some as on the verge of civil war. I was a child then but distinctly remember the riots at the Chicago convention. I remember the scenes on the nightly news that showed graphic war footage from abroad and a nonstop stream of demonstration. It was a troubled and devisive time and if one views it in those terms, it is, even if unacceptable, understandable that some people took up arms against their own country.
Epilogue:
Fortunately, for America we eventually pulled out of Vietnam and now they are a valued trading partner. The seventies brought us disco, hot tubs and cocaine, all valuable resources for the Me Generation that was able to begin burying the activism of the 60's. Ayers and Dohrn were never charged with any crimes. America dealt with its collective guilt for having abondened the Vietnam veteran by building a wall in Washington and by honoring its future veterans with an act taken from a Tony Orlando song.
Dude, if you are going to smear don't use the site that employs Jerome Corsi, the scumbag from swiftboats and Obama Nation.
Obama wrote his own book, he got the deal when he got elected Harvard Law Review President.
And if you wanna play this game:
What about McCain's connections to Nazi sympathizers? Catholic bashers? iran-Contra? Keating 5? What about him leaving his first wife in a nasty way and not talking about it in public?
What about Palin's love of Buchanan? And her ties to USA-hating Alaska Separatists? Her constant abuses of power?
I will say I find in US the democrats will say anything and also even after facts. Say anything and lie just to make counter record to truth, as long as it goes on record you will say anything. Many unstable people too are democrats with some kind of personality flaw or physical and social troubles.
BUCKLEY'S SON! The extreme right National Review's founder's son thinks Obama is the way to go. Let's not forget Andrew Sullivan is also a conservative.
"Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers had worked together on two non-profit boards in Chicago, including that of the Annenberg Challenge, an education project that was funded with a huge grant from the former Nixon administration official Walter Annenberg and which also had on its board a Republican donor and former Nixon aide Arnold Weber. Mr. Weber has donated $1,500 to Mr. McCain this election cycle, according to federal giving records."
Geoff, I pity you. When you make a statement like:
I will say I find in US the democrats will say anything and also even after facts. Say anything and lie just to make counter record to truth, as long as it goes on record you will say anything. Many unstable people too are democrats with some kind of personality flaw or physical and social troubles.
it just proves you have no idea what you are talking about. What, are we suppose to take this article as fact? I might suggest, if not implore you, to look up the definition of the word fact. If you are going to make such asinine comments, at least have some intelligence not to contradict yourself.
"McCain's stellar college record, 844th out of 849"
Also, look at his vice-presidential candidate's high school records. She nearly flunked out of high school! She then went to six colleges in five years! And majored in communications.....
Folks, she is not only anti-intellectual. She is dumb. As in really dumb. This is not a bright-lightbulb presidential ticket.
I'm imploring McCain to keep up the negativity. Please, continue to bring up Ayers and to get angry and to allow your supporters to yell out violent, potentially treasonous comments.
Because if you look at the polls, it's helping Obama. And not only that, but it's putting some very red-state senate races in play: Georgia (Chambliss v. Martin), Alaska (Stevens v. Begich), North Carolina (Dole v. Hagan), Kentucky (McConnel v. Lunsford) and even Minnesota (Coleman v Franken!)
More anger, more vitriol from the McPalin camp, please!
The GOP has become the modern-day equivalent of the Know-Nothings. Not only are they stupid, they're proud of being stupid and they openly vilify anybody who is educated and well-spoken. Can't have none of them librul elites speakin' them big words tellin' them how things should be run.
farwest1, I dont know why the VP's intellectual laziness is not made more of an issue. She is scarier and less prepared than Bush, and McCain is actually not that better (academically).
I appreciate conservatives and their ideas, but the last 8 years have spent any respect I cold have had for them.
There has been some discussion of Barack Obama's relationship with the former radical activist William Ayers. Because Ayers is linked to plots to bomb the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol in the 1970s, and because Ayres recently said he wished he had done more, some people say Obama's association with Ayers calls into question his judgment. Does Obama's connection with Ayers make you less likely to vote for him for president or does it not really make a difference to your vote?
Less Likely 32%
No Difference 61%
It's not working!!!
Meanwhile, the poll suggests that McCain's attacks could be blowing back on him: A majority -- 51% -- say he's running a negative campaign, as compared to only 21% who say that about Obama.
I like the wording of that poll, too. It's very "push-poll"esque. It also doesn't describe the amount or type of association that the two of them had.
