Review: Deconstructing Obama: the life, loves, and letters of America’s first postmodern president
Deconstructing Obama: The life, loves, and letters of America's first postmodern president
Deconstructing implies taking apart something that has been built, not born … something that has been created that can be broken into its parts. And deconstructing is exactly what author Jack Cashill does in his non-fiction treatise, Deconstructing Obama. Cashill makes a very strong case for not only denying Obama’s authorship of both Dreams from My Father and Audacity of Hope, but also a strong case for proving that most of the “facts” we’ve heard about Mr. Obama’s past are so much smoke and mirrors, so much constructed fiction built on truth-stretching and downright lies.
And what’s particularly pleasing to me is that I’ve been just about proven right — back before the 2008 election, I read Dreams from My Father. Well to be completely truthful, I was only able to read a little more than half of it before I needed to put it down — it was becoming a near-occasion of sin for me as I was getting so riled up. Dreams reads like a stereotypical “I was born a poor kid” biography that just doesn’t ring true.
You see, Mr. Obama is about 6 weeks older than I; I too grew up in the liberal west (in San Francisco) of the 60s, 70s and early 80s; I went to college with kids who had gone to the elite prep school in Hawaii where Obama went; I was in college from 79-83 and then grad school in the late 80s. What Obama (or whoever ghost-wrote for him) relates in Dreams is just not an accurate view of the world back then. In fact, if he was truly born in Hawaii — no matter his multi-racialness — he wouldn’t have been ostracized; according to my contemporaries from Hawaii back then, the tendency was to ostracize you ONLY if you were an alien, a foreigner from the mainland.
Further, if he was so poor: how the heck was he able to afford the elite private school of Punahou? Or coming to college in California … or transferring to Columbia and later Harvard? Only once does he mention actually working during his high school or undergrad years — a half-sentence mention of a part-time job on a construction site one summer while at Columbia. Never once does he explain how he was able to bum around Europe the summer after undergrad-graduation where he was trying to “find himself” in the tourist spots of France, meets a Sengalese traveler in a road-side bar in Spain, and finally ends up in Kenya (a trip he “writes” in Dreams that occurs in ’88, but records show was actually in the summer of ’83).
The only part of Dreams that rang true was the strong sense of entitelement … that all that was given to Obama was owed by a country that didn’t always treat multi-racial people fairly. The stink of the era of affirmative action was pretty strong then … maybe that’s how it all happened.
Cashill builds a fact-based case for Obama having a ghost-writer — this wouldn’t be news (even Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage was later proved to be written by Ted Sorenson), but what got Cashill on the trail was the fact that “an aspiring state senator of modest means and minimal reputation could afford such a quality professional touch-up impressed me as an angle worth examining.” (pg 12). Reading Cashill’s analysis not only proves some of my original thoughts about the book, but also clearly calls into question the authorship of the books that Mr. Obama so brazenly described to teachers in July of 2008 as “I’ve written two books … I actually wrote them myself.”
What else is “smoke and mirrors” about this man?
An angle that is touched-on by Cashill, but not hammered enough, that upsets me so much (I was received a BA in Print Journalism back in 1983) is WHY DIDN’T THE MEDIA PURSUE ANY OF THESE DISCREPANCIES? Even the conservative media grew quiet about any of Cashill’s revelations before, during and after the election. The media, that which is supposed to be unbiased … that which is termed the Fourth Estate (the “fourth estate” is used to emphasize the independence of the Press) …that which is supposed to protect the public from the truth-stretching of politicians, to give us the facts, didn’t do squat. Anyone who tried to determine Obama’s paternity was labeled “conspiracy crazies”. Anyone who tried to get the “facts” to fit the truth were labeled “racists”. Even fellow Democrat Geraldine Ferraro told the New York Times “Anytime you say anything to anybody about the Obama campaign, it immediately becomes a racist attack.”
Where was the press … the Fourth Estate … when anyone questioned the “facts”?
I think this is the saddest part of the whole constructed-on-half-truths story of Mr. Obama — that the Fourth Estate (both the liberal and conservative media pundits) failed at their job for the American voting public. Reading Cashill’s courageously researched book helps to bring truth back to the American people. Even if Cashill’s conclusion aren’t 100 percent accurate, he raises questions that need answers. Let’s hope this time the media picks up where Cashill left off, using their substantial monetary, political and social resources, and brings out the whole truth before the next election.
As the media ombudsmen of the past would recommend, “follow the money” and see where that leads.
Wonderful review. I had the same experience…Dreams From My Father didn’t ring true at all. When I read Chapter 2 & some of the memories & insights of a 6-9 yr old boy…well, they have to be made up.
One other glaring unanswered question is, who is the woman that he dated for a year while at Columbia? Page 210 in the book. “…there was a woman in New York that I loved. She was white. She had dark hair, and specks of green in her eyes. Her voice sounded like a wind chime.” Who was this? They supposedly dated for a year! It is hard to believe that a reporter wouldn’t try to find out. Anyway…our news media is worthless. A big thanks to Jack Cashill for writing the book.
According to Cashill, if his thesis that Bill Ayers (yep, the head of the Weathermen and thus a domestic terrorist) actually wrote the books is true, the woman they talk about is actually Ayers’ long-lost love that blew up in a Greenwich Village bombing. The book is really worth reading if only to get people questioning ….
Mary, you ask REALLY GOOD questions! !
“WHY DIDN’T THE MEDIA PURSUE ANY OF THESE DISCREPANCIES? Even the conservative media grew quiet about any of Cashill’s revelations before, during and after the election. The media, that which is supposed to be unbiased … that which is termed the Fourth Estate (the “fourth estate” is used to emphasize the independence of the Press) …that which is supposed to protect the public from the truth-stretching of politicians, to give us the facts, didn’t do squat.”
Here I offer some quotes for you to consider:
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“If you want to make someone angry, tell him a lie; if you want to make him furious, tell him the truth.” [?]
“If the truth is that ugly — which it is — then we do have to be careful about the way that we tell the
truth. But to say somehow that telling the truth should be avoided because people may respond badly to
the truth seems bizarre to me.” – Chuck Skoro, Deacon, St. Paul’s Catholic Church
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“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary
organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most
influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of
the daily press….They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.
An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was
furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness,
militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the
interests of the purchasers.” U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917
“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications
whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.
It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright
lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march
towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is
surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller, founder of
the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in
the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is
a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they
better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” Woodrow Wilson,The New
Freedom (1913)
“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the
spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these
principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and
become the servant of humanity.” – Abraham Lincoln
Depressions, wars, disasters, assassinations – ALL of them were planned, caused, instigated, and implemented
by the International Banksters and their attempt to establish a central bank in every country in the world, which
they have now done, thanks to corrupt politicians who have been bought and paid for.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who issued silver certificates, and Abraham Lincoln, who issued treasury notes
(greenbacks), were the only men who actively intended to stop them. Both were assassinated by the Banksters.
Garfield and McKinley talked about stopping them. Both were assassinated by the Banksters.
Yours in the Light of the True Faith,
Kirra