Obama’s Ghostwriters — ObWi Exclusive!!

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by publius

Andy McCarthy has a major scoop today — he suggests that Bill Ayers not only knows Obama, but that he actually wrote Obama’s book. I was understandably skeptical that Ayers would ghostwrite a book about growing up fatherless and black in a white community, but then I thought — when has McCarthy ever been wrong?

So, I scanned a full text of Dreams of My Father through a program I hacked up here — the iPublius © — that compares a scanned text with the existing writings of others. The program identifies ghostwriters by analyzing similar “themes, sophistication and signature phraseology.” The results from the iPublius revealed a far darker story than even McCarthy describes. It’s not merely that Obama let Ayres write a chapter of his book, he let lots of other people write other chapters. Here’s the list of authors according to the iPublius:

Preface — Barack Obama

Chpt. 1 — Bill Ayers

Chpt. 2 — Jeremiah Wright

Chpt. 3 — Larry Johnson (ed. — That one surprised me).

Chpt. 4 — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Chpt. 5 — Billy Mitchell (slimy cheat from King of Kong)

Chpt. 6 — Karl Marx (posthumously)

Chpt. 7 — Darth Vader

Chpt. 8 — The gorilla from Donkey Kong

Chpt. 9 — Eric Martin

Chpt. 10 — Hamas Q. Muslimman (a Buddhist, ironically)

Chpt. 11 — the New Deal

Chpt. 12 — Gary Farber

This is an absolute outrage — and I commend McCarthy for getting to the bottom of it.

67 thoughts on “Obama’s Ghostwriters — ObWi Exclusive!!”

  2. Reinforcing McCarthy’s speculation about secret conspiracies (and how apt that phrase!), I have it on good authority that the books of Obama and Ayers used not only identical alphabets, but even indistinguishable systems of punctuation! P.S. How do we know McCarthy actually wrote his own blog post? I see the malign ghostwriting hand of Bill Ayers there as well, desperately seeking to promote his claim to the credit cruelly denied him for so long!

  5. To be honest, I reckon Obama probably is substantially underplaying his relationship to Ayers. The delicious irony of all this is that the Reps are fuming because they know there’s more to this because they just can’t prove it, Obama’s sewn up stuff too tight back in Chicago.
    Don’t get me wrong, personally I don’t care at all about Obama’s relationships with Ayers and Wright, but I do think the Reps are right in thinking that he and Ayers actually are friends or at least friendly, and it is genuinely absurd to think that Obama was somehow ignorant of the content of Wright’s more explosive sermons.
    The fact is, Obama is comfortable with people whose opinions are anathema to the right, and probably to many/most Americans if presented in the right (ie very negative) light. But it’s obviously absurd to assume that Obama shares their views or is as radical as them, even if he is capable of understanding and sympathising with their points of view. Rational people know that this is actually a great quality for a president fighting the war on terror, to understand that not every fervent critic of American policy is simply teh eevil.
    I guess my point is, by all means lets stamp on the Republican attack machine, but I also wouldn’t want us to drink our own candidate’s kool-aid.

  10. “To be honest, I reckon Obama probably is substantially underplaying his relationship to Ayers.”
    And this reckoning is based on what, again?

  11. To be honest, I reckon Obama probably is substantially underplaying his relationship to Ayers.

    Bet it’s that they go karaoke singing together.

  12. Did anybody ever contact the Annenberg Foundation and get a list of all the other people on the board for the Annenberg Challenge? I keep hearing that there were plenty of republicans on the board, but I am curious if they have been identified and if they have made statements on the issue.

  13. Publius, cheat? Billy Mitchell didn’t come across very well in the documentary, but the documentary sets it up that way. A very entertaining, damning rant about it:
    http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000574.html
    It was set up to present a good-vs-evil storyline — fine, it was an entertaining movie while it lasted, at least, but I feel it’s wrong to go around accusing Billy Mitchell of being a “slimy cheat”.

  15. Also, there’s an Onion AV Club interview with Billy Mitchell; he comes across as a bit arrogant, but it’s an interesting Rashomon exercise in seeing the filmmaker’s defense of what they did, and Billy Mitchell’s defense of who he is.

  16. Aha, but since it can be proven (to the satisfaction of at least one blogger, somewhere) that the scripts for the Star Wars movies and Das Kapital were written by Eric Martin and sent back in time by the CIA’s “Stargate”…
    Regards, C

  17. Does this shed light on the controversy over whether the original Donkey Kong is in fact identical to the current Donkey Kong, or has become the elderly ape known in more recent games as Cranky Kong? Because I feel the public needs to know.

