Cashill, Jack 1947–

PERSONAL:

Born 1947, in Newark, NJ. Education: Purdue University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Kansas City, MO; western NY. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, producer, educator. Ingram's Magazine, Kansas City, MO, contract executive editor; WorldNetDaily, columnist; KMBZ-AM radio, Kansas City, MO, talk-show host for four programs; Catholic Family Radio network, talk-show host. Producer of documentaries for PBS and national cable channels, including The Royal Years and Megafix, WND, 2004. Has taught media and literature at various universities in the Kansas City area and at Purdue University.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright fellowship.

WRITINGS:

Snake Handling in Mid-America: An Incite-ful Look at American Life and Work in the 90s (essays), illustrated by Dan Regan, Westport Publishers (Kansas City, MO), 1991.

2006: The Chautauqua Rising (novel), Olin Frederick (Dunkirk, NY), 2000.

(With James Sanders) First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America, WND Books (Nashville, TN), 2003.

Ron Brown's Body: How One Man's Death Saved the Clinton Presidency and Hillary's Future, WND Books (Nashville, TN), 2004.

Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture, Nelson Current (Nashville, TN), 2005.

Helping America Help Itself, Whippoorwill Press (Overland Park, KS), 2005.

Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King's Dream, Nelson Current (Nashville, TN), 2006.

What's the Matter with California? Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking, Threshold Editions (New York, NY), 2007.

(And director) Reconsidering the Region: Wyandotte County REBORN (documentary film), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Weekly Standard, Missouri Medicine Medical Journal, and WorldNetDaily

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and producer Jack Cashill was born in 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, and earned his doctorate in American studies at Purdue University. Cashill works primarily as a freelancer, and the focus of his work tends to be controversial subjects that have gone relatively unnoticed or even ignored by mainstream media outlets. As a producer, and sometimes as a writer and director, he has participated in the creation of a number of documentary films for both local PBS stations and national cable networks, including The Royal Years, which won an Emmy Award, and Reconsidering the Region: Wyandotte County REBORN. He is also involved in radio, hosting a number of daily talk shows for the Kansas City AM station KMBZ, and also for the Catholic Family Radio's national network. He serves as executive editor for Ingram's Magazine, a major business publication in Kansas City, and has contributed freelance articles to a number of periodicals, including Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Weekly Standard, Missouri Medicine Medical Journal, and WorldNetDaily. He is the author of several works of nonfiction, a novel, and a collection of essays.

Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture takes a look at different instances in recent cultural history when what at first appeared to be a wondrous cultural revelation or discovery was later revealed to be no more a scam. Cashill picks apart a series of different cultural phenomena, including the juggernaut that was Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which was later proven to be partially falsified and in some instances plagiarized, and the Piltdown hoax, in which proof of human evolution from apes was supposed to have been demonstrated by a group of British scientists, but it was later discovered that they had combined a human skull with the jaw bone of an orangutan in an elaborate attempt to back up their hypotheses. Richard Nadler, writing for the National Review, commented that "the unanswered question of Cashill's book is why these miscreants, whose hoaxes spread so swiftly, were refuted so slowly, and with such great difficulty, if at all. Hoodwinked skillfully presents the intrigues of the elite village; but deceptions that transform an entire civilization require more than a village."

In Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King's Dream, Cashill offers readers and boxing fans an alternative to a straightforward biography of Muhammad Ali. He chooses to dissect the man's career in terms of the impact that he had on American culture, both through his actions and through his public persona and the media hype that often surrounded him. He delves into the mythos that built up around Ali as he made the metamorphosis from Cassius Marcellus Clay, an eighteen-year-old fighter with an amazing winning streak, to Muhammad Ali, champion and media phenomenon. Over the course of the book, Cashill reveals a number of untruths that were spread early in Ali's career, such as the fact that he was the grandson of slaves; in actuality, Ali's grandparents were born after the Civil War was over and were never slaves. Cashill also criticizes Ali for encouraging separatist behavior between blacks and whites at a time in American history when civil unrest was already high and people in general were in need of a leader to show them what could be achieved through unity. Much of this Cashill blames on Ali's early involvement with the Nation of Islam and the racist ideas that it proliferated. The author notes that later, when Ali turned away from the organization, his outlook became markedly different. Although Cashill also addresses boxing and the successes of Ali's career, he focuses more on the man as a whole and his journey as a person and public figure, which was intricately intertwined with the social politics of the day. Tom Donelson, writing for the Blog Critics Web site, remarked that "there were many heroic aspects of Ali's career but there were the blemishes as well. Ali's complexity is clouded by the political agenda of those writing the history books but even without the mythology, Ali accomplished much."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Books in Canada, June 22, 2007, James Roots, review of Sucker Punch: The Hard Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Killed King's Dream, p. 19.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2007, review of What's the Matter with California? Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking.

National Review, September 26, 2005, Richard Nadler, "Forceful Frauds," p. 64.

Publishers Weekly, November 18, 2002, review of First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America, p. 4; August 13, 2007, review of What's the Matter with California?, p. 56.

Society, May 1, 2006, David Stoll, review of Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture.

ONLINE

Blog Critics Web site,http://blogcritics.org/ (February 8, 2006), Tom Donelson, review of Sucker Punch.

ConWebWatch,http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/ (September 13, 2007), Terry Krepel, "Cashill's Cornucopia of Clinton Conspiracies."

Front Page Online,http://www.frontpagemag.com/ (May 10, 2006), Jamie Glazov, "The Lie of Ali."

Jack Cashill Home Page,http://www.cashill.com (April 21, 2008).

Notes from Evil Bender Web site,http://www.evilbender.wordpress.com/ (March 10, 2008), "WND: Jack Cashill Thinks He Wins Science Debate."

Prime Buzz Web site,http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/ (September 17, 2007), Dave Helling, "Jack Cashill Q&A."

Tony's Kansas City,http://www.tonyskansascity.com/ (March 24, 2008), "Kansas City Author Jack