Ayers is just the latest of a long string of lefties talking up revolution. That barely qualifies as news, these days.
But then, Ayers seemed to validate Jack Cashill’s thesis about him writing Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father. He closed by saying the same odd thing he said to Ann Leary in that coffee shop at Reagan International, October 2009; “if you can prove it, we can split the royalties.” The audience clearly believed he was joking…
Video via Jack Cashill at The American Thinker:
Says Cashill:
With his final comment, the Ayers-friendly audience laughed in relief. The media will laugh nervously upon seeing the video as well.
The White House will not.Barack Obama knows what I know and what the people who have read my book, “Deconstructing Obama,” know: Bill Ayers is the principal craftsman behind Dreams. The evidence is overwhelming.
Cashill’s latest book, Deconstructing Obama can be purchased here.
Over at Uncommon Misconceptions, Geoff isn’t buying it: William Ayers Didn’t Affirm Squat
But when I watch the video, it’s clear that Ayers didn’t “retreat into irony.” His statement that he wrote the book was a calculated jab at Cashill: he was ironic from the start, and continued that vein until the session ended. Everybody in the audience took it the same way, laughing at the claims because they think Cashill’s out to lunch.
Except Cashill isn’t “out to lunch”. At all. He’s a reputable research journalist, documentarian, and author of numerous excellent books. His research is solid, and corroborated by Christopher Anderson, another author who wrote a book sympathetic to the Obama’s, “Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage”:
According to Andersen, Obama was “hopelessly blocked” in his effort to honor the $150,000 contract Simon & Schuster had advanced him after three years of trying.
Obama was particularly worried because he had spent $75,000 of the advance and had produced nothing. In 1993, the publisher canceled the contract but let Obama keep the money after he pled poverty due to “massive student loan debt.”
After his agent secured Obama a smaller contract with the Times Books division of Random House, Barack and Michelle decamped to Bali in the hope that he would be able to finish the book without interruption. That did not happen either.
With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from “his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”
To flesh out his family history, Obama had taped interviews with various family members. Andersen writes, “These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers.”
Andersen quotes a Hyde Park neighbor: “Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both.”
Andersen continues, “In the end, Ayers’ contribution to Barack’s ‘Dreams From My Father’ would be significant – so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayerss own writing.”
To his credit, Andersen cites my contribution to his research, but he clearly has access to inside information that I did not have. His level of detail on the mechanics of the transmission goes beyond anything I could have discovered on my own.
Andersen concludes, “Thanks to help from the veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Books.”
Cashill has proven his case, already. Ayers wrote the damn book.
Leftists lie and misdirect as a matter of course. Geoff should know that. Ayers is having lots of fun with this issue, tweaking both his political enemies, and the ingrate in the White House at the same time.
MORE:
Just by way of further explanation: Ayers has a history of peevishly disseminating inconvenient truths. For about two seconds, right after the 2008 election, I had thought that maybe Ayers was an honest commie, because he had come out and admitted his friendship with the Obama’s, calling them, “family friends”:
Golly gee willickers what’s up with this? The Chicago Tribune reports:
In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, describes President-elect Barack Obama as a “family friend” and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the 1960s.
Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.
“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends
But right-wing commentators tried to use those connections to smear Obama, he says.
Of course, this turned out to be a massive blunder on Ayers’ part because the Obama administration had been hotly contesting allegations that they were friends with the Ayers’ for most of the past year. According to Obama’s “Fight the Smears” campaign jokesite, he and Ayers were merely passing acquaintances who happened to work on a board together. Even without Ayers’ friendship claim, we knew that to be complete BS based on the extensive evidence to the contrary that had accumulated.
Anyway, within 24 hours, Ayers had completely changed his story:
Note the unbelievably tortured explanation of his Obama as “family friend” characterization:
“I’m talking there about the fact that I became an issue unwittingly and unwillingly in the campaign and I decided that I didn’t want to answer any of it at that moment because it was such a profoundly dishonest narrative, but…I’m describing there, uh, how the blogosphere characterized the relationship. I would say…uh…really that we knew each other in a professional way, uh, again, on the same level as thousands of other people … uh, and I am a guy from around the neighborhood, incidentally.”
