seems circumstantial, but it does make some fascinating points: who wrote Obama's book ? not sure i buy it at all, but the guy does some interesting analysis. this may be a question that IS answerable in the near future with new technologies coming online.
I remember "Profiles in Courage", a book written by Ted Sorenson, and for which JFK received a Pulitzer Prize.
If the logic behind this is true (that an author's first work cannot be good), then there is no such thing as an excellent debut novel/article/column. This is, of course, ridiculous and stupid.
grove, put the way you put it, i agree. but that is not really his point. his point is that there is zero previous evidence that Obama can write well at all and that any short examples of his writings have been blocked from exposure (his LSAT, any writings for the Law Review etc)..........so you are using a strawman representation of the argument.
A well-educated and well-read man turns out to be able to write decently. There is nothing to this. It's low-brow conspiracy-mongering. This is stupid.
Check this sentence on the FRES, it's 55.1... WILLIAM AYERS MUST HAVE JUST COME IN AND WRITTEN IT FOR ME!!! "The sad bellow of a train sounds through the Sulphur Springs night air, mourning for the promise of a vibrant city that never grew, calling to sleep those sad inhabitants of a town doomed to stagnation." Try it yourself.
Lawyers write as a matter of their profession. By the time they leave law school, they've written quite a bit. Thinking clearly is the first step to writing clearly. Obama is clearly a smart guy. You may have noticed that a number of attorneys over the last twenty or so years have popped up in fiction and TV as writers. Oh, and who gives a **** if he got help writing a memoir? I always wondered if the binLaden Family bailed W out of any of his business messes. Even if they did, I wouldn't call W a terrorist. I don't have to hate an opponent and believe he is an enemy of the US to justify my vote for the guy I choose. The good vs evil model is not a good intellectual beginning to political considerations. I don't blame you for distancing yourself from the article. You should have just emailed Horn6721 and let him run with it.
What a ridiculous story. By the way, I just ran this sentence (which I've redacted to remove specifics), from an email I wrote yesterday, through the readability test:
You guys don't get it, do you? Ayers went really underground in the 70's and 80's, emerged as an academe for the sole purpose of making (by ghostwriting a memoir in the early 90's) a new bomb (Obama, a then unknown graduate of Harvard Law School) to plant in the White House to blow up the entire country about 15 years later. My goodness! To think the country is falling for it!
This is an absurd theory, especially when one puts the book's publishing history in context. Obama's book sold only 15,000 copies when it was originally published in 1995 and then went out of print. The book only really started selling after Obama gave his 2004 speech. So this book was not some sensation or a best-seller when originally published, the book's success is tied to Obama winning the 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate.
I have a theory that John McCain's "Faith of Our Fathers" was written by Charles Keating. Maybe I should pitch that story idea to the "American Thinker."
"Fugitive Days" was written after Obama's book. If the stylistic similarities the guy in the foil hat notes are so striking, I think that proves that Obama ghost wrote the book for Ayers. We cannot elect a man who ghost writes books for terrorists. COME ON PEOPLE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU! CAN'T YOU SEE THE TRUTH BEFORE YOUR EYES? AAAHHHHRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
Here's a vote that Andy Katz ghosted the books. The following passage comes in at 12.6 years education for readability and 54.1 readability on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease scale. "So, Barnes offers up a little tip that freshman shooting guard Varez Ward will be a factor for this season's team, returning big men Gary Johnson and Dexter Pittman will provide hard-nosed play inside and have improved greatly, and the surprise contributor this season will be the oft-injured big man Matt Hill. His cerebral play will be a help for the Longhorns."
This is what the pubs have for hope in re reaching the Oval Office. I am surprised anyone thinks the book is well written. It is readable, but it's power hardly derives from the prose.
I would like to see JM's college writing as well. I need some new techniques on picking up strippers and getting loaded...
This is so outlandish, it feels like someone making something up to make fun of the conspiracy theorists. Of course, the new GOP seems willing to consider just about any theory as legitinate enough that it "raises questions" or that "Obama needs to be up front about this."
Not a big deal, Henry Rollins wrote David Lee Roths, "Crazy From the Heat". A lot of people are there for the process and feed the story, the writer just crafts it.
I can guarantee Ayers did not write Obama's book. How? I have been reading marxist literature for over forty years. Ayers is a marxist. They can't write. None of them. Except Trotsky a little. Add to that the fact that Ayers has been an education bureaucrat for the last twenty or thirty years. They are the only people in the world who write worse than marxists. If you doubt me, pick up a copy of any marxist book and read a few pages. Yes, Marx has some nice lines in the Manifesto but they are about what a great system capitalism is ("all that is solid melts into air") and then he slinks back into determiinist claptrap. And you really need to read any book or paper written by an "educator." And to think, we turn the kids over to these brain dead cretins. Ayers is incapable of writing decent prose. Some lawyers on the other hand do quite well, especially is they are aiming for clarity and directness, which Obama mostly does in his book.