For instance, I had a friend who got heavily into drug use. I stayed his friend and tried to help him through it. Does this make me a "drug user by association"?
crackpot bullshit turn the page already.
oh yeah - mccain's on a yeehaw jihad and palin's out to get you if yr educated. watch out!
just skip this nonsense fer crissakes.
Boy, can you imagine how much trouble if one of the presidential candidates was born in Panama (canal zone, schamal zone - he's a furiner!)
Honestly, its amazing how the republican campaign just can't get an effective lock on Obama, because every smear (except the one they're treading very close to now that nothing else has stuck) they go on and contradict it two minutes later or are even more guilty.
No Experience then selects Palin
Truly bizarre "Fur-i-ner" claim when McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone!
Affiliation with the Keating 5, "reading up" on the economy from Phil Gramm's whiner-proof library and trying to tie Obama to Fannie & Freddie when your new economic advisor's company took thousands and thousands of dollars to lobby congress for them.
Obama instead keeps pointing out how erratic McCain has been in his response to the economy, his statements, his campaign... Its the same message which turns the traditional republican strength on its head, and now Mcain has no choice but to keep on his current, self-destructive course.
In other word, he got played. Funny how when one side makes a habit of closing their eyes to the truth and stamping their feet, glorifying stubbornness and demeaning intelligence, the other side takes the time to study their opponent and ju-jitsu their old fearmongering asses.
Bush sucked at governing, but he never tried to out-windsurf Kerry either.
and finally, Heir Danube, go back to Germany and don't let the door hit you in your anschluss on the way out.
Oct 12, 08 5:14 pm ·
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Who writes Obama's Books?
I have to read this because it make sense and is scientific deconstructing writing of books:
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75611
Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a three-part analysis of Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father."
"I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city." Bill Ayers, "Fugitive Days."
"Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds." Barack Obama, "Dreams From My Father."
Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write "Dreams From My Father," he had written very close to nothing.
As an undergraduate, Obama had written what he justifiably calls some "very bad poetry." He published nothing under his own name in The Harvard Law Review, where he served as an editor and as president. And after leaving Harvard, he published nothing in its review or in any law journal.
Then, in 1995, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time magazine has called – with a straight face – "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."
The public is asked to believe Obama wrote this on his own. I do not buy this canard for a minute, not at all. In writing a book on intellectual fraud, "Hoodwinked," I developed an eye for literary humbug, and "Dreams" serves up an eyeful.
In writing an earlier article about "Dreams'" dubious authorship, I had questioned whether the influential Muslim crackpot who paved Obama's way into Harvard, Khalid al-Mansour, might have greased his way into the world of publishing as well. If so, he remains well behind the scenes.
On closer examination, the path to publication appears more straightforward than I anticipated. There are two sources here to consider.
One, a surprising 2006 article by liberal publisher Peter Osnos for the American Century Foundation offers some hard evidence on what Osnos describes as the "ruthlessness" of Obama's literary ascent.
The second, more speculative source – Bill Ayers' 2001 memoir "Fugitive Days" – may very well answer the questions that Osnos cannot.
As Osnos relates, a 1990 New York Times profile on Harvard's first black editor caught the eye of a hustling young literary agent named Jane Dystel.
Dystel persuaded Obama to put a book proposal together, and she submitted it. Poseidon, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster, signed on and authorized a roughly $125,000 advance for Obama's proposed memoir.
With advance in hand, Obama repaired to Chicago where the University of Chicago offered him an office and stipend to help him write. Obama dithered.
At one point, in order to finish without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. He was surely in way over his head.
According to Osnos, Simon & Schuster canceled the contract and likely asked that Obama return at least some of the advance.
Dystel did not give up. She solicited Times Book, the division of Random House at which Osnos was publisher. He met with Obama, took his word that he could finish the book and authorized a new advance of $40,000.
Then suddenly, somehow, the muse descended on Obama and transformed him from a struggling, unschooled wannabe into a literary superstar.
As the New York Times gushed, again with a straight face, Obama was "that rare politician who can write ... and write movingly and genuinely about himself."
Osnos offhandedly notes that the writing of "Dreams" was "all Obama's," which means only that someone had fixed the book before he had seen it. Two questions demand answers: who and why.
I have attempted to contact Dystel without success, but it is highly unlikely she re-wrote the book. Whoever did almost assuredly shared many of Obama's sentiments, spoke his language and spent considerable time reworking the text.
