Bill Ayers, accosted by a conservative blogger in an airport, jokingly confessed to having written Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, mocking a theory that is now a staple of the conspiracy-minded right's political mythology. Dave Weigel explains who bought it:
People he's duped so far: Jonah Goldberg, his mother Lucianne Goldberg, Tom Maguire, Dennis Byrne, Carol Platt Lieblau, and a bunch of other conservatives, some of whom try to split the difference by suggesting that Ayers is revealing a little bit of truth behind the sarcasm. How embarrassing.
Look, just like the "birther" movement is on some level, premised on a basic inability to accept a black man as president of the United States, the Ayers conspiracy is premised in part on the idea that most black people are too stupid to write their own books. And among them is a man who Steven Hayward sees as one of the leading intellectual lights of today's conservatism.
I'm actually pretty sure you can draw a straight line from believing the premise of The Bell Curve to disbelief that Barack Obama could have written Dreams from My Father. It's a shame.
-- A. Serwer
