The great Jerome Corsi documents yet another shrapnel fragment flying off the continuing Obama train wreck.
Bill Ayers: One more, one more (question)
Question:Thank you sir, thank you, thank you. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein wrote that President Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father," quote: "may be the best written memoir ever produced by an American politician."
Ayers: I agree with that.
Question:What is your opinion of Barack Obama's style as a writer and uh …
Ayers: I think the book is very good, the second book ("The Audacity of Hope") is more of a political hack book, but uh, the first book is quite good.
Question: Also, you just mentioned the Pentagon and Tomahawk …
Ayers: Did you know that I wrote it, incidentally?
Question: What's that?
Ayers: I wrote that book.
Several audience members: Yeah, we know that.
Question: You wrote that?
Ayers: Yeah, yeah. And if you help me prove it, I’ll split the royalties with you. Thank you very much.
Oooooof.
WND contributor Jack Cashill seems to thinkthis is a shot across Barack Obama's bow. In his opinion, the very anti-war Bill Ayers is angry at Obama for the President's Libyan war kinetic military action. I think that's a pretty good assessment.
I don't believe that's the entire story here though. I think Bill Ayers is suffering from a classic case of 'Tire Tracks From Under Obama's Bus' Syndrome. Peace Prize Barry basically used Ayers like a kleenex. Instead of Ayers catching at least a little credit for penning Dreams--something like 'By Barack Obama and William Ayers'--homeboy got a whole lot of nothing.
It might have been easier on Ayers to get no props for Dreamswhen Obambi was a hack community rabble-rouser or a benchwarming Illinois state Senator. When the former Weatherman watched Obama become a Democrat Party show-horse and media-created President, without ever acknowledging Bill Ayers' full contribution to the St. Bambi mythos, that was probably incredibly grating. Obama's North African adventurism may have been simply the last straw.
More importantly than Bill Ayers needing to recover from his skinned knee and bruised ego, this episode is just one more nail in the coffin for the Barack Obama 2008 campaign narrative. Dreams From My Fatherwas a big piece of Obama's intellectual curriculum vitae. As opposed to the supposedly illiterate Dubya or the crusty old warrior John McCain, Candidate Lightbringer was a serious author who had written not one, but two books. Dreams and The Audacity of Hope were meant to display Barry's intellectual firepower. While the junior Senator from Illinois had almost no legislative accomplishments, his alleged mastery of the written word was supposed to assure nervous voters that they were supporting a true Renaissance man.
And now we see the myth of Obama's intellectualism crumbling. All it took was one of the key enablers in Bamster's web of lies to get pissed off at his former protegé. Barry's chickens are finally coming home to roost.
But really, one can't be completely shocked when a politician as weaselly as Barack Obama is found out to have inflated his resume. To paraphrase Winston Churchill's comments about Clement Atlee, Senator HopeyChangey's barely-there congressional record had much to be humble about. No empty-suit candidate with a similar doughnut hole in his history could do anything else. Obama is clearly no exception to this fibbing phenomenon.
The blame for Obama being able to pull off this sham rests not with the president, but with the American mainstream press. The New York Times/MSNBC/Washington Post Axis of Fail constantly pats itself on the crotch for brave truth-telling. Instead of digging into Obama's shady past, they did everything they could to bury damaging details about their preferred candidate and attacked his opposition.
Better still, this MSM willful blindness also reveals just how badly they suck at the one job in which they're supposed to be experts. They're the ones who were supposed to figure out just how much Bill Ayers figured into Barack Obama's narrative. The lamestream press allowed the illusion of Barack Obama's superior intelligence--a major component of his appeal to voters--to flourish without a question. By doing that, they set themselves up to be punked by bloggers who have shown more initiative in the last two years than Big Media has shown in the last two decades.
UPDATE: Now a big ole' Memeorandum thread too. Time to pile on while the piling on is good, I say.
UPDATE II: Allahpundit offers a dissenting view:
Via the American Thinker. I think John Hawkins is spot on in detecting the sarcasm here, but if you’re inclined to believe that Ayers is The One’s ghostwriter, you’re bound to detect a “deeper truth” in his tone.
... I think he enjoys mocking people who push this idea and enjoys it doubly when they can’t detect the mockery. In fact, I’d bet that this is his stock response anytime the book is mentioned in his presence — insisting that he wrote it to see if the listener laughs and then toying with them if they seem credulous. But as I say, your mileage may vary.
Yeah, this doesn't exactly work for me. AP's analysis blithely discounts Jack Cashill's work that pretty much proves that Bill Ayers wrote "Dreams". Cashill lays out the bones of his argument here.
To credit Dreamsto Obama alone, one has to posit any number of near miraculous variables: he somehow found the time; he somewhere mastered nautical jargon and postmodern jabberwocky; he in some sudden, inexplicable way developed the technique and the talent to transform himself from stumbling amateur to literary superstar without any stops in between.
If anything, the last few years should make Cashill's thesis even more believable. The Duffer-in-Chief is not exactly breaking his back as President. Dude works harder on his NCAA basketball brackets than on seemingly anything else. The guy requires a teleprompter for both formal and informal occasions. It seems highly unlikely that Barack Obama would put in the work necessary to become a strong writer.
Moreover, why can't two things be true at once? Why can't Bill Ayers be sarcastic and be telling the truth at the same time? I mean, it's sorta weird, but it's not such a strange thing. Ayers is a squirrelly lib hack. It makes weird sense that he'd do something so goofy and underhanded. Homeboy probably gets a little thrill thinking how clever he is laying out this secret in plain view.