I had never even thought of Bill Ayers as a likely ghostwriter until I ordered his memoir, "Fugitive Days," and began to read it. He writes very well and very much like "Obama."
Unlike "Dreams," however, where the high style is intermittent, "Fugitive Days" is infused with the authorial voice in every sentence. That voice is surely Ayers'.
"What makes 'Fugitive Days' unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity," writes left-wing literary guru and Obama pal, Edward Said.
Said adds that Ayers' "family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement ... all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia." He could have said very much the same about "Dreams From My Father."
Obama's memoir was published in June 1995. In January 1995, Ayers had chosen Obama, then a junior lawyer at a minor law firm, to chair the multi-million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge grants.
In the fall of that same year, 1995, Ayers and his wife, Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn, launched Obama's ascent to political stardom with a fundraiser in their Chicago home.
In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama's career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama's belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.
Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a three-part analysis of Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father." Read Part 1, "Bill Ayers' motive for penning memoir."
Bill Ayers and Barack Obama have a good deal in common. Indeed, their respective memoirs, "Fugitive Days" and "Dreams From My Father," read like they could have been written by the same person – and, in fact, they may very well have been.
All the cited quotes that follow come from these two books. On the subject of content, I will refer to the author of "Dreams" as "Obama." On the subject of style, I will refer to him as the "'Dreams' author."
"Dreams" melds two styles: one, a long-winded accounting of conversations and events, polished just well enough to pass muster; the second, a fierce, succinct and tightly coiled analysis of the events that have been related.
"Fugitive Days" is fierce, succinct and tightly coiled throughout. It lacks the sometimes tedious fluff of "Dreams" and is the better book.
In the way of background, Ayers and Obama both grew up in comfortable white households and have struggled to find an identity as righteous black men ever since.
Just as Obama resisted "the pure and heady breeze of privilege" to which he was exposed as a child, Ayers, too, resisted "white skin privilege" or at least tried to.
"I also thought I was black," says Ayers only half-jokingly. He read all the books Obama did – James Baldwin, Leroi Jones, Richard Wright, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."
As proof of his righteousness, Ayers named his first son "Malik" after the newly Islamic Malcolm X and the second son "Zayd" after Zayd Shakur, a Black Panther killed in a shootout that claimed the life of a New Jersey state trooper.
Tellingly, Ayers, like Obama, began his careers as a self-described "community organizer," Ayers in inner-city Cleveland, Obama in inner-city Chicago.
"They talked into the night about children, welfare, schools, crime, rent, gangs, the problems and the life of a neighborhood," Ayers tells us of the poor black folks he tried to organize. "Dreams" is filled with such encounters.
In short, Ayers was fully capable of crawling inside Obama's head and relating in superior prose what the "Dreams" author calls a "rage at the white world [that] needed no object."
Indeed, in "Dreams," it is on the subject of black rage that the author writes most eloquently. Phrases like "full of inarticulate resentments," "knotted, howling assertion of self," "unruly maleness," "unadorned insistence on respect" and "withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage" lace the book.
In "Fugitive Days," "rage" rules and in high style as well. Ayers tells of how his "rage got started" and how it evolved into an "uncontrollable rage – fierce frenzy of fire and lava."
Indeed, the Weathermen's inaugural act of mass violence was the "Days of Rage" in 1969 Chicago.
As in Chicago, that rage led Ayers to a sentiment with which Obama was altogether familiar. Ah, yes, "audacity!"
Ayers writes, "I felt the warrior rising up inside of me – audacity and courage, righteousness, of course, and more audacity." This is one of several references.
The combination of audacity and rage has produced two memoirs that follow oddly similar rules. Ayers describes his as "a memory book," one that deliberately blurs facts and changes identities and makes no claims at history.
Obama says much the same. In "Dreams," some characters are composites. Some appear out of precise chronology. Names have been changed.
"Is this then the truth?" writes Ayers of "Fugitive Days." "Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me."
"What I've tried to do," says Obama in the same spirit, "is write an honest account of a particular province of my life."
The reader knows that Ayers – with some justification – has much to hide. He senses that Obama does too, but he is never quite sure why.
This presumed poetic license leads to the frequent manipulation of dates to make a political point.
"I saw a dead body once, as I said, when I was 10, during the Korean War," writes Ayers. This correlation is important enough that Ayers mentions it twice. The only problem is that Ayers was eight when the Korean War ended.
