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Bill Ayers admits he wrote "Dreams From My Father"

If one is basing the ghostwriting claim on an analysis of the writing, it is important to point out that Dreams from My Father was published 6 years before Ayers' Fugitive Days (which appears to be the book used for most of the "analysis"). So, Ayers wrote the biography of someone else before his own. Wouldn't it also be possible that Ayers was copying passages and the style of Obama?
 
CptColumbo said:
If one is basing the ghostwriting claim on an analysis of the writing, it is important to point out that Dreams from My Father was published 6 years before Ayers' Fugitive Days (which appears to be the book used for most of the "analysis"). So, Ayers wrote the biography of someone else before his own. Wouldn't it also be possible that Ayers was copying passages and the style of Obama?
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Maybe Ayers was so enthralled by Obama's writing style that he subconsciously adopted it. I think there's just as much, if not more, evidence for this theory than BAC's.
 
A few questions here that BAC hasn't answered... generally that's a sign of wanting to promote ideas but not being able to defend them.
 
BeAChooser said:
Here's more for you folks to ignore:

http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/yavelow.htm



:D
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First, the last line of the report points out the sample size was too small to normalize the data.

Second, Chris Yavelow's background is in music composition and has no particular expertise in linguistics or statistical analysis. If that's your criteria for analysis, I have a friend with similar credentials (MFA in Music Conducting and a great DM) who will attest that the two writing styles are not that similar at all. Appeals to inappropriate authority are fun!
 
Upchurch said:
But no evidence that they did. New York and Chicago are big places with lots of people.
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But Sidley and Austin wasn't a big law firm. And both were involved in the same "causes". They both knew the same people. So that greatly increased the likelihood of them coming in contact with one another during that previous decade. And yes, New York and Chicago are big places, but they didn't live on opposite sides of those cities. They both lived within walking distance of each other for years and years and years. Like I said, their kids went to the same schools and probably shopped at the same stores. Now you can choose to close your eyes. I can't stop you. But there are just too many connections, too many contradicting witnesses, for Ayers to have just been "a guy in the neighborhood" like Obama originally lied.

Upchurch said:
Also, a mail carrier who sees "a tall and thin young black man" is hardly convincing. There are lots of those in Chicago.
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Except that mail carrier is quite clear in his rememberance. He said when Obama ran for President that's when he remembered the encounter and said that Obama told him his name. And the encounter took place right in front of the home of Ayers' parents, long before you leftists say that Ayers could possibly have met Obama. Now you can dismiss that piece of evidence too. Call that postman a liar. I can't stop you. But someone here is hiding in a box to avoid facing the truth. Wishful thinking on YOUR part is not going to make all these facts go away. Obama lied about his relationship with Ayers. That we know for a fact. Numerous people that the two had in common are on record saying that they were "friends". And there is considerable reason to believe they met one another long before 1995, as I clearly demonstrated.

Upchurch said:
And I love how you minimize Ayers' involvement in the book to make it fit within the small timeframe.
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I didn't minimize anything. I stated from the beginning that it looks like Ayers' involvement consisted of editing a draft and writing a few additional chapters outright to bind it all together. And I've presented a host of facts and sources that suggest that's true. Facts that you simply ignore in this debate because that's all you can do. And even then, I've only presented a fraction of the evidence there is ... that Cashill covers in his articles and book on this. You and all the rest of the Obamaphiles on this thread won't read Cashill's book, much less the articles I linked describing some of what's covered in it, so you can't claim to be informed. You are just hiding. My claim is backed up by lots of evidence and numerous experts. Your claim, that Obama and Obama alone wrote the book, is not. It depends entirely on the word of Obama (who has a long record of lying now). And on ignoring Obama's clear efforts to hid and mischaracterize his past.. Someone here is quite gullible, UC ... and it's not me. :D

Upchurch said:
Yes, five months is still an extremely short period of time to even re-write someone else's book
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As I pointed out, that five month claim is bogus. They met at least 7 months earlier and probably much earlier than that.

And you claim someone can't edit and publish book in 7 months? Well, that just depends on the author and subject. Nora Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Roberts ) publishes several books a year. And her type of writing isn't all that difference than Dreams … it's colorful fiction. Story telling. Just like Dreams. Academic writing takes longer … all that research. But Ayers wouldn't have required that in order to edit and complete Dreams. Obama had already done whatever research was needed.

