Apologies if this has already been covered. I don't see it anywhere, but I have been known to screw up.
We all do - particularly, it seems, the modern Republican party, one of whose prominent members has been making overtures to an Oxford don to get him to work on 'outing' Obama's published biographical works as having been actually written by .... wait for it ... William Ayers!! Of course.
Sadly for them, the don in question, one Dr Peter Millican, decided the notion was utter rubbish and declined the job. The story is the The Times.
Link to story here.
I don't want to quote a big chunk of the text - the story is a Times exclusive. I'm sure you'll let me know if the link above fails. Under the headline Republicans try to use Oxford don to smear Barack Obama, the story details how someone called Robert Fox along with Chris Cannon (Rep congressman from Utah) tried to hire Millican, an expert in computer plagiarism-detection, to prove that Jack Cashill's theory about Ayers ghostwriting for Obama was all true.
Unfortunately for them, turns out the expert found the notion to be ridiculous.
Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges "very implausible". A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.
Millican said: "I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them." He said Fox gave him the impression that Cannon had got "cold feet about it being seen to be funded by the Republicans".
I'd have thought, if you wanted to out someone for hiring a ghostwriter, you might choose a subject who isn't, demonstrably and in countless televised interviews all over YouTube, one of the most eloquent speakers in anglophone culture, whose spoken style clearly matches up with what's in the biographies he has purportedly farmed out to the hired help.
I'd also have thought that if you want to dignify your gutter-raking by using an Oxford don, you might also do well to consider than such people have their reputations to consider, and aren't about to make laughing-stocks of themselves for a lousy £10,000.
Worth a shot, though, eh boys?