  19. Chpt. 10 — Hamas Q. Muslimman (a Buddhist, ironically)
    I did not think you capable of such wiseassery, sir. So glad to be proven wrong.

  22. What McCarthy left out is that these same authors have been promised cabinet positions in the Obama White House.
    Gary Farber for Labor Secretary!

  23. One of McCarthy’s “criticisms” is that there is nothing in Obama’s paper trail that would indicate an ability to write that well. Note to McCarthy…James Jones never wrote anything before he wrote “From Here To Eternity”…

  24. You know, that would have been funnier if I had remembered the guy’s name is Cullen Sheehan and not Cullen Murphy.
    I blame the Lagavulin that forced its way into my glass at around 2:00am this morning.
    Sigh.

  25. I heard Hilzoy got Bill Ayers to write her posts for her on September 3rd, the second week in June, and all of April this year. I hear Bill Ayers ghostblogs for Glenn Greenwald, The Rude Pundit, and Arthur Silbur. In his spare time, I heard he writes Harry Potter fanfic and M*A*S*H novels.

  26. I did the dirty and clicked on the NRO link and found this quote that I thought was funny:
    “If he wins, Obama will be my president, and as I’m not a MoveOn Democrat who’d rather tear down my country than see a president I opposed succeed”
    Why do I find that hard to believe? Is it because the last time a Democratic President was in office, these wingnuts did everything in their power to destroy him?
    Everyone knows what is going to happen if Obama wins. Just hit rewind on the time machine and go back to ’92 and press play. The NRO lunatics won’t see Obama as deserving of the office and will show no respect or decency to him. The seeds of this hate are already being planted by the McCain campain.

  27. “One of McCarthy’s “criticisms” is that there is nothing in Obama’s paper trail that would indicate an ability to write that well.”
    OHMIGOD! Harper Lee didn’t write To Kill A Mockingbird, BILL AYERS DID!

  29. “it’s not merely that obama let ayres write a chapter of his book”

    ayers. people keep making this error for some reason.

    it’s probably a vast left wing conspiracy to confuse people into thinking it’s another man entirely.
    or just a typo.

  30. I’m impressed that Mitchell could both push for an independent Air Force, to the point of court martial, and be a Donkey Kong champion. That’s a guy with true mad skilz.
    Also, I love his Hair Products For Men.

  31. Obama is comfortable with people whose opinions are anathema to the right, and probably to many/most Americans if presented in the right (ie very negative) light
    Lincoln, Jefferson, Adams (“The US is not a Christian Nation”), Franklin…

  32. “The NRO lunatics”
    They actually do vary somewhat, as individuals, in their opinions, you know. They’re not, in fact, clones.
    Derbyshire’s form of madness is rather different than Lopez’s, which is different than McCarthy, which is different than Goldberg, etc.

  33. They actually do vary somewhat, as individuals, in their opinions, you know. They’re not, in fact, clones.
    True — and yet, they all manage to be lunatics. Impressive, no?

  34. I hope everybody realizes that this is either a joke or the musings of a paranoid person. Have you ever walked by a criminal in the airport? Do you know everything about the people you work with?
    This so-called analysis of writing came up supposedly with wildly different writing styles in each chapter.
    In order to do this type of textual analysis scientifically, one needs to have a group of writings that you use to develop the program, then a group of writings that you test is against. There is always going to be some error.
    Here is a link to a free article. Forget the biochemistry and look at the methods used. Before you say a presidential candidate is consorting with terrorists based on some rinky dink analysis, please use good methods.
    http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/347/25/1999?ijkey=54f663c97f6246d9d0d1475cce97b2e0cbb179d4
    Alternatively, stop the whining and start thinking about how to fix our country.

  37. And this reckoning is based on what, again?
    As a resident, I’ll just say that Bill Ayers was someone you *had* to be friends with if you wanted to exist in Chicago politics.
    His dad until he died was a powerful, powerful, man. As a matter of fact, if he hadn’t died last year you never would have heard boo-bullshit about Bill Ayers. If anyone didn’t know what they were doing and started up this line of bullshit, his dad would have made a few calls and McCain or Palin would have figured out it was real bad business to bring up Bill Ayers.
    It’s just Chicago, and it’s stupid and desperate to start talking about the Weathermen in 2008, but Obama probably had the same warm relations that every other pol in Illinois had (including all the Republicans) with Bill Ayers.

  40. I’ve also noticed a rather telling physical quirk that Obama and Ayers share: Both men tend to expand and contract their chest cavities in rhythmic cycles that seem to repeat every few seconds. I recognize this isn’t necessarily unique to the two men, but I would recommend to all the vocal standard bearers of the honorable Republican Party that they make a commitment to demonstrate their solidarity against the seditious Obama candidacy by consciously avoiding this particular tic, at least until the danger of the election has passed.

