re: #172 songbird

Yes, but it would show whose material Obama had been reading, studying, and whose literary style he would have absorbed.

Not in this case. It shows only that Ayers and Obama are both the product of having been through college post 1960, and both took some liberal arts courses—or were otherwise exposed to standard po-mo, lit-crit ideas, same as everyone who’s been through college now.

Edit: Sharm just said this above in a much better way