Bush's Book

William Ayers wrote "Dreams From My Father."

 

I was going to go there but...

I don't think Ayers wrote it (or was even involved), but Obama has never acknowledged any help. Do you believe that?

Besides his two books, we've never really seen any other examples of his writing.

 

60 Minutes is the CBS bedmate of Simon and Schuster.

Random House - which owns Crown, publisher of President Bush's book - is owned by a German company, Bertelsmann.

 

Shit. You're right. My mistake.

I should have looked it up to confirm before posting.

 

Maybe I'm not getting something here -- e.g., y'all are messing with one another -- but TARP was signed into law on October 3, 2008 ... a month before the election.

 

YF, I don't doubt that he had help - but I don't think that it was that different from the help that any young writer gets, including any one of us. The idea that the right seems to hint at - that you come out of the womb a fully formed Hemingway or else you're a Class-A fraud - just isn't how the process works. It's 90 percent craft, 10 percent talent.

That being said, I read "The Bridge" by David Remnick, and there is quite a bit in there about how one of Obama's initial goals in life was to be a novelist. He spent a lot of his time on the South Side of Chicago writing short stories and trying to hone that skill set. He utilized a lot of his experiences during his community organizing days as a basis for short stories and ideas for possible novels. In fact, Remnick strongly suggests that some of the reasons for Obama's community organizing were not altruistic at all, but instead a way to gain life experiences and insight into the inner-city that he could put to use in his fiction.

You say that we haven't seen any other writing by him, but that's not that unusual. Nicholas Sparks wasn't published until he finally sold "The Notebook" for a $1 million advance. He admits that he still has a fully completed novel sitting in a drawer somewhere that wasn't good enough to be published, and that he will never allow to see the light of day because it isn't good enough. Do you doubt that Nicholas Sparks wrote "The Notebook"?

Is it that much of a stretch to believe that Obama also wrote some poorly constructed short stories and chapters of unfinished novels as he developed those skills?

 

Boom, you mean?

(Freudian slip)

 

I'd vote for Boom. But we all know 21 wears the pants and decides the policy in that family.

 

BOOM IS GEORGE BUSH!!

 

IRAQ