Elementary Watson ...

The Real Roots of "The Betrayal"

This is so great! “ In my own forthcoming book, Deconstructing Obama, I ask two basic questions: one is whether Barack Obama wrote the books and speeches penned under his name, and two is whether the stories he tells therein are true. Like D'Souza, I focus on the most important work in Obama's canon: his celebrated 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.  - Jack Cashill, The Real Roots of Obama's Rage Cashill uses his own extensive knowledge as he respectfully, but critically,  reviews Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Rage of Obama's.  It's great because all this obliquely addresses (Obama's birthplace is not mentioned)  something that has, if not driven me nuts, come close to it.  That would be Ann Coulter's pronouncement last year that  "birthers" are kook conspirators.  I felt betrayed. As much as I adore Ann however, she offered no compelling reason for that conclusion, and I dismissed it as either - a "let's not be distracted by a media battle we've already lost," or "I haven't paid much attention to it, but my people* tell me the birthers are wrong" cop-out.  The former is so atypical of someone who'd  fight for Joe McCarthy's legacy, that I rejected it in favor of the other.  *Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter share the same belly buttons.  Back to Cashill. “ Like Procrustes, the mythological innkeeper who stretched his victims or severed their limbs to make them fit his iron bed, D'Souza whacks away at the facts to make his "incredible osmosis" theory work. The severing begins with the story of Obama's origins. In his "essence," D'Souza explains, Obama was "his father's son." In his retelling, Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, served largely as the vehicle through which the absent Obama exercised his will on the young Obama, she being "Obama Sr.'s first convert" to anti-colonialism. To make this storyline credible, D'Souza has to embrace the narrative that Obama rolled out in Dreams and amplified during his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. As Obama told the conventioneers, his father grew up in Kenya "herding goats." His mother he traced to Kansas, as he always did. "My parents shared not only an improbable love," said Obama. "They shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation."  Like Obama, D'Souza sustains this narrative at the expense of the facts, and he does so in several salient ways ...  [The FULLNESS] Obama's birthplace is not mentioned, but it is established that  important conservative philomaths have simply not in this instance done their homework. At best.  I cannot allow myself contemplate any worse reason.