  41. Jack Cashill’s original “story” on this subject is interesting. It shows how someone that has actually very little data can stretch into describing Obama into how Cashill wants to view him. Because Obama published little to nothing prior, implies to him that he probably can’t write; not fulfilling the original contract to writ the book implies that Obama wsa in way over his head and overlooks that while he did nt make his deadlines, he still could have had a majority of it written. Two sentences, one from Ayres book, the other from Obama’s are compared to show that Ayres probably wrote the whole book–that is a stretch that this author certainly wanted to make.
    Obama didn’t write his books.
    Kerry didn’t deserve his medals.
    Gore lied about his record.
    Clinton was slick Willy.
    Anyone else see Rove’s pattern?

  45. Anyone else see Rove’s pattern?
    his baldness has progressed sufficiently that i don’t think we can determine which pattern he followed to get there.

  46. McCarthy is barely scratching the surface with Obama. First, it wasn’t Ayres who wrote Obama’s book, it was Obama who wrote Ayres’ book. How else would Obama have learned the communist ideology he’s been so successful at hiding?
    It’s also become evident via Mark Hemingway that Barack Obama is a mob kingpin seeking to consolidate his control over the “United Nations” of organized crime.
    Finally, I create my own case that Barack Obama assassinated President Kennedy when he was 27 months old. Given all the questions that have been raised about Obama, it’s impossible not to conclude that it was Obama rather than Oswald who killed one of “our greatest presidents in America” (to paraphrase Palin).

  47. “First, it wasn’t Ayres who wrote Obama’s book, it was Obama who wrote Ayres’ book.”
    Ayers, damnit. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers. Ayers.
    Obama also caused us to lose Vietnam, though. And China.

  49. Very clever. And of course by a principled ELS letter spacing (the key is too large to fit in this comment), we have as the actual author of the book…
    Bill Ayers
    Larry Johnson
    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
    Jeremiah Wright
    Hamas Q. Muslimman
    Eric Martin
    Billy Mitchell
    The gorilla from Donkey Kong
    Darth Vader
    Gary Farber
    Karl Marx
    …SATAN!!!!

  50. I field tested iPublius© and found a number of bugs. Fixing them resulted in the following output:

    • Preface — Barack Obama
    • Chpt. 1 — Bill Ayers
    • Chpt. 2 — Jeremiah Wright
    • Chpt. 3 — Hugo Chávez
    • Chpt. 4 — Mrs .Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
    • Chpt. 5 — Willie Horton
    • Chpt. 6 — Eldridge Cleaver (posthumously)
    • Chpt. 7 — Sistah Souljah
    • Chpt. 8 — Barbra Streisand
    • Chpt. 9 — John Walker Lindh
    • Chpt. 10 — Hamas Q. Muslimman (the Mooslim one)
    • Chpt. 11 — Rodney King
    • Chpt. 12 — Sonny Bono (unexplained)

  52. Ayers. People keep making this error for some reason.
    I suspect it’s because of Lew (though John spells it like Bill.)

  54. McCarthy: the rigors of the campaign which would cause even the most gifted communicator to faulter from time to time.
    But what, then, causes McCarthy’s spelling to faulter?

  55. Finally, I create my own case that Barack Obama assassinated President Kennedy when he was 27 months old.
    Obama is Noir !

  61. publius:
    I expect better from you. Content is copyrighted, brands and devices are registered. You, as a lawyer who follows that stuff, should know this. So it should be the iPublius ®, or the iPublius™, but certainly not the iPublius ©.
    [No, I really don’t have anything of value to add…]

  63. Cynic is correct–it is a little known fact that Gary Farber is actually Sony Bono, who wss not really killed in that skiing accident . . .
    Farber/Bono is, in fact, in litigation agasint Obama for a portion of the proceeds of the book, Cher and Cher alike . . .

  66. Actually, devices are patented.
    Brands are trademarked.
    And content is copyrighted.
    The extent to which software enjoys copyright protections, it is in the actual expression of the source code itself, as well as the physical look and feel of the graphical interface (Gary’s link explains this in more detail).
    But tgirsch is right that p-diddy should have used the trademark symbol, not the copyright symbol. The copyright symbol would appear in the graphical interface.
    He would use the ® symbol if the trademark has actually been registered with the USPTO.
    He would use the ™ symbol if the trademark is not actually registered. Trademarks, like copyrights, enjoy common law protections even when not filed or registered.

  67. Is true! Every chapter I stole from different author. Index I took from old Vladivostok telephone directory!
    The giveaway, incidentally, was that Chapter 12 included the words “I wrote about this two years ago in my other book”.

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