PrintSeptember 29, 2009
Unmasking Obama
It is now abundantly clear that the image of Barack Obama sold to the American electorate was tightly edited, air-brushed, and exaggerated. He has worn a series of masks -- eloquent orator, brilliant scholar, centrist, and literary sensation. All of these masks are coming off as he copes with a job for which image will not suffice. For instance, hiding behind the eloquent orator mask is a guy who says "uhh" a lot when he is winging it, and who makes lots of factual and grammatical mistakes.
Now, thanks to Jack Cashill, the literary mask has been removed. Obama is a literary pretender. Case closed. The evidence is overwhelming that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Dreams from my Father, the book which established Obama's pose as a brilliant writer (and therefore a fine mind, in the estimation of many). The stylistic resemblance between the Dreams and Ayers' work is stunning. Now we know, thanks to Chris Andersen's new book,that Obama hit a brick wall trying to fulfill his contract to produce a book, and shipped off his notes and tapes to Ayers. That is the classic description of a ghost writer's assignment. And it completely fits the theories Cashill had inferentially reasoned from the data of his literary studies.
The revelation that Chris Andersen had two separate sources means that this fact meets the journalistic standard of reliability, provided by a respected, established bestselling author. Obama's dismissal of Ayers as "just a guy in the neighborhood" has been shown to be an outright lie.
That will certainly be the verdict of history, regardless of whether or not the issue of Obama's ghost written book ever breaks through into the national discussion. My bet is that the media will not be able to suppress discussion. The image of Obama packing boxes full of tapes and notebooks and hauling them over to Ayers' house a couple of blocks away, is simple and compelling evidence of a ghost writer being put to work. Jack's literary detective work made the case, and Andersen's two neighborhood sources confirm it.
Anyone who refuses to deal with this issue is willfully avoiding topics that make Obama look bad. The facts are in the public domain.
The New York Times has just appointed a new editor to monitor online conservative websites and talk radio, to make sure the paper doesn't embarrass itself again, as it did on the Van Jones and ACORN stories. Unlike every other editor, the Times is keeping the name of this editor secret.
[Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news,] and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person "a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere."
So, whoever you are at the New York Times, you're probably reading American Thinker as an unpleasant duty. If I knew who you were, I'd bombard you with a polite note laying out the trail for you to follow on this important story. The President of The United States lied when he claimed that "I actually wrote them [his books] myself."
I think that's news that's fit to be printed, even if uncongenial to the incumbent Democrat president. Don't you?
I think that's news that's fit to be printed, even if uncongenial to the incumbent Democrat president. Don't you?
Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker.