Obama tells us that when he was 10, he and his family visited the mainland. On the trip, back in their motel room, they watched the Watergate Hearings on TV. The problem, of course, is that those hearing started just before Obama turned 12.
One could forgive a single missed date, but inconsistent dates and numbers appear frequently in both books and often reinforce some moment of lost innocence.
In the same spirit, both books abound in detail too closely remembered and conversations too well recorded. These moments in both books occasionally lead to an awareness of ugly and unrelenting racism.
In 1970, for instance, the 9-year-old Obama alleges to be visiting the American Embassy in Indonesia. While waiting, he chances upon "a collection of Life magazines neatly displayed in clear plastic binders."
In one magazine, he reads a story about a black man with an "uneven, ghostly hue," who has been rendered grotesque by a chemical treatment.
"There were thousands of people like him," Obama learned, "black men and women back in America who'd undergone the same treatment in response to advertisements that promised happiness as a white person."
Obama's attention to detail is a ruse. Life never ran such an article. When challenged, Obama claimed it was Ebony. Ebony ran no such article either. Besides, black was beautiful in 1970.
In a similar vein, Ayers tells of hitching a ride in Missouri with "Bud," the driver of a "brand-new Peterbilt truck." The man proceeds to regale Ayers with a string of dirty jokes – at least two of them retold word for word – before reaching under his seat and pulling out a large pistol, his "Nigger neutralizer."
"White people can never quite remember the scope and scale of the slavocracy," Ayers reminds the reader again and again. He writes as though he were not one of them.
In Obama, alas, Ayers may have found a much more a lethal weapon to use against the "marauding monster" called America than any pipe bomb he could have ever built.
Editor's note: This is the final installment of a three-part analysis of Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father." Read Part 1, "Bill Ayers' motive for penning memoir." Read Part 2, "Deconstructing the text."
On several occasions I have gotten calls from publishers to rescue a book, almost always one written by a celebrity. They have a vested interest in seeing that the book come out on time and in good style, especially if it is a projected best-seller.
My job is to match the voice of the authors, capture their content and refine their style.
Whoever rescued Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" went much further. He invested considerable time to invent a distinctive voice and style for an unknown author. In essence, he created the "Barack Obama" we know and did so for reasons that defy any marketing imperative.
Obama, who had nothing in print until "Dreams" save for some awful undergraduate poetry, could no more write a book like this than I could paint the Mona Lisa. He has done nothing since, either spoken or written, to even hint at the eloquence of the memoir's authorial voice.
Lacking digitized, full text versions of "Dreams" or Bill Ayers' "Fugitive Days," I have been reduced to close readings and yellow highlighters.
That much said, a textual comparison of the two books and the additional circumstantial evidence of time, place, means and motive make Ayers a highly likely candidate for Obama's ghostwriter.
This is troubling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the character of Bill Ayers, the radical leftist who has made "unrepentant" a household word.
For Ayers, like so many on the left, hard and soft, facts are whatever he can get away with. "He was not interested in finding the truth but in proclaiming it," British historian Paul Johnson says of Karl Marx, but he might as well have been talking about Ayers.
In perfectly pitched post-modern patois, Ayers admits as much. "The truth we know now," he tells the reader, "is always complicated, layered, evasive, perspectival."
"The old gods failed and the old truths left the world," Ayers insists. "Clear conclusions," he elaborates, "were mainly delusional, a luxury of religious fanatics and fools."
Having declared truth obsolete, Ayers permits himself to lie, often and outrageously. To justify his bombing of the Pentagon, for instance, Ayers tells the reader that a century earlier, abolitionist John Brown had "shot all the members of the grand jury," which is easily disproved nonsense.
Ayers is particularly reckless with numbers. In the "rotten and unjustifiable" Vietnam War, he tells us, America was responsible for the "indiscriminate murder of millions of Vietnamese."
Our sanctions against Iraq killed "500,000 Iraqi children." The Clinton-era missile strike on a Sudanese chemical factory "caused tens of thousands of deaths."
Demographics don't stand in the way of a good story. During the American bombing along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, he insists, "perhaps three-quarters of a million peasants were murdered cleanly from the air."
This figure represents many more people than lived in the area that was bombed and more than 10 percent of the Cambodian population. In reality, fewer than 750,000 Cambodians died violently during that whole era from all causes, most in the civil war raging throughout the country.