Huhhhhhhhhhhh???
Wow. I take back what I said about him being a straight shooter. Talk about “profoundly dishonest”.
Also note how the event at his home that he had previously described as a fundraiser, and where he actually donated money to Obama, has become just a small “coffee”, per the Fight the Smears talking points.
Yeah, I’m taking Cashill’s side over this lying d-bag’s.
Wait….
“uh, and I am a guy from around the neighborhood, incidentally.”
Was Ayers mocking Obama, there? Obama had famously made a similar statement in the Democratic Presidential Debate, April 16, 2008:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you explain that (Ayers) relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?
OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George.
Again with the strange dichotomy. Ayers could be tweaking Obama, or he could be tweaking the right wing blogosphere, who made tons of hay over that quote.
“And you know that I wrote it (the book), incidentally?”
Or both…
Cross-posted at NewsReal Blog.
Linked by Michelle Malkin in Buzzworthy, The Lonely Conservative, and Little Miss Attila, thanks!
Hat tip: Brian B.

















March, 28, 2011 at 9:27 am
Yeah, I don’t buy it. I wrote a post over at my site about it – it seems pretty clear that Ayers was joking from the start. Casshill is a victim of wishful thinking.
March, 28, 2011 at 10:04 am
You’re wrong. See my update.
March, 28, 2011 at 10:47 am
the fact that the histories of a domestic terrorist and a sitting US president are consistently intertwined affirms a great deal, book or not.
March, 28, 2011 at 11:07 am
Mr. Ayers is a nogoodnik from way back. If I had the power I’d have him deported to North Korea- we could toss him out of an airplane wearing nothing but his birthday suit and a parachute and let him come floating down into Pyongyang. He’d be very happy there- it’s a place where all his dreams have come true.
March, 28, 2011 at 1:31 pm
[...] Bill Ayers quip is a double–it’s directed at the right and at President “Keep My Distance from My [...]
March, 28, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Andersen later clarified his comments in the book, saying that Ayers “did not write Barack Obama’s book.”
But regardless, even if Ayers did write the book, he didn’t confess to anything in the American Thinker video clip. He was poking fun at Casshill for his audience, who all seemed to appreciate the joke.
March, 28, 2011 at 2:37 pm
You direct me to Media Matters who took a break from their 24/7 monitoring Fox News to watch the Anderson interview on CNN “clarifying”, Geoff? Gee, I wonder who tipped them off that Anderson was going on the show to completely change his story? You understand how underhanded the left is, right, Geoff? You don’t suspect that the White House conspires with Media Matters?
Bill Ayers also changed his story, (as I mention in the post) when he got into trouble for saying he was friends with Obama after the election, (which Anderson doesn’t deny).
Lots of other people who know the Obamas (like Neil Abercrombie) have readjusted past statements about Obama after too much truth got out.
You say he was poking fun at Cashill. I agree. But I think he was poking fun at Obama, too. Ayers is a weird dude, and obviously not an honest broker, (which should be obvious).
March, 28, 2011 at 2:47 pm
[...] 2: Be sure to check out Nice Deb’s post on the topic which goes further in [...]
March, 28, 2011 at 3:40 pm
You direct me to Media Matters who took a break from their 24/7 monitoring Fox News to watch the Anderson interview on CNN “clarifying”, Geoff?
Well, they had the clip.
Gee, I wonder who tipped them off that Anderson was going on the show to completely change his story?
It’s their (Soros-funded) job to follow the media, so it’s not very surprising that they’d pick up on that interview.
You don’t suspect that the White House conspires with Media Matters?
Not in this case. It’s possible that Howard Kurtz may have conspired with the White House (or at least received some helpful hints as to how the interview should go), but there’s no reason to believe that Media Matters was involved. At least this time.
