Round The Bend

We're a few hours late on this but John Cashill at The American Thinker wonders who wrote Dreams Of My Father. His hypothesis: Bill Ayers.

In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama’s career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama’s belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.

This is idiocy of a sort few encounter in life. Do with it what you will. (Maybe frame it?) But I want to comment upon one premise of Cashill's argument -- that Obama did not have the literary ability to pen such a work. Cashill provides a terrible analogy:

The public is asked to believe Obama wrote Dreams From My Father on his own, almost as thugh he were some sort of literary idiot savant. I do not buy this canard for a minute, not at all. Writing is as much a craft as, say, golf. To put this in perspective, imagine if a friend played a few rounds in the high 90s and then a few years later, without further practice, made the PGA Tour. It doesn't happen.

All this analogy proves is that no amount of practice can rescue some writers from the swamps of muddled thinking, poor articulation, and strained imagination.

Sunday, October 12, 2008