The killing began in earnest only in 1975 after the bombing had stopped and the communists took over. In fact, Pol Pot is the only communist Ayers criticizes, but, of course, he blames his rise on America.
Not an ill word is said about the demonstrably murderous thugs Ayers holds up as heroes: Castro, Che, Ho Chi Minh, or even Mao, the greatest monster of the 20th century.
As to the three clowns who blew themselves up in 1970 in their Greenwich Village townhouse, Ayers wonders out loud how it will take before America "imagines their actions as heroic."
For the record, the three Weathermen, including Ayers' then girlfriend, Diana Oughton, were finishing up an anti-personnel bomb designed to kill non-coms and their dates at a dance that night at Fort Dix.
Ayers, by the way, is a "distinguished professor" in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He teaches our teachers how to teach our children.
That Obama had anything to do with this man should disqualify him for the presidency. At the end of the day, the only difference between Bill Ayers and Tim McVeigh is competence.
Obama dissembles lethally when he describes Ayers as "just some guy in my neighborhood." He is much more than that and quite possibly, as I have argued, the real author of "Dreams From My Father."
The publisher of "Dreams," the openly liberal Peter Osnos, tells how Obama dumped his devoted long time agent after "Dreams" took off and then signed a seven-figure deal with Crown, using only a by-the-hour attorney.
Obama pulled off the deal after his election but before being sworn in as senator, this way to avoid the disclosure and reporting requirements applicable to members of Congress.
To his credit, Osnos publicly scolds Obama for his "ruthlessness" and "his questionable judgment about using public service as a personal payday."
Our best hope, if Obama is elected, is that he will throw Ayers under the proverbial bus as he threw his agents and numerous others.
Our worst fear, however, is that a President Obama will prove to be the "Mansourian Candidate" and that he will continue to play the useful dummy to evil ventriloquists like Bill Ayers and Khalid Al-Mansour.
Fasten your seatbelts.
Copyright 2008 Jack Cashill
"Yep, looks like a photoshop job to me, I've seen a lot, I should know. You can tell by the pixels."
PS - "openly liberal"????
The great wall of words....
fuck off, tallywacker
Who writes your posts?
Walter Annenberg,a Reagan and Nixon Ambassador, was the foundation head. There was a Republican governor on the board as well.
Geoff,
Have you ever been on a board?
Many times you see the other people once a year.
Do you know someone that disagree with?
How do you deal with them?
I love the idea that Obama is someone's ventriloquist. Isn't that Bush he's talking about.
We have the opportunity to have a U of C constitutional law professor as President.
Any real conservative would jump at the chance to have someone in charge who has actually read and grappled with the Federalist Papers.
Geoff, McCain is toast and his ilk have trashed our country with poisoned arguments like the one you've made. Be a man and read something substantial like the Federalist Papers and maybe you'll learn something.
hhhhhhhhhh...
thank god this shit is almost over...
oh hey look! the dow dropped another couple hundred points!!!!
better discuss far fetched conspiracy theories instead though... its best not to trouble american citizens with actual issues
So in short.
"I can't bring myself to believe Obama wrote this book. Even though he's intelligent and well spoken he never published a major written work so the book was clearly written by someone else. It is well known that until you publish a good book you obviously can not publish a good book.... While i'm going to present zero facts that Ayers was involved, i'm going to say i see some weak similarities between books each one published and note that Obama met Ayers a few times. Clearly Obama is a terrorist."
Maybe the Republican governor who was on the board wrote his book? Or Republican Ambassador Annenberg? It was a Republican's foundation after all!
And taught his classes for 12 years at the U of C?
Clearly, McCain's stellar college record, 844th out of 849, means we're in better hands!
If Rush Limbaugh went on the radio and announced that the sun rises in the west, I'm sure we'd soon see some dipshit troll repeating it here as if he's trying to save the world from some horrible pinko-leftist-commie-muslim-terrorist conspiracy.
just saw Chicago 10 yesterday there was one right wing conservative republican ex military guy in the audience he kept telling people on the panel and in the audience to 'SHUT UP'
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0905979/
science = good, to figure out who wrote a book.
science = bad, to figure out how we came to being.
the right is setting the bar ever higher for our country...