Here, consider this source:

http://wealthwisdomandsuccess.com/success-books/book-talk-how-long-does-it-take-to-write-a-book/2009

I polled several other author friends and the answered have varied greatly. However, most authors seemed to write their books during a 60 to 90 day intensive time period.
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And that's from scratch. Surely Ayers, an accomplished writer, could have edited Obama's already existing manuscript in a few weeks or a month. I think could have, and still have gotten 8 hours sleep and 3 meals a day. :D

Heck, just look at Bill Ayers' own book writing history the last 20 years or so:

The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, published 1989

Chicago Reader: the Long Strange Trip of Bill Ayers, published 1990

Teacher Lore: Learning From Our Own Experience, published 1992

To Become A Teacher: Making a Difference In Children's Lives, published 1995

City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row, published 1996

A Kind and Just Parent, published 1998

A Light In Dark Times, published 1998

Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader, published 1998

A Simple Justice: the Challenge of Small Schools, published 2000

Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment, published 2001

To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, published 2001

Fugitive Days, Memoirs of an antiwar activist, a new afterword by the author, published 2001

On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited, published 2003

Teaching the personal and the political: Essays On Hope and Justice, published 2004

Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Committment and Ethical Action in the Classroom, published 2004

Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statemetns and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974, published 2006

City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row, published 2008

The Herb Kohl Reader: Awakening the Heart of Teaching, published 2009

Handbook of Social Justice in Education, published 2009

Race Course: Against White Supremacy, published 2009

To Teach: The Journey, in Comics, published 2010

You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows, published 2010

Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom, published 2011

Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Bookstores Represent Everything you Want to Fight for from Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities, published 2011

There's a list of 24 books since 1989 (and I'm sure I missed a few) where he's listed as an author. That's an average of more than one a year. He considers himself the principle author on at least 13 of them (http://billayers.wordpress.com/writings/ ). And he did all that despite involvement in many other things during that same time … like co-chairing CAC, working as a board member on several foundations, working as a teacher and professor, participating in various conferences, writing numerous smaller articles (his own web page mentions articles in the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, The Nation, Educational Leadership, the New York Times and the Cambridge Journal of Education), providing interviews to other writers, keeping a blog since 2006, and supporting causes like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the Middle East (which he and Dohrn visited not too long ago). And yet you think he was incapable of editing a manuscript and adding a few chapters to it in a few months time? LOL!

Ayers was more than capable of doing what you claim is impossible … even assuming that he didn't know Obama before 1995. And more than likely, he did know Obama before that, and thus had more of that strange 2 year gap between Obama supposedly finishing his book and it being published to revise the Dreams book.

Just compare that writing history with Obama's. Go ahead, UC, list for us ALL of Obama's writings. Prove to us that Obama was capable of writing the "finest memoir of all time". :rolleyes: :D
 
Let's see... the idea is that because Ayers has been real busy the last 20 years, there's no reason he couldn't have been even busier and written yet another book for which he's never before claimed credit, and because some guy has been saying on his blog that Obama didn't write his memoir himself, the burden of proof is now on those who believe that he did? :boggled:

I'm struggling to find words to describe that argument. 'Psychotic' and 'retarded' don't quite seem to cut it.
 
BeAChooser's article said:
The friend knew that Yavelow, an award-winning composer and author, had worked for years developing what he believes is the most comprehensive linguistics tool for authorship detection, a software product trademarked as FictionFixer.
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Well I believe that I made "the most comprehensive linguistics tool for authorship detection" and it proves Ayers didn't write the book. Thread over I win.
 
I believe I made one even better and it proves that alien monkeys from outer space achieved it randomly in a mass typing experiment.
 
BeAChooser said:
But Sidley and Austin wasn't a big law firm. And both were involved in the same "causes". They both knew the same people. So that greatly increased the likelihood of them coming in contact with one another during that previous decade. And yes, New York and Chicago are big places, but they didn't live on opposite sides of those cities. They both lived within walking distance of each other for years and years and years. Like I said, their kids went to the same schools and probably shopped at the same stores. Now you can choose to close your eyes. I can't stop you. But there are just too many connections, too many contradicting witnesses, for Ayers to have just been "a guy in the neighborhood" like Obama originally lied.



