Did Someone Mention ‘Obama’ and ‘Plagiarism’?

From The American Thinker Blog:

But my gripe isn't with Michelle. It is with her husband. During the 2008 campaign I read Barack Obama's alleged 1995 masterpiece, Dreams from My Father, and came to a startling conclusion. This conclusion was later confirmed by celebrity biographer Christopher Andersen, namely that "literary devices and themes [in Dreams] bear a jarring similarity to [Bill] Ayers’ own writings.” Did they ever.

It seems that shortly before getting into the revolution business, Bill Ayers took a job as a merchant seaman. “I’d thought that when I signed on that I might write an American novel about a young man at sea,” says Ayers in his 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days, “but I didn’t have it in me.”
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Andersen based his account of Dreams’ creation on two unnamed sources within Hyde Park. As Andersen tells it, Obama found himself deeply in debt and “hopelessly blocked.” At “Michelle’s urging,” Obama “sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.” What attracted the Obamas were “Ayers’s proven abilities as a writer” as evident in his 1993 book, To Teach.

The media, however, could not bring themselves to question any of this. In recognizing Obama’s unique genius, they validated their own. They have so much emotional equity staked in this recognition that they would rather believe Obama a failed president than a fraudulent human being or a fake writer. In May 2010, in the midst of the Gulf oil mess, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, plumbed new depths of self-deception. In 'Dreams From My Father,'" she wrote, Obama showed passion, lyricism, empathy and an exquisite understanding of character and psychological context -- all the qualities that he has stubbornly resisted showing as president. It was a book that promised a president who could see into the hearts of other people. But there's so much you don't learn about candidates in campaigns, even when they seem completely exposed."

I should end the narrative here, but that would be like leaving a Cinquo de Mayo party with the piñata intact. While fact-checking to make sure Dowd did win a Pulitzer -- I was a little incredulous -- I discovered that she too had been hit with a plagiarism rap. In May 2009, Dowd lifted a paragraph nearly word for word from the blog of Talking Points Memo editor, Josh Marshall. Said Dowd in her own defense, "My friend [who shared her info with Dowd] must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.” Of course, Maureen, we believe you. You write for the New York Times.

It wasn;t plagarism, if Obama hired a guy to write his Autobiography. I think it's called a biography. Other people would call it fraud.