Barack Obama 10-10-08
nobody reads lengthy posts...which is exactly why nobody understands 3D honeycomb
reagan and the muhajadeen
reagan and iran
reagan and saddam hussein
As I've said on this forum before. I met Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow weatherman and Northwestern law professor, Bernadette Dohrn Amazingly, they did not stuff a pipebomb down my pants. This continual harping about Obama palling around with terrorists is a perfect example of the lack of the considerations of history demonstrated by the right wing and its lack of ideas for the future.
Of course, I realize the desperation of the right, which seems to be wandering as aimlessly as their candidate at a town forum. They feel the need to keep making this Obama/Terrorist connection despite the fact that the country seems to have plunged head first into a serious and prolonged credit crisis. Is this what the shallow slogan of CountryFirst is referring to? Country First into a recession fueled by greed, misjudgement and reregulation? When faced with a current crisis what do the Republicans do? They bring up the past. Of course, they bring it up in a manner that lacks all context. They speak of John McCain's prisoner of war status as though being captured is a heroic and selfless deed. Well, McCain certainly acted heroically as a prisoner, this has been documented and acknowledged. But his experience is viewed as the only valid experience of that time and presented in a manner that presupposes that America was in total support of his military activities. Perhaps we could remember the 1960's in a context that is a bit more serious than My Three Sons and The Monkees.
The United States was engaged in a dirty war and committing acts that make Abu Gharib seem like a Fraternity pledge hazing. And losing 50,000 young Americans in the process. Niether Kennedy nor Johnson wanted to be there nor did either see the situation as winnable. Somehow they both went against there better judgement and caved to a Pentagon that kept feeding the American working and underclass into an Indochine meat grinder. Over the course of this build up and faced with the prospect of mounting casualites and prolonged strategic quagmire, opposition to this "police action" grew here at home and hundreds of thousands of citizens both young and old put their country first by vocalizing and demonstrating opposition to the war.
The Weather Underground which split from the SDS was fed up and attempted to do something more militant and pointed about their frustation with American policy. Opposed to imperialism, racism, sexism and classism they took extreme measures and bombed selected targets. In retrospect, and in a post 9/11 world, one may question this violent action, but for America at the time it is surprising that more groups didn't take up the mantel.
This country was viewed by some as on the verge of civil war. I was a child then but distinctly remember the riots at the Chicago convention. I remember the scenes on the nightly news that showed graphic war footage from abroad and a nonstop stream of demonstration. It was a troubled and devisive time and if one views it in those terms, it is, even if unacceptable, understandable that some people took up arms against their own country.
Epilogue:
Fortunately, for America we eventually pulled out of Vietnam and now they are a valued trading partner. The seventies brought us disco, hot tubs and cocaine, all valuable resources for the Me Generation that was able to begin burying the activism of the 60's. Ayers and Dohrn were never charged with any crimes. America dealt with its collective guilt for having abondened the Vietnam veteran by building a wall in Washington and by honoring its future veterans with an act taken from a Tony Orlando song.
Dude, if you are going to smear don't use the site that employs Jerome Corsi, the scumbag from swiftboats and Obama Nation.
Obama wrote his own book, he got the deal when he got elected Harvard Law Review President.
And if you wanna play this game:
What about McCain's connections to Nazi sympathizers? Catholic bashers? iran-Contra? Keating 5? What about him leaving his first wife in a nasty way and not talking about it in public?
What about Palin's love of Buchanan? And her ties to USA-hating Alaska Separatists? Her constant abuses of power?
I will say I find in US the democrats will say anything and also even after facts. Say anything and lie just to make counter record to truth, as long as it goes on record you will say anything. Many unstable people too are democrats with some kind of personality flaw or physical and social troubles.
HA...there is absolutely no reason to respond to that
What intellectual conservatives are saying:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/chris-buckley-f.html
BUCKLEY'S SON! The extreme right National Review's founder's son thinks Obama is the way to go. Let's not forget Andrew Sullivan is also a conservative.
David Brooks (one of my favorite conservative thinkers):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/08/david-brooks-sarah-palin_n_133001.html
Geoff, it is not only 'democrats', Obama is polling in the 50's+ because this country is seeing the extreme angry right for who they are.
From the NY Times.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/new-mccain-ad-slams-obama-on-ayers-economy/?hp
Does this make Arnold Weber a terrorist and by association, McCain a terrorist?
How does this help anything?
Geoff, I pity you. When you make a statement like:
I will say I find in US the democrats will say anything and also even after facts. Say anything and lie just to make counter record to truth, as long as it goes on record you will say anything. Many unstable people too are democrats with some kind of personality flaw or physical and social troubles.
it just proves you have no idea what you are talking about. What, are we suppose to take this article as fact? I might suggest, if not implore you, to look up the definition of the word fact. If you are going to make such asinine comments, at least have some intelligence not to contradict yourself.