Except that mail carrier is quite clear in his rememberance. He said when Obama ran for President that's when he remembered the encounter and said that Obama told him his name. And the encounter took place right in front of the home of Ayers' parents, long before you leftists say that Ayers could possibly have met Obama. Now you can dismiss that piece of evidence too. Call that postman a liar. I can't stop you. But someone here is hiding in a box to avoid facing the truth. Wishful thinking on YOUR part is not going to make all these facts go away. Obama lied about his relationship with Ayers. That we know for a fact. Numerous people that the two had in common are on record saying that they were "friends". And there is considerable reason to believe they met one another long before 1995, as I clearly demonstrated.



I didn't minimize anything. I stated from the beginning that it looks like Ayers' involvement consisted of editing a draft and writing a few additional chapters outright to bind it all together. And I've presented a host of facts and sources that suggest that's true. Facts that you simply ignore in this debate because that's all you can do. And even then, I've only presented a fraction of the evidence there is ... that Cashill covers in his articles and book on this. You and all the rest of the Obamaphiles on this thread won't read Cashill's book, much less the articles I linked describing some of what's covered in it, so you can't claim to be informed. You are just hiding. My claim is backed up by lots of evidence and numerous experts. Your claim, that Obama and Obama alone wrote the book, is not. It depends entirely on the word of Obama (who has a long record of lying now). And on ignoring Obama's clear efforts to hid and mischaracterize his past.. Someone here is quite gullible, UC ... and it's not me. :D



As I pointed out, that five month claim is bogus. They met at least 7 months earlier and probably much earlier than that.

And you claim someone can't edit and publish book in 7 months? Well, that just depends on the author and subject. Nora Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Roberts ) publishes several books a year. And her type of writing isn't all that difference than Dreams … it's colorful fiction. Story telling. Just like Dreams. Academic writing takes longer … all that research. But Ayers wouldn't have required that in order to edit and complete Dreams. Obama had already done whatever research was needed.

Here, consider this source:

http://wealthwisdomandsuccess.com/success-books/book-talk-how-long-does-it-take-to-write-a-book/2009



And that's from scratch. Surely Ayers, an accomplished writer, could have edited Obama's already existing manuscript in a few weeks or a month. I think could have, and still have gotten 8 hours sleep and 3 meals a day. :D

Heck, just look at Bill Ayers' own book writing history the last 20 years or so:

The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, published 1989

Chicago Reader: the Long Strange Trip of Bill Ayers, published 1990

Teacher Lore: Learning From Our Own Experience, published 1992

To Become A Teacher: Making a Difference In Children's Lives, published 1995

City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row, published 1996

A Kind and Just Parent, published 1998

A Light In Dark Times, published 1998

Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader, published 1998

A Simple Justice: the Challenge of Small Schools, published 2000

Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment, published 2001

To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, published 2001

Fugitive Days, Memoirs of an antiwar activist, a new afterword by the author, published 2001

On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited, published 2003

Teaching the personal and the political: Essays On Hope and Justice, published 2004

Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Committment and Ethical Action in the Classroom, published 2004

Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statemetns and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974, published 2006

City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row, published 2008

The Herb Kohl Reader: Awakening the Heart of Teaching, published 2009

Handbook of Social Justice in Education, published 2009

Race Course: Against White Supremacy, published 2009

To Teach: The Journey, in Comics, published 2010

You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows, published 2010

Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom, published 2011

Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Bookstores Represent Everything you Want to Fight for from Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities, published 2011

There's a list of 24 books since 1989 (and I'm sure I missed a few) where he's listed as an author. That's an average of more than one a year. He considers himself the principle author on at least 13 of them (http://billayers.wordpress.com/writings/ ). And he did all that despite involvement in many other things during that same time … like co-chairing CAC, working as a board member on several foundations, working as a teacher and professor, participating in various conferences, writing numerous smaller articles (his own web page mentions articles in the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, The Nation, Educational Leadership, the New York Times and the Cambridge Journal of Education), providing interviews to other writers, keeping a blog since 2006, and supporting causes like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the Middle East (which he and Dohrn visited not too long ago). And yet you think he was incapable of editing a manuscript and adding a few chapters to it in a few months time? LOL!

Ayers was more than capable of doing what you claim is impossible … even assuming that he didn't know Obama before 1995. And more than likely, he did know Obama before that, and thus had more of that strange 2 year gap between Obama supposedly finishing his book and it being published to revise the Dreams book.

Just compare that writing history with Obama's. Go ahead, UC, list for us ALL of Obama's writings. Prove to us that Obama was capable of writing the "finest memoir of all time". :rolleyes: :D
Click to expand...

Very impressive wall of text.

Ayers was joking.
 
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