Monday, November 3, 2008

Authors Against Obama update

In May, I formed Authors Against Obama, a group of professional writers outraged by the sweetheart deal Obama got on Dreams From My Father. A 28-year-old law student gets a book deal from Simon & Schuster, blows his deadline, then gets another deal (from Times Books) with a $40K advance to write a book about racial policy and instead delivers . . . a memoir. A freaking memoir!

Now we learn from Jack Cashill that there is evidence that Obama didn't even write his own memoir. There are striking similarities of style and structure between Dreams of My Father and Bill Ayers' 2001 book Fugitive Days.

Look, I'm way past the point of imagining that undecided swing voters give a damn about Bill Ayers. What I can't understand is why working journalists and authors everywhere aren't frothing mad at the very idea of a 28-year-old getting a Simon & Schuster contract, before he'd accomplished anything except getting admitted to Harvard Law, blowing that deal, getting another deal, and eventually taking five years to publish a book that appears to have been substantially ghost-written!

A memoir, for crying out loud! Who publishes a memoir at 33? No justice, no peace.

2 comments:

  1. Well, doesn't it suck that professional basketball players make more dough than hard working nurses? Come on, Mr. McCain, Obama is a unique individual with a sobby backstory--that sells books (or at least they thought it would).

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