I think he was poking fun at Obama, too. Ayers is a weird dude, and obviously not an honest broker, (which should be obvious).
I agree that Ayers is a weird fish, and not a particularly honest one. But that clip doesn’t give any evidence that he was admitting anything. He deadpanned a joke, and Casshill bit.
March, 28, 2011 at 4:00 pm
[...] Cross-posted at Nice Deb [...]
March, 28, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Well, they had the clip.
They are the only ones in the blogosphere who had the clip.
It’s their (Soros-funded) job to follow the (right wing) media – FIFY.
Who was conservative in that clip? No one. Strange. It’s almost like the entire reason Media Matters “monitored” that show, and put it up on their blog was to shoot down some damaging stories about Obama.
It doesn’t bother you that Anderson changed his story from:
“In the end, Ayers’ contribution to Barack’s ‘Dreams From My Father’ would be significant – so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’ own writing.”
“Thanks to help from the veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Books.”
(That’s basically what Cashill has been saying. Obama gave him some material, but Ayers did most of the work.)
To:
“I definitely did not say he wrote the book”…
Isn’t it kind of amazing how libs have gone from *Obama barely knew Ayers and no way did he have anything to do with his book* to *sure, they were friends and Ayers helped him a little on his book?*
But he didn’t write the WHOLE thing, see?
But that clip doesn’t give any evidence that he was admitting anything.
Well, I agree, that’s why I titled my post the way I did.
I do think Ayers is playing games.
March, 28, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Hi-frickin-larious that you could think he was being serious, even for a second. You guys are completely nuts, you know that? All of you.
Wow.
March, 28, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Huh? Um, no, as I’ve made perfectly clear from the beginning- Ayers is playing games. He tried to make it look like a joke, and the audience laughed in relief, but it was a head fake.
It’s frickin’ hilarious that you comment on blogs without reading the post, first.
You’re a further laughingstock and a pathetic dupe to boot, if you think Obama wrote Dreams From My Father by himself, as he claims.
March, 28, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Regardless of who wrote it, the Obama book is a side show.
I’ve like to hear more about Ayers’ comments regarding revolution. He seemed to be saying most people won’t realize revolution’s happening until it’s done. But that they’ll clearly recognize what happened after the fact.
Did he imply something’s in play? And if so, how far down the road are we?
March, 28, 2011 at 10:05 pm
I think the left has high hopes that a coalition of left-wing moonbat forces — unions, commies, and anarchists are going to rise up and rage against the machine, or something. They’ve been talking about it for months, and there are massive protests planned in April.
March, 28, 2011 at 10:52 pm
[...] Piven, Stephen Lerner, Van Jones, Jeremiah Wright, Dylan Ratigan, Ted Rall, etc , and most recently, Bill Ayers openly fantasizing about it. The seem to think their time has [...]
April, 1, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Cashill is in error and so is anyone who buys into this. The supposed literary similarities Cashill adduces don’t hold water — comparing them side by side is unconvincing. And when a computer expert, using software designed for such comparisons, did a preliminary examination and concluded it was unlikely that Ayersl wrote Dreams, but he would be willing to conduct the full test with the understanding that the results would have to be published regardless of what they revealed, the test was called off. That computer expert and his software are the same that Cashill had been earlier used for his “proofs.” Needless to say, at that point Cashill abandoned him and began denigrating the use of such methods — the same methods he had earlier affirmed!
Cashill may be in in for the money, but not for the truth.
April, 1, 2011 at 7:45 pm
None of that squares with what Cashill himself wrote in 5/2009:
Looking for some scientific verification, I consulted Patrick Juola of Duquesne, a leading authority in the field of literary forensics. Juola, however, advised me against relying on computer analysis on a subject this sensitive. “The accuracy just isn’t there,” he told me. He encouraged me instead “to do what you’re already doing . . . good old-fashioned literary detective work.” I took his advice.
I wonder where you were getting your information?