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This is so great!
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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
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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.
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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]
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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.
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