Bill Ayers has just poured gasoline on the firestorm raging about the true authorship of Barack Obama’s book “Dreams From My Father.”
In an impromptu interview at a Starbucks in D.C., Bill Ayers has evidently claimed he is the true author of Obama’s best selling book.
Jack Cashill first illuded to this when reading Christopher Andersen’s new book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage.
Andersen contends that despite a large advance, Obama found himself “hopelessly blocked.” After four years of trying to finish, Obama “sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.” This he did “at Michelle’s urging,” she being the more pragmatic half of the couple.
What attracted the Obamas were “Ayers’s proven abilities as a writer.” Barack particularly liked the fluid novelistic style of To Teach, a 1993 book by Ayers. This he hoped to emulate for his own family history. In fact, he had already taped interviews with many of his relatives, both African and American. The key sentence in Andersen’s account is the one that follows:
“These oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers.” Adds Andersen, “Thanks to help from veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Book.” The manuscript in question would become Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, what Joe Klein of Time Magazine called “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”
Cody Kessler with Backyard Conservative from Chicago is claiming that she approached Bill Ayers at a Starbucks in Washington D.C., snapped his picture and started a conversation with him. She has offered evidence of this conversation by posting the photo and her flight ticket to prove she was indeed there with Ayers. Ayers was in D.C. giving a speech to the GW on the day in question.
Then, unprompted he said–I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said–Michelle asked me to. I looked at him. He seemed eager. He’s about my height, short. He went on to say–and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop pulling my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again–I really wrote it, the wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily edited it. He said–I wrote it. I said–why would I believe you, you’re a liar.
He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.
But the question remains – is Barack Obama a fraud? Is his myth-making creation and only major accomplishment a product of Bill Ayers’ imagination? (or his own) Is our President Barack Obama’s biography written by an unrepentant domestic terrorist?
