POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Jeff Goldstein’s Posts on Cashill and Andersen

If you haven't followed the story closely, you may not know that last year Jack Cashill determined that Bill Ayers likely had a hand in the production of Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father, which garnered such fawning critical acclaim.  Cashill's speculation was based on stylistic comparisons, comparisons of metaphor and theme, and other factors, including that Obama had left no paper trail that he was capable of penning such a piece on his own, whereas his book revealed a lot of similarities to the several writings of Ayers, who, despite being a treacherous douchebag, is nevertheless an accomplished prose stylist.

The suggestion, once broached, caused some commotion in the blogopshere.  Naturally, those who were inclined to disparage Obama found it more compelling than Obamaphiles did.  And although he didn't endorse Cashill's thesis, Jeff thought it worthy of consideration.  Naturally, as well, this brought down a considerable amount of abuse on his head.

The recent book about Obama and Michelle's marriage by celebrity biographer Christopher Andersen verified Ayers hand in Dreams, and was met with outraged denial among the Obamarati.  Jeff's been in an ongoing blog battle with Scott Kaufman, but Ta-Nehisi Coates, of The Atlantic really ought to be sharing some of the crow, having determined that the whole theory was a matter of epic failure.

Scott's been going around and around with Jeff, and yesterday engaged me on Twitter in this matter.  He seems to believe that Cashill's methodology was unreasonable, and that anyone who believed what he said was unreasoning, and that, in effect, Cashill's having been right was the equivalent of a man closing his eyes while being pitched at, swinging the bat blindly, and hitting a home run.  In fact, though, Cashill was one person who did have his eyes open, while the MSM blindly lavished praise on the man whom they would make king.  And, given Obama's history of obfuscations, withholding of information, and outright lies, those of us who credited the possibility that Cashill might be right understood that he had a reasonable basis for his suspicion based on the available evidence that Obama was a jumped-up, twatwaffling weasel who was given an enormous book deal based on having been the first blackish editor of the Harvard Law Review, for which he is said to have done very little work.  The sum total of his acknowledgment of Ayers' contribution is thanks for letting him use the kitchen table, which is one of those typically Obaman scratch your cheek with your middle finger "sly" gestures.

In trying to explain to Scott why I didn't care about his refusal to apologize, which he has gone to elaborate lengths to justify, I mentioned that some scientific historians believe that Gregor Mendel fudged his data.  And Scott responded by asking me whether I really wanted to contest with him over obsolete evolutionary theory, with a helpful link to an abstract of his dissertation.  I replied that that wasn't the purpose.  What I meant to say is that a person can arrive at a valid insight based on methods that another person might regard as heuristic, but that in and of itself doesn't invalidate their insights.

Cashill was right.  Scott Eric Kaufman and Ta-Nehisi Coates were wrong.  And those who believed that Barack Obama would stoop to taking credit for an accomplishment not his in important ways, and would lie outright when asked about it, were right.  Really, it amounts to a kind of plagiarism.  But all of this truth is really damning evidence against people like Jeff, Jack Cashill, and me, because, after all, wasn't this a kind of profiling, and isn't that raaaaacist?

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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