We’ve been waiting. We’ve been sitting in breathless anticipation for an October Surprise from our old pal, conservative “writer” and Font of Smugness Jack Cashill. Jack has been all over the story of who really wrote Barack Obama’s stirring memoir, Dreams From My Father. (Hint: it was “unrepentant domestic terrorist” and legendary seafarer Bill Ayers.) But as we’ve noted, the story always seemed to be missing something, some crucial element that would move it from speculation to earth-shattering revelation: it was missing “evidence.” But today, friends, the wait is over. Cashill has found the final clue, the last jigsaw piece: he has found science. Step aside, Isaac and Albert. Move over, Galileo and T. Alva. There’s a new scientist in town.
In his (we hope) final column before the election, Jack breaks out the big guns. And check this out: he’s writing from DC, where he has ” repaired in only a semi-successful attempt to bring the news to our truth-phobic national capital.” Zing! Take that, Washington elite! But he’s not done. Jack is chock full of the very latest pop culture references:
At the heart of my message is that Barack Obama is an impostor, the Milli Vanilli of politics , a man who has been lip-synching for the last 13 years to lyrics pre-recorded by, among others, Bill Ayers.
You just know he wanted to mention Crystal Pepsi or MC Hammer in there, but couldn’t figure out how. He’s also a little too quick to admit that the testing methods are unreliable:
Early in this investigation, I had contacted Patrick Juola, one of the nation’s leading authorities on data-driven computer analysis. Juola cautioned that in his field, “the accuracy simply isn’t there.”
Oh… so, great? Are we still going to press forward with this useless exercise even if we know it’s all unreliable? Yes, yes we are. Be prepared for an avalanche of chi-squares and Q-values. Some samples:
“Using the chi-square statistic,” observes one professor, “Obama’s and Ayers’s books were indistinguishable, while Obama’s book was easily distinguishable from books by other authors.”…
“Even more interesting, when we extract those sections of ‘Dreams From My Father’ that Dr. (Ed. note: ha!) Cashill believes to be Ayers’ writing and treat this as a unique document, the style analysis software identifies a stronger correlation between this sample and Ayers’ ‘Fugitive Days’ than we see between this same sample and the remainder of ‘Dreams From My Father’!…
These results achieved through good methodology should readily stimulate scientists skilled in the particular relevant fields to construct their own tests, place objective metrics on the correlation between the Ayers-Obama documents and publish results.”
So at this point you might be wondering just who all these mystery scientists are, right? Ha, tough luck!
The authors’ contact information could be made available on deep background for serious news sources.
Allow me to translate: “These guys are quacks who’ve been denied tenure just about everywhere, but I’m willing to give them up if you just please pay attention to me.” And we’re sure that by “serious news sources” he really just means the wingnut conventions over at TownHall and WorldNetDaily.
And so this is it, we suppose. With the election just days away, the only attention Jack’s “discovery” is getting is when it is being debunked by major media. So what are we left with? A sad shell of a man; a once-proud author and professional commentator whose last shreds of dignity and reputation have been squandered in a foolhardy and ill-advised venture; a movement, personified by men like Jack, that lies in shambles at the altar of free-market orthodoxy and relentless devotion to social issues; and a man whose sole contribution to the national conversation is condescending negativity and smug indifference to the plight of his fellow man.
You have fallen, sir. And you have fallen hard. But we shed no tears for your intellectual Waterloo.
[...] desperate, latching onto totally incidental nautical imagery in both authors’ works and announcing that he had somehow found a way to scientifically prove his crackpot theories. He also seemed to [...]