The Republican party is desperate, corrupt and bankrupt of ideas.
The only way they can win is through deceit—through terror—through fear—through lies.
Geoff Danube, you are a rhetorical terrorist.
Also, look at his vice-presidential candidate's high school records. She nearly flunked out of high school! She then went to six colleges in five years! And majored in communications.....
Folks, she is not only anti-intellectual. She is dumb. As in really dumb. This is not a bright-lightbulb presidential ticket.
I'm imploring McCain to keep up the negativity. Please, continue to bring up Ayers and to get angry and to allow your supporters to yell out violent, potentially treasonous comments.
Because if you look at the polls, it's helping Obama. And not only that, but it's putting some very red-state senate races in play: Georgia (Chambliss v. Martin), Alaska (Stevens v. Begich), North Carolina (Dole v. Hagan), Kentucky (McConnel v. Lunsford) and even Minnesota (Coleman v Franken!)
More anger, more vitriol from the McPalin camp, please!
The GOP has become the modern-day equivalent of the Know-Nothings. Not only are they stupid, they're proud of being stupid and they openly vilify anybody who is educated and well-spoken. Can't have none of them librul elites speakin' them big words tellin' them how things should be run.
farwest1, I dont know why the VP's intellectual laziness is not made more of an issue. She is scarier and less prepared than Bush, and McCain is actually not that better (academically).
I appreciate conservatives and their ideas, but the last 8 years have spent any respect I cold have had for them.
More on the dying Republican brand and party by smart conservatives:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/roves-legacy.html
EMO = republicans.
Sarah Palin's high school grades.
what a shitty pick, first mccain then palin
i think we're bottoming out on the stock market as well as (hopefully) the republican party. time to start over.
This fox news poll says:
There has been some discussion of Barack Obama's relationship with the former radical activist William Ayers. Because Ayers is linked to plots to bomb the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol in the 1970s, and because Ayres recently said he wished he had done more, some people say Obama's association with Ayers calls into question his judgment. Does Obama's connection with Ayers make you less likely to vote for him for president or does it not really make a difference to your vote?
Less Likely 32%
No Difference 61%
It's not working!!!
Meanwhile, the poll suggests that McCain's attacks could be blowing back on him: A majority -- 51% -- say he's running a negative campaign, as compared to only 21% who say that about Obama.
I like the wording of that poll, too. It's very "push-poll"esque. It also doesn't describe the amount or type of association that the two of them had.
For instance, I had a friend who got heavily into drug use. I stayed his friend and tried to help him through it. Does this make me a "drug user by association"?
The logic here is nonexistent, as with Ayers.
I think Im going to start a tin-foil-hat factory. I'll make millions!
Palin got a "D" in foreigh language?
crackpot bullshit turn the page already.
oh yeah - mccain's on a yeehaw jihad and palin's out to get you if yr educated. watch out!
just skip this nonsense fer crissakes.
colbert
Someone (panda) call me?
Boy, can you imagine how much trouble if one of the presidential candidates was born in Panama (canal zone, schamal zone - he's a furiner!)
Honestly, its amazing how the republican campaign just can't get an effective lock on Obama, because every smear (except the one they're treading very close to now that nothing else has stuck) they go on and contradict it two minutes later or are even more guilty.
No Experience then selects Palin
Truly bizarre "Fur-i-ner" claim when McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone!
Affiliation with the Keating 5, "reading up" on the economy from Phil Gramm's whiner-proof library and trying to tie Obama to Fannie & Freddie when your new economic advisor's company took thousands and thousands of dollars to lobby congress for them.
Obama instead keeps pointing out how erratic McCain has been in his response to the economy, his statements, his campaign... Its the same message which turns the traditional republican strength on its head, and now Mcain has no choice but to keep on his current, self-destructive course.
In other word, he got played. Funny how when one side makes a habit of closing their eyes to the truth and stamping their feet, glorifying stubbornness and demeaning intelligence, the other side takes the time to study their opponent and ju-jitsu their old fearmongering asses.
Bush sucked at governing, but he never tried to out-windsurf Kerry either.
and finally, Heir Danube, go back to Germany and don't let the door hit you in your anschluss on the way out.
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