I'm going to spend the rest of my life apologizing to Jack Cashill, aren't I?

Because today he interviewed journalist Christopher Andersen (who, like him, writes celebrity biographies) on The Mancow Show and Andersen announced that "he had two separate sources 'within Hyde Park' [who claim William Ayers wrote Dreams From My Father] but, understandably, would not elaborate."  Two anonymous sources from, as they say, the neighborhood is the tipping point for me: when combined with the credibility Andersen has earned by dint of a "highly successful career as a celebrity journalist" and the evidence gathered during Cashill's "textual sleuthing," no intellectually honest person could doubt that there's a there in there.  How could there not be?  Andersen "interviewed some 200 people for the book," which is a whole lot.  Here is a list of them drawn from the back matter and organized by chapters:

Chapters 1 and 2

1. Janet Allison
2. Maxine Box
3. Clive Gray
4. Joyce Feuer
5. Leslie Hairston
6. Lowell Jacobs
7. Keith Kakugawa
8. Eric Kusunoki
9. Julie Lauster
10. Alan Lum
11. Chris McLachlin
12. Abner Mikva
13. Newton Minow
14. Toni Preckwinkle
15. Vinai Thummalapally
16. Carolyn Trani
17. Pake Zane

Chapters 3 and 4

1. Loretta Augustin-Herron
2. Bradford Berenson
3. Cheryl Johnson
4. Hazel Johnson
5. Jerry Kellman
6. Mike Kruglik
7. Yvonne Lloyd
8. Alvin Love
9. Abner Mikva*
10. Judson Miner
11. Newton Minow*
12. Linda Randle
13. Vinai Thummalapally*
14. Laurence Tribe

Chapters 5 to 8

1. Janet Allison*
2. Letitia Baldrige
3. Mary Ann Campbell
4. Joyce Feuer*
5. Leslie Hairston*
6. Tom Harkin
7. Coralee Jacobs
8. Denny Jacobs
9. Lowell Jacobs
10. Mike Jacobs
11. John Kerry
12. Edward Koch
13. Rick Lazio
14. Alan Love*
15. Abner Mikva*
16. Judson Miner*
17. Newton Minow*
18. Jeremiah Posedel
19. Toni Preckwinkle*
20. Betsy Vandercook
21. Larry Walsh
22. Wellington Wilson
23. Zarif

If you subtract the sources I asterisked because they were counted in previous chapters, the final tally of Andersen's 200 some interviews is an impressive 43.  That means that only 157 or so of them were unwilling to speak truth to the powerful lies of the President on the record.  That so few of them were willing to follow the example of the young Obama's "roommate and closest friend . . . Siddiqi" and speak on the—hold on a minute.  Does anyone see Siddiqi's name among those listed as interviewees?  No? 

Must be Andersen toeing the ethical line again and passing off information from someone else's published work as original research.  No big deal: Siddiqi told someone that he had no memory of Obama having had a "year-long relationship with a rich, green-eyed lovely" who, as Cashill corroborated via independent textual sleuthing, was actually Ayers's former flame, Diana Oughton.  The credibility of Siddiqi's memories is further enhanced by the fact that when he lived with Obama, he spent the majority of his time snorting cocaine, smoking marijuana, and perfecting his Cheech impersonation.  Who wouldn't believe his memory of that period is infallible?

Cashill anticipates that the critics who balk at the "lack of attribution by Andersen" or believe that "the citation of [Cashill] as a source and/or a reliance upon [him] as a source" constitutes a demonstration of intellectual unseriousness.  Neither of those positions (both of which I have taken) "imply," as Cashill claims, "that Andersen is a fraud and a liar and that he contrived the story he told" because I'm not implying anything.

The sloppiness of Andersen's research demonstrably proves that he's not the sort of celebrity biographer an intelligent person trusts with anonymous sources.  Andersen's inability to recognize the worthlessness of Cashill's impressionistic "textual sleuthing" demonstrably proves that he's not the sort of celebrity biographer an intelligent person trusts to do responsible literary analysis.  Need I remind you of the "quality" of Cashill's work?

