Simon Maloy looks at Jack Cashill's new book.
More than anything else, Deconstructing Obama is a bizarre book. It's a frayed string of conspiracy theories that loops and knots itself into a tangled mess. It's a disjointed harangue in which chapters seem to repeat themselves and an entire section is inexplicably devoted to Sarah Palin's "perseverance in the face of resistance." It's an intellectually and morally offensive screed in which 19-year-old Barack Obama's poetry serves as the launching point for an outlandish theory about Obama's grandfather bribing Barack Obama Sr. to pose as the future president's father. (Cashill's candidates for Obama's "real" father include Malcolm X and Jimi Hendrix.)
During the 2008 election, Cashill got a lot of positive attention for his "close reading" of Obama's autobiography Dreams from My Father, which lead him to conclude that William Ayers had actually written it. It's not accurate, though, that " the pillars of the conservative media ... declined to give his Ayers ghostwriting conspiracy even a cursory examination." Andrew McCarthy, whose nuttery about a grand conspiracy between the Muslim Brotherhood and the American left seemingly escaped National Review Editor Rich Lowry's notice, called Cashill's Ayers theory " thorough, thoughtful, and alarming." Not all of his colleagues shared that view, much to his dismay.
As Obama biographer David Remnick points out in his book, the "black people aren't smart enough to write really good books" genre of literary criticism goes all the way back to Frederick Douglass. The belief that Obama's "real" father must have been one of the few black historical figures Cashill can name off the top of his head seems to be more of a personal problem.
Still, I'm looking forward to hearing what National Review has to say about the Jimi Hendrix/Malcolm X theories. Does McCarthy believe Obama was conceived following an energetic performance of Hendrix' "All Along The Watchtower?" Or moments before Malcolm drafted "The Ballot or The Bullet?" Inquiring minds...
