Did Terrorist Ayers Write Obama’s Two Books?

I had not heard of this before today, but after sifting through the evidence and following the links, there does seem to exist some pretty strong evidence that supports this hypothesis:

More Evidence that Ayers Ghostwrote Obama’s Books

Some may know that there has been strongly evidenced suggestions that Barack Obama may have had his two books ghostwritten by William Ayers, essentially refuting that there is no relationship between the two.

The initial evidence centered around the facts that the writing techniques between Barack Obama’s book Dreams From My Father was eerily similar to those of Fugitive Days, William Ayers autobiography. From Dr. Jack Cashill over at his website:

“Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write Dreams From My Father, he had written very close to nothing.

As an undergraduate, Obama had written what he justifiably calls some “very bad poetry.” He published nothing under his own name in The Harvard Law Review, where he served as an editor and as president. And after leaving Harvard, he published nothing in its review or in any law journal.”

Jack Cashill’s analysis focuses on two specific sentences from both books and here is his analysis:

These two sentences are alike in more than their poetry, their length and their gracefully layered structure. They tabulate nearly identically on the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), something of a standard in the field.

The “Fugitive Days” excerpt scores a 54 on reading ease and a 12 th grade reading level. The “Dreams’” excerpt scores a 54.8 on reading ease and a 12 th grade reading level. Scores can range from 0 to 121, so hitting a nearly exact score matters.

Now, with all of that said, one has to look at the time line to see if the ghostwriting is even plausible based on time constraints, mainly because William Ayers is the author of a few other books and may not have had the time to write Obama’s book in between his own. Through a little research, I was able to extract the following data:

Between 1989 and 2008, William Ayers wrote around 17 different books. During this time frame, he averaged one year between each of his published works, that is, except for two distinct breaks that appear in Ayers’ publishing history. The first break that we see with Ayers book releases was between April of 1989 and August of 1995. Dreams From My Father was published during the time that Ayers had that break. The second break by William Ayers took place between September 2005 and basically right now. During this second break Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope was released.

Doesn’t it seem VERY coincidental that Obama’s books were written at the same time that William Ayers was taking breaks in his own literary aspirations?

Here is the table I used to gather the data:

Ayer’s Published Dates	Days since previous published date	Title
6/1/2009	120.00	Race Course Against White Supremacy
2/1/2009	19.00	The Herb Kohl Reader: Awakening the Heart of Teaching
1/12/2009	46.00	Fugitive Days PA: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist
11/26/2008	115.00	Handbook of Social Justice in Education
8/1/2008	1036.00	City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row
9/15/2005	524.00	Teaching Toward Freedom
4/1/2004	180.00	Teaching the Personal and the Political: Essays on Hope and Justice
10/1/2003	510.00	On the Side of the Child: Summerhill Revisited (Between Teacher and Text, 2)
5/1/2002	150.00	Refusing Racism: White Allies and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Teaching for Social Justice, 8)
12/1/2001	30.00	Zero Tolerance Resisting the Drive for Punishment
11/1/2001	51.00	A School of Our Own: Parents, Power, and Community at the East Harlem Block School
9/10/2001	189.00	Fugitive Days
3/1/2001	270.00	To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher
6/1/2000	150.00	A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools (Teaching for Social Justice Series)
1/1/2000	300.00	Teaching from the Inside Out: The Eight – Fold Path to Creative Teaching and Living
3/1/1999	210.00	Teacher Lore: Learning from Our Own Experience
8/1/1998	60.00	Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader
6/1/1998	764.00	A Kind and Just Parent
4/17/1996	256.00	City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row
8/1/1995	2280.00	To Become a Teacher: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives
4/1/1989		The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives
	363.00
Average days w/o break	327	0.895890411
Longest break	1036	2.838356164

Does this mean that Ayers was Obama’s ghostwriter? We can’t be 100% sure but we can start to say that there is a pattern that I think puts him right in the thick of things, especially when coupled with the analysis by Jack Cashill.

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