The A-level match

Cashill:

What Mr. Midwest noticed recently is that both Ayers in [A Kind and Just Parent] and Obama in [Dreams From My Father] make reference to the poet Carl Sandburg. In itself, this is not a grand revelation. Let us call it a C-level match. Obama and Ayers seem to have shared the same library in any case . . . Ayers and Obama, however, go beyond citing Sandburg. Each quotes the opening line of his poem "Chicago" . . . This I would call a B-level match. What raises it up a notch to an A-level match is the fact that both misquote "Chicago," and they do so in exactly the same way.

Reality:

Both Ayers and Obama misquote the opening line of Carl Sandburg's "Chicago," substituting "hog butcher to the world" for "hog butcher for the world." This mutual error would be significant (an "A-level match") if Ayers and Obama were the only two people who ever made it, but according to Google Book Search—a secret search engine to which only I have access—the same mistake has been made by Nelson Algren, Alan Lomax, Andrei Codrescu, H.L. Mencken, Paul Krugman, Perry Miller, Donald Hall, Ed McBain, Saul Bellow, S.J. Perelman, Nathanaël West, Ezra Pound, Wright Morris, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, and the 1967 Illinois Commission on Automation and Technological Progress. (To name but a few.) According to Cashill, I have now proven that Dreams From My Father was written by many a dead man of American letters, a living mystery writer, a New York Times columnist and the 1967 Illinois Commission on Automation and Technological Progress. That bears repeating: I have an "A-level match" that proves that Obama's autobiography was written by a "study of the economic and social effects of automation and other technological changes on industry, commerce, agriculture, education, manpower, and society in Illinois" when Obama was only six years old.

The "baleful" affair

Cashill:

Returning to the exotic, in his Indonesian backyard Obama discovered two "birds of paradise" running wild as well as chickens, ducks, and a "yellow dog with a baleful howl." In [Ayers'] Fugitive Days, there is even more "howling" than there is in Dreams . . . In [A Kind and Just Parent], he talks specifically about a "yellow dog." And he uses the word "baleful" to describe an "eye" in Fugitive Days. For the record, "baleful" means "threatening harm." I had to look it up.

Reality:

Cashill cited as "A-level" evidence the fact that Ayers and Obama used a word he didn't know, despite his being the Executive Editor of Kansas City’s premier business publication, Ingram’s Magazine; despite his having written for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard; despite his having authored five books of non-fiction; and despite the word "baleful" having appeared in print 342 times in the past six months alone. Granted, all those appearances were in high-minded literary publications like Newsday ("[w]ith his baleful countenance, wild hair, sonorous baritone and sage pronouncements") or leftist rags like The Washington Times ("warn them in baleful tones if they've forgotten, say, the Constitution"), so it would be unreasonable to expect Cashill to have been familiar with the word . . . or would be, were it not for the fact that it also appears 19 times in the pages of the American Thinker, the publication for which Cashill penned this tripe. (Seems he can begin his careful literary analysis of the other 848,000 potential ghost writers closer to home.)

Lawyers and legal jargon

Cashill:

To this point, I have just skimmed the 759 items in the bill of particulars in my case against Obama's literary genius. Not familiar with the term "bill of particulars?" Uncertain myself, I looked that one up too. It means a list of written statements made by a party to a court proceeding. Ayers and Obama each refer knowingly to a "bill of particulars." Doesn't everyone?

The answer, of course, is no.

Reality:

The phrase "bill of particulars" is an uncommon construction, and its repeated use indicates that the speaker has a specialized vocabulary in which this construction regularly appears. According to LexisNexis, this is exactly the case: in the past six months, that exact phrase has been written 509 times and every single one of them looks like this:

United States v. Clark, NO. 05-6507, UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT, 09a0422n.06;, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 12940; 2009 FED App. 0422N (6th Cir.), June 15, 2009, Filed, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION. SIXTH CIRCUIT RULE 28(g) LIMITS CITATION TO SPECIFIC SITUATIONS. PLEASE SEE RULE 28(g) BEFORE CITING IN A PROCEEDING IN A COURT IN THE SIXTH CIRCUIT. IF CITED, A COPY MUST BE SERVED ON OTHER PARTIES AND THE COURT. THIS NOTICE IS TO BE PROMINENTLY DISPLAYED IF THIS DECISION IS REPRODUCED.

The only people who regularly use the phrase "bill of particulars," then, are lawyers[.]

Self-evidently hilarious examples of "textual sleuthing"

1. Common words are common: "Another note of interest is that all of the distinctive words in the last sentence above—'master,' 'beast,' 'grim,' 'unapologetic,' and 'deed,' as well as the phrase 'hunkered down'—appear in Fugitive Days."
2. The sea is a pregnant metaphor: "Ayers and Obama both use words that relate to the sea ('fog, mist, ships, seas, boats, oceans, calms, captains, charts, first mates, storms, streams, wind, waves, anchors, barges, horizons, ports, panoramas, moorings, tides, currents, and things howling, fluttering, knotted, ragged, tangled, and murky')."
3. People are lonely: "After the neighbor's death, the police let themselves into the old man’s apartment, and for no good reason Obama finds himself in the apartment. 'The loneliness of the scene affected me,' he writes. Loneliness as a theme courses through Fugitive Days as well."
4. Old men are stooped and people wear hats: "In the opening pages, Obama makes an exception to his New York solitude for an elderly neighbor, a "stooped" gentleman who wore a 'fedora.' In Fugitive Days, it was Ayers’ grandfather who was "stooped" and a helpful stranger who wore a 'fedora.'"
5. Some people are quiet: "Obama tells the reader that the neighbor’s 'silence' impressed him. 'Silence' impressed Ayers as well. There are at least ten references to the word in Fugitive Days."
6. Angry people feel rage: "[B]oth Ayers and Obama speak of 'rage' the way that Eskimos do of snow—in so many varieties, so often, that they feel the need to qualify it, here as 'impressive rage,' elsewhere in Dreams as 'suppressed rage' or 'coil of rage,' and in Fugitive Days as 'justifiable rage,' 'uncontrollable rage,' 'blind rage,' and, of course, 'Days of Rage.'"
   

The Kicker

Cashill tells us he wouldn't believe himself either: "I have as much faith in the hypothesis that follows as . . . biologists do in evolution, so bear with me please as I, like they, present my evidence in the indicative."  He has as much "faith" in his hypothesis as biologists do in the hypothesis of evolution.  I wonder what Intelligence Design advocate Jack Cashill has to say about that kind of faith?

ID partisans across the board believe in micro-evolution: that is, evolution within a species. Some believe in evolution between species, macro-evolution, if guided.

What the ID movement challenges is Darwinian mechanics, random variation and natural selection, an elegant idea in 1859 but in 1999 still just an idea. Neo-Darwinians have as much trouble explaining how complex organs like a wing or an eye—or even a single cell within an eye—could be the result of unguided, incremental change as Darwin did.

Darwin could only hope that the fossil record would one day prove him right. It hasn't. No evidence has surfaced of a transformation from one species to the next. Nor has anyone offered a satisfactory explanation for the rash of new animal life that inexplicably entered the fossil record during the so-called Cambrian explosion.

I am not about to dignify that creationist nonsense by responding to it.  If Cashill really wants to know what use half a wing might be to a flightless bird, he can go ask a penguin. 

Conclusion

When I first wrote that anyone who uses "Cashill's juvenile musings as a hypothetical which, if true, suggests all the unsavory things [they] already believe about Obama," I didn't know that Cashill also bought into Intelligent Design, but it makes sense that someone who could compile and be convinced by the evidence above would be a subject of King Tendentiousness himself.  Like ID, Cashill's theory consists of details inexpertly cobbled together by deeply interested parties.  The similar caveat applies in both: should it turn out that one day the Great Designer reveals Himself or Obama admits that Ayers helped edit his memoir, the soundness of their respective methodologies would not be validated—all that will be proven is that sometimes tendentious idiots get lucky.

UPDATE.  Not surprisingly, those who desperately want the story to be true believe that the two anonymous sources validate Cashill's initial findings:

My wonder is, will these condescending literary "experts" continue to hide behind their strained pedantic incredulity, or are they willing to revisit this story now that additional information is available to them—information that suggests that those of us who kept an open mind . . . were far less doctrinaire in our arguments than those who, in their rush to condemn us as knee-jerk political reactionaries, were themselves guilty of having prematurely ruling the possible "absurd"?

And when the Great Designer parks His Flying Saucer and reveals His Plan, I will eat crow.  Until that day, I will continue to insist that The X-Files was a fiction no matter how many sources, anonymous or otherwise, report having been abducted and probed. 

(x-posted.)

Comments

[happyfeet]

Then her accomplishments are kind of anemic. ooh. She graduated college. How many people actually ever flunk out of those mollycoddling inbred Ivy League diploma factories anyways? Not many. Once you're in it's really really hard not to graduate, and she had her some help getting in I'm guessing. Wonder what her scores were. No idea. But she sure didn't do much with her life after college. Made some babies and held down some not particularly high-flying administrator job what only paid real money after she could pimp access to her man.

I think that's very telling.

[tomemos]

"How many people actually ever flunk out of those mollycoddling inbred Ivy League diploma factories anyways?"

How many graduate cum laude and then go to Harvard Law?

"But she sure didn't do much with her life after college."

She got into Harvard Law, she got a job as a lawyer, she had several administrative positions. What do you want, a publication in Nature?

"I think that's very telling."

Of what??! Let's remember, your claim was that Michelle Obama is actually dumb. Now you're reduced to saying that her accomplishments are merely in line with other law school graduates?

Hey, Hillary Clinton was in Us too, talking about her fashion disasters! What a ditz! Using your standard, it would be impossible for any prominent woman to be considered smart. Which is probably what you're going for.

[happyfeet]

whatever. The truth is for real that if every Harvard grad went on to have as unstellar and unremarkable a career as M'chelle Obama went on to have, that school would have to start charging way less monies I think.

What does poor Hillary have to do with anything? Leave the poor wretch alone I think.

[happyfeet]

also that was not a crappy song. take it back

[Josh E.]

I don't know why you folks bother arguing with it.

[Karl Steel]

How many people actually ever flunk out of those mollycoddling inbred Ivy League diploma factories anyways? Not many. Once you're in it's really really hard not to graduate, and she had her some help getting in I'm guessing.

Did they not teach you how to google at d'Iberville Technical College? Google graduation and freshman retention rates if you'd like to get your question answered, although if you're interested in relevant data for Michelle Obama, you'll have to do that research historically.

[Karl Steel]

Also, I don't follow your logic, HF. Are you saying the place where I teach, Brooklyn College, is a better school than the place I got my PhD, Columbia University, because BC's retention and graduation rates are (likely) worse than those of Columbia? That's certainly what you're implying.

And why do you "guess" that Michelle Obama had "help" (whatever that means) when she was an undergrad and law student?

[happyfeet]

The point is that graduating from the college you got into isn't an accomplishment. It's what you're opposed to do. After that is when you're supposed to do fabulous things with your Ivy League-anointed brains. M'chelle skipped that part for some reason. But hey did you check out her toney arms in Copenhagen? OMG that's so hawt.

Exhibitionistic little minx.

[tomemos]

"The point is that graduating from the college you got into isn't an accomplishment. It's what you're opposed to do."

Freudian slip?

[tomemos]

The idea that if a woman has an "unstellar and unremarkable" career, then she is actually stupid, is a very telling one. It's the intellectual version of the virgin/whore complex.

[happyfeet]

Tomemos you need to brush up on your Chris Rock. Why is it so important for you that M'chelle be perceived as some sort of super genius? I never said she was dumb I said she's not particularly intellectual and I noted that she whines whines whines about stuff most people don't find particularly bothersome. Like keeping fruit about the house.

She's remarkably average I think in almost every respect except for how angry and hateful she can be. That anti-American church she went to for two decades was not exactly the Church Of The Enlightened And Scholarly Mind. It was a dumb church for dumb people what she thought Barack could play and become like Mr. ACORN or something.

You think she's some sort of brilliant mind. I think she's a hateful marxist little trollop.

I think the evidence is in my favor.

[tomemos]

"I never said she was dumb I said she's not particularly intellectual"

First witness for the prosecution: Happyfeet, less than 24 hours ago:

"Woman struggles to fill a fruit bowl with fruit. Asking her to fill a page with words would make her head asplode I think."

So I'm glad to read that you've recanted that. For the record, I never claimed that she was "some sort of brilliant mind." And I'm extremely familiar with Chris Rock and "N***** vs. Black People," so familiar that I know for sure that Chris Rock doesn't say "opposed to do." Just checked the iTunes file, and—nope, it's "supposed."

Anyway, now that you've admitted that Michelle Obama isn't dumb, I'm happy to declare victory and go home.

[P.T. Smith]

Happyfeet, usually you amuse me, a lot. Most of the time it feels like you're making fun and getting a rise, some of the stuff you say is genuinely funny, even if you mean it and I disagree with you; but this time you've lost that, completely. I want to say that your implication that...but I can't, because you aren't even implying, you've gone beyond. You are insisting that a woman you do not know, at all, is stupid, because you refuse to believe that she is smart, based on nothing but your own insistence, and you move from there to insist, repeatedly, that since "woman" must not be intelligent, "woman" is also a slut. Nothing funny there.

I know you're just going to respond in your usual fashion, but I've said my peace (yes, I know the actual term is "piece," but heck, I prefer mine), and I feel better about it.

[happyfeet]

unamused is kind of the default around here.

I never said M'chelle was stupid. I think she is of wholly unremarkable intelligence is all. You are insisting that a woman you do not know is intelligent. I don't think that's the case, and that there's precious little in evidence for it.

My implication is that there's absolutely nothing sacrosanct about Barack's woman, and that's all there is to that. Hateful little marxist trollop is very apt. She and her husband want to hold my little country down and climb on top and do their nasty dirty socialist business.

Ick.

The way they're enthusiastically presiding over the decline of American living standards is really sickening I think, and who's gonna get hurt most are the people they so unctuously claim to be servicing.

ohnoes.

sexisms

racisms

As if.

These Obama ones just suck balls. Ecumenically.

[happyfeet]

oh. And I never really saw any Chris Rock. I hate comedy. My friend used T used to quote him a lot. She distinctly said opposed to. Maybe she was wrong. I still like it like that for some reason.

[happyfeet]

oh. That should just be my friend T used to quote him a lot.

[P.T. Smith]

trollop: a vulgar or disreputable woman; especially : one who engages in sex promiscuously or for money

[happyfeet]

yup. disreputable.

That one's trouble, P.T. Wish it weren't so.

[happyfeet]

And y'all really have to get over your ideas about racism racism racism sexism sexism sexism. It's puerile. People can say all kind of foul things about M'chelle and her little president husband just cause of who they are, inside, not cause of them being black and the one having breasts.

Jeez. These two would like nothing better than to see every black woman in our little country die in a dirty socialist gubmint hospital. Who you calling racist?

[happyfeet]

this is like a really long page, no? Did Mr. SEK fiddle with something?