SALON

Wednesday, Oct 7, 2009 5:45 PM UTC

Obama’s ghostwriter fesses up!

Bill Ayers jokes: "I ghost-wrote 'Dreams From My Father.'" Conservative bloggers: "We knew it!"

By

Topics: Barack Obama, War Room,

Obama's ghostwriter fesses up!William Ayers speaks about his two books to an audience at the All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, Monday, Nov. 17, 2008.

It’s the question tearing the nation apart: Who really wrote Barack Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father”? You see, only Obama-worshiping sheeple think that the president would have been capable of penning that memoir. No, it must have been someone else. Someone close to Obama — a guy in the neighborhood perhaps. Someone who also writes books. You see where this is going, don’t you? Bill Ayers wrote “Dreams From My Father.” There’s no other explanation.

This theory seems to spring up every few months, gain a minor following in the more credulous pockets of the right-wing blogosphere, and then die down a bit. Well, today it’s back once more, and with its strongest piece of “evidence” yet, the Ayers-as-ghostwriter camp has gained a whole pile of online attention, and they even got credence from people like the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg.

Here’s what happened: A conservative blogger by the name of Anne Leary ran into Ayers buying coffee in an airport. Recognizing him, she started talking to him in what seems to have been a rather unfriendly manner. Leary identified herself as a conservative blogger and took Ayers’ photo, presumably to prove the encounter happened, and shortly after, he dropped this bombshell:

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.

A few bloggers just didn’t have the willpower to resist bait that tantalizing. At Examiner.com, James Simpson speculated that the stress of mounting evidence of his crimes cracked Ayers’ otherwise steely communist discipline, causing him to spill the beans. Powerline’s Scott Johnson weighed the evidence and decided that Ayers was probably joking. Still, he noted, “I think it’s fair to say that Ayers is a good [ghostwriter] candidate.”

Call it X-Files conservatism. You know — “I want to believe.” Other believers included ChicagoNow’s Dennis Byrne, Tom Maguire at Just One Minute, Lance Burri of Troglopundit, the well-named “Reliapundit,” New Zeal’s Trevor Loudon and Another Black Conservative.

Most prominently, the National Review’s Goldberg, who had previously dismissed the theory, wondered if he should reevaluate. Wrote Goldberg:

If it pans out, that is to my mind a very big story. Stay tuned. But I do think I should revise my earlier pooh-poohing of Jack Cashill’s effort to prove the Ayers-Obama connection. A while back, a close friend of mine (and a pretty famous person in NR land) harrangued me about how I didn’t give Cashill’s argument enough attention or consideration and that it makes a pretty persuasive case. This friend then walked me through it for a while and I was impressed.

Meanwhile, at Townhall.com, Carol Platt Liebau asked, “One has to wonder why no one in the MSM [mainstream media] ever thought of simply asking ‘Professor’ Ayers the same question. Will anyone in the MSM bother to follow up?”

Funny thing — someone in the MSM went and did that. The National Journal asked Ayers about the book over the weekend.

When he finished speaking, we put the authorship question right to him. For a split second, Ayers was nonplussed. Then an Abbie Hoffmanish, steal-this-book-sort-of-smile lit up his face. He gently took National Journal by the arm. “Here’s what I’m going to say. This is my quote. Be sure to write it down: ‘Yes, I wrote Dreams From My Father. I ghostwrote the whole thing. I met with the president three or four times, and then I wrote the entire book.’” He released National Journal’s arm, and beamed in Marxist triumph. “And now I would like the royalties.”

After seeing that piece, Goldberg wrote a sparse update, with the above quotation and the comment, “It sounds like Ayers is jerking some chains.”

Who says lefties have no sense of humor?

Update: The Daily Beast e-mailed Ayers looking for comment, and got this response from him: “You’ve all lost your minds. Best of luck in the twilight zone.”

Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale. More Gabriel Winant.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 62 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations