Talk:Dreams from My Father

Necessary Citations/Amendments

There are several statements that need to be validated.

• "Obama enrolled at Occidental College, where he describes living a "party" lifestyle of drug and alcohol use."

My understanding was that the party lifestyle of drug and alcohol use was mostly during his high school years.Davemcarlson 07:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

• "transferred to Columbia College at Columbia University, where he majored in political science."

My understanding was that he majored in international relations. Can someone verify? Davemcarlson 07:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

• "It was during his time spent here [as a community organizer] that Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ."

I believe this happened later, after he returned from Harvard Law School. I think he joined Trinity with his wife (it's in The Audacity of Hope, but I don't have time to look it up right now), whom he married after graduating from Harvard (age 26-28 or so). I think that Obama wasn't at a place where he felt able to commit to any church until after he went to Kenya, which was after the community organizing Davemcarlson 07:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

have the time to look everything up, but the drug and alcohol lifestyle extended from high school to his times at Occidental. The book mentions that once he transfers to Columbia his life changes (he starts jogging every day, stops drugs and finds excuses every time his friends call him for drinks). UnknownParadox 00:58, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It is not our job to look up disputed statements that you dont like. If you think they are untrue then find the correct answers yourself with sources.

Linkage Issues

For some reason, Barack's father and mother both link back to him, which is really odd. We need to fix these link issues. Gautam ^Discuss 02:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Bill Ayers as Obama's ghostwriter

I see no reason why American Thinker shouldn't be considered an RS. IMO, the article make a convincing case that Obama is unlikely to have written this book himself. The part about Bill Ayers is more speculative, but speculation can be included if it is clearly labeled as such. Kauffner (talk) 03:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

See our article on The American Thinker for why it's not a reliable source. See also Questionable sources, which this definitely is. Reverting. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Did you actually read the article that you are referring to? It says that AT has been quoted in the New York Times and other major papers. We have higher standard than they do?

I did a check on who's been reverting this passage. It's anonymous IPs in Britain and Australia. I don't what to make of that. Kauffner (talk) 09:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Quoting a source indicating "some people are saying this" and referencing them as reliable are two different things. The National Enquirer has been quoted in the New York Times — that doesn't mean that we can use them as a source, even when they're right.

If you want, we can bring this to WP:RS/N to see what a wider group of editors think about whether this source is reliable. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 09:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I've started the discussion here. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 10:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I wrote the thing up in exactly the form you are recommending: "Some commentators have speculated that...." Some of other responses say it is a "weird theory" or an "exceptional claim", but people with active political careers generally do use ghostwriters. The ghostwriters for Kenneday and Malcolm X didn't get credit until years publication. Kauffner (talk) 16:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

A couple of points: so far it's only one commentator, not "some commentators". Second, even though ghostwriting is common in political circles, these days it's common practice to acknowledge when a book has been ghostwritten. I've seen articles in reliable sources which make the point that although most politicians get ghostwriters to pen their books, Obama actually wrote his. To suggest that this is not so is to suggest fraud on the part of Obama, which requires exceptional sourcing per WP:BLP. There are also genuinely reliable sources which explicitly state that Obama did not use a ghostwriter ([1], [2], [3], for starters). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:14, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

How about an "authorship" section that cites what various articles have to say on the subject? Hillary used an uncredited ghostwriter for her memoirs.[4] Kauffner (talk) 18:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Only if a more reliable, mainstream source picks up Cashill's allegation. This one source isn't reliable enough to merit even questioning the book's authorship. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Cashill's claims have been featured on WorldNetNews[5], Rush,[6], and Rusty Humphries[7]. These news sources all have major audiences. "Mainstream" means what? A liberal newspaper? Where does this requirement come from? Kauffner (talk) 05:33, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Reliable sources#News organizations: "Material from mainstream news organizations is welcomed, particularly the high-quality end of the market, such as The Washington Post, The Times in Britain, and The Associated Press." Also, "While the reporting of rumors has a news value, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should only include information verified by reliable sources. Wikipedia is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." Despite the pseudoscientific trappings, Cashill's article amounts to supposition and gossip.

It's not about liberal versus conservative. A similar claim about a conservative figure that came from Huffington Post or DailyKos would be equally unacceptable. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Klein's claim is the opinion of a journalist. Cashill's claim is the opinion of a PhD'd scholatr of American literature. I think both are equally reliable, and both belong in the article. This page is about a controversy. I should note that the attack on The American Thinker on that page comes from The Nation, which is itself no more reliable, to put it mildly.--Mikedelsol (talk) 17:07, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

It's just that, opinion, and including it here would violate the standards of wikipedia. You can edit-war until you get blocked, but we're not going to include bizarre fringe theories in this article. --Loonymonkey (talk) 17:21, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Deleted the Klein comment applying your principle. This is nto a fringe theory, and if anybody is going to be blocked, it is the Obamanauts. Are you guys paid? You should be--Mikedelsol (talk) 17:27, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. You are incorrect when you say "this page is about a controversy". It is about a book, a book which reliable sources agree was written by Barack Obama and no-one else. Plenty of people with PhDs advocate fringe theories — the determination of whether they should be covered in an article is based on whether the claim has been repeated or addressed in reliable sources, which, as far as I can tell, this one has not. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:19, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

You've made this argument before. It's been rebutted before. Of course America Thinker is RS. A whole list of major media outlets has referred to it.

Everything is somebody's opinion. You can source opinions on both sides on both and get NPOV. Kauffner (talk) 01:27, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Rush Limbaugh is not a reliable source either. Time is. If this gets coverage in mainstream sources, it can be included. Just because it's proliferating throughout the conservative blogosphere and right-wing talk radio, that doesn't mean that it's not a fringe theory. A comparison on the liberal side would be the claim that John McCain's oft-repeated story about the cross drawn by one of his Vietnamese captors in the sand is based on a story told by Aleksandr Solzhenistyn about his experiences in a Soviet gulag. Plenty of sources across the blogosphere (DailyKos, Huffington Post, etc.) made that claim, but as far as I know it never made it to any reliable sources. So, in accordance with Wikipedia policy, it's not mentioned in Faith of My Fathers.

With regard to Wikipedia policy there is a fundamental difference between Klein's opinion about the book and Cashill's opinion about its authorship — the latter has implications for WP:BLP, as it suggests that Obama has been committing literary fraud. WP:BLP#Reliable sources says, "When less-than-reliable publications print material they suspect is untrue, they often include weasel phrases and attributions to anonymous sources. Look out for these. If the original publication doesn't believe its own story, why should we?" Cashill admits that he cannot prove his hypothesis. There is no policy-based justification for including this claim in the article. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:04, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with Josiah and Loonymonkey that this "controversy" has not yet received coverage in reliable sources, so we can't include it. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:03, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Josiah, Loonymonkey, and Akhilleus, and would add that this issue is also covered by WP:BLP, which Wikipedia:Reliable sources#News organizations addresses: "In articles about living persons, only material from high-quality news organizations should be used." American Thinker is many things, but "high-quality news organization" it is not. ~ priyanath ^talk 02:49, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I gather that Time magazine and the book itself can't be used either. Kauffner (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a helpful attitude. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's stop being naive here. This is not, in essence, a suggestion that a book by a leading political figure was written with the aid of a ghostwriter. This article in the American Thinker is, plainly and simply, a political smear, from a website that has engaged in such activity in the past. The object is not primarily to damage the reputation of Barack Obama by suggesting dishonesty - though that is part of it - but to suggest a close linkage with Bill Ayers, as part of a political narrative that implies - without a shred of evidence - that Obama is secretly linked to terrorism. The article by Cahill is a farrago, a piece of ill-disguised political journalism. He makes no attempt to take a balanced point of view. He suggests that the two books must have been written by the same person, because the writers have the same background, because they approach writing about nature in a vaguely similar way, because they both use metaphors relating to the sea and Obama could not possibly understand the meaning of the word 'ballast' because he is not a specialist on maritime subjects. He makes no attempt to compare the book's style to anyone else - except, laughably - a book by himself - and uses a variety of pseudo-scientific comparisions (eg, similarity of readability scores) to give an impression of seriousness. He admits to being 'pleased with the findings'. We ought not to allow Wikipedia to become a tool in what is, in essence, a political process. --Adelphoi En Kardia Dios Bous (talk) 12:45, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

As an uninvolved admin who noticed this discussion by way of the fringe theories noticeboard, this seems to clearly fall under our biographies of living persons policy. The claim that someone lied about authoring a book is quite inflammatory and contentious; such claims require high-quality sourcing. The American Thinker does not meet the bar for sourcing this sort of claim about a living person in a Wikipedia article, and the material in question violates WP:BLP. Furthermore, as articles relating to Obama and the 2008 Presidential election are under article probation, I would suggest that tolerance for edit-warring to restore poorly-sourced, BLP-noncompliant material will be fairly low. Additional input can be sought through the usual means, including requests for comment or the BLP noticeboard, but edit-warring needs to stop. MastCell ^Talk 18:10, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

This is a bestselling book. It's authorship is notable in and of itself. What if Obama becomes president? Every article dealing with comtemporary politics becomes BLP? The sorry history of memoirs written by U.S. politicans is that they almost all turn out to be ghostwritten. It would be extraordinary if Obama actually wrote the book all by himself. The hokey-sounding nautical stuff isn't Cashill's best argument either. The average sentence length for Ayers' Fugitive Days and Deams are the same (23 words). Kauffner (talk) 04:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Cashill has published a new article comparing the book to known Obama writing samples and known Ayers writing samples. Using the techniques used in literary analysis and authorship analysis, including repeated themes and vocabulary, Cashill makes a compelling argument "Dreams from My Father" was written by Ayers. [8] This is a significant development in this story. RonCram (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

People in the media are picking up on this story. [9] RonCram (talk) 05:42, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a bit closer to WP:RS than the previous sources, but it's still not good enough to pass the high threshold set by the article probation and WP:BLP. The Toledo Blade column Ron links to is an opinion piece by a local columnist, and WP:BLP says, "If someone appears to be promoting a biased point of view, insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability." The relevance is clear here, but there are still no reliable third-party sources referencing this theory.

If the story makes it to the national media, either as a news story covering the claim and reactions to it, or perhaps in the writings of a nationally syndicated columnist, then maybe we can include it in a neutral fashion ("Jack Cashill has claimed this; other sources say that."). Similarly, if the Obama campaign responds to the accusation, that response would make the claim noteworthy. But so far it's still being ignored on a national/mainstream level, and we shouldn't and can't "push the story".

Finally, this entire affair reminds me of a bit from my favorite play, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. In one scene, a literary academic is addressing a mathematician:

...One of my colleagues believed he had found an unattributed short story by D. H. Lawrence, and he analyzed it on his home computer, most interesting, perhaps you remember the paper? ... Well, by comparing sentence structures and so forth, this chap showed that there was a ninety percent chance that the story had indeed been written by the same person as Women in Love. To my inexpressible joy, one of your maths mob was able to show that on the same statistical basis there was a ninety percent chance that Lawrence also wrote the Just William books and much of the previous day's Brighton and Hove Argus.

Incidentally, readers interested in a more neutral assessment of Cashill's argument should read this blog entry by Ann Althouse, a bona fide centrist. (And no, Althouse's commentary doesn't meet the standard of WP:RS either.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Josiah, I am not familiar with the play but that was amusing quote. Like any field of human endeavor, authorship analysis can be well done or poorly done. I studied the subject some when getting my Masters. I have read some pieces that were absolutely atrocious. That said, I find the way Cashill handled the evidence in his latest article to be very compelling. He didn't rely on sentence structure but on vocabulary and recurrent themes. Of course, my opinion does not mean anything in this context. I am merely trying to explain why I think this is important. Regarding whether the piece in the Toledo Blade is RS or not, we need only know that the Blade is Toledo's only daily newspaper. That makes it RS. Someone may argue that the piece is only RS for the opinion of the columnist and not for the facts under controversy. I would grant that. But what still remains is there is a controversy in the media as to the authorship of Obama's memoir. I think the article should state that and let readers decide for themselves. RonCram (talk) 07:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Josiah, I just read piece by Ann Althouse. She was definitely skeptical of Cashill's article at first. By the end of her piece, she seemed to be somewhat dismayed by the similar seafaring imagery in both "Dreams" and "Fugitive Days." Ayers worked as a sailor for a time but Obama never did. For a non-sailor to use such imagery would be very strange. Althouse is taken aback by this similarity and ends the article by leaving it to the reader. I have to agree with Cashill. RonCram (talk) 07:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Note that Althouse begins by conceding that Obama probably did have a ghostwriter. I assume a specialist will run Qsum on the writing samples before long and we'll get some definite answers. Kauffner (talk)

I don't consider Qsum to be definitive. People write with different sentence length depending on their audience. Plus getting a different number would not give you the identity of the ghostwriter. Cashill has approached this like solving a crime. He tied means, motive and opportunity to William Ayers. The common seafaring imagery between samples, Ayers demonstrated ability and willingness to help would be writers and Ayers promotion of Obama as a "writer" is almost like a fingerprint at the crime scene. I am not saying any crime was committed, but Cashill used this approach to solve the mystery.RonCram (talk) 12:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Please note that C. S. Forester wrote both Obama's and Ayers' books. Note the shared seafaring motives in the modern books and The Happy Return. Also, all three authors have an otherwise inexplicable tendency to use sentences with a lengths of more than 3 words, and use both "the" and "and" over and over again! In other words, the Cashill "analysis" is a sad joke, half cherry-picking and half botched statistics. Determining the properties of a text on a 30 sentence sample? 30 is just barely enough to get a meaningful average (always assuming the sentences were representative - unlikely, if they are from a single passage each). Where is the standard deviation? And why only 30 non-randomly selected sentences? And why was there no search for differences in style? Finding superficial similarities in any pair of long texts (from similar eras, in the same language, dealing with related topics, from authors from the same culture) is a trivial, but completely meaningless. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:35, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Stephan, while you know something of mathematics, you are not as well informed on authorship analysis. Personally, I do not like counting the number of words in a sentence. This can change if the same author is writing to two different audiences or if his purpose is different. However, the points Cashill makes regarding recurrent themes and vocabulary are compelling. The theme of "constructing" your history is pretty rare and most people might look at it as lying - but there it is in both books. The large number of seafaring terms seems completely natural in Ayers book since he used to be a sailor but appears completely out of place in Obama's book because he never was. Think about Psalm 23. No one doubts it was written by the former shepherd, King David. Who but a shepherd would think in those terms? How can anyone but a sailor write in the terms used by Obama? But my analysis is no more meaningful than your uneducated analysis. The real question is: Is the controversy real and is it reported in reliable sources? The answer clearly is yes. RonCram (talk) 19:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Can we close this discussion? Since nobody has anything that even comes close to a reliable source for these fringe claims there isn't anything left to discuss. As seen above, the topic is simply devolving into a forum of personal opinion that has nothing to do with improving the article. --Loonymonkey (talk) 14:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Second. Tvoz/talk 16:40, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

No. The discussion is not fringe. It is occurring in daily newspapers and national publications. If you don't understand this, you need to reread the discussion. RonCram (talk) 19:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Major lulz for this section header. Hoo boy. Sure, the book maybe had a ghost writer. But to suggest that the ghost writer was Bill Ayers?? What is this, a Coen brothers movie??? Come on, that's ludicrous. Beyond ludicrous. Concur with closing this ridiculous discussion. --Jaysweet (talk) 19:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, this discussion should not continue. If more reliable sources start reporting on this idea, then we should of course revisit the issue. But until then, let's not waste our time with this. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Even some of the Obama-lovers at the National Review think this claim is in a league of nuttiness with the Vince Foster and Ron Brown conspiracy theories ([10]). Time to put this to bed, unless perhaps there's a section in our 2008 U.S. Presidential election article on "Desperate last-minute ploys to turn the debate away from the economy"? MastCell ^Talk 19:55, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Cherry picked quotes

Adding 'favorite' quotes from the book to prove a point violates both WP:POV and WP:UNDUE. ~ priyanath ^talk 02:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

You can say this about adding anything. Besides, the quotes I have added have been widely discussed in the media. If quotes don't make a point, they are pointless. Do you think quotes should be chosen by a randomizing algorithm? Kauffner (talk) 07:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Concur with Priyanath. Please see WP:POINT along with the other links he provides above. --guyzero | talk 07:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

You need to read this rule yourself, since it is not what you seem to think it is. There's no rule against making a point. The rule is against disrupting Wikipedia. Kauffner (talk) 15:14, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

This is very simple. The quotations Kauffner is trying to add are the ones which have been chosen by conservative commentators for their inflammatory appearance. Most, if not all, of them, are less inflammatory in their original contexts. (For example, as I recall the section about reading Farrakhan's newsletter, Obama is actually pointing out how self-defeating and useless that sort of rhetoric is; he's not writing approvingly of it.)

There's no need for any quotations, really. There might be a case for a section talking in a neutral fashion about how some conservative commentators have taken certain quotations out of their original context in an attempt to make Obama look radical or anti-American (assuming that we can find both examples of notable commentators doing that and other notable commentators refuting the willful misinterpretations they're promoting). Even that would have to be handled very carefully, to avoid placing undue weight on a minority view. But placing the "worst" quotations in the article outside of any context is completely unacceptable. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I also point out that this article is in the scope of the Barack Obama article probation. If this continues, I will issue limited time topic bans until November 5th. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

What Obama writes about himself is a "minority view"? This is such a joke. Kauffner (talk) 12:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be a "minority view" to present these passages as representative or significant. Reviews of the book as a book have not focused on these passages. It's all about the context. If you want to say, "Conservative commentator John Doe III highlighted Obama's description of his college years..." that might be acceptable, if John Doe III is notable. But if we choose which excerpts we think are notable, then we're engaging in original research, and almost certainly violating WP:NPOV. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:40, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

You can't be serious. Take a look at Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men, a featured book article. It has an extended pull quote from the book about Madame Roland. Besides, if you quote from a review, what's the difference? It's "cherry picking" the review. Kauffner (talk) 04:15, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Come on. Madame Roland isn't running for President, and articles related to Mary Shelley aren't on article probation. The comparison is specious. More important, that article is full of secondary sources which discuss the book — the quotations don't stand alone, out of any context. The pull quote about Madame Roland is presented in the context of Shelley's treatment of women and figures from the French Revolution, and the text which discusses that context is cited to two scholarly works on the subject. We need that sort of cited context for the quotations you want to include. If these quotations are important to an understanding of the book Dreams from My Father, then some reliable source will have commented on them. Find one, and then we can talk.

Similarly, if you want to find other reviews from mainstream reliable sources, so that the Klein quote isn't given undue weight, that would be fine. But when you try to throw in a quotation about Marxist professors without any context or any citation from a reliable source indicating that this is at all important, it gives the strong impression that you're more interested in pushing a specific political viewpoint than in improving the article on a politician's memoir. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:47, 2 November 2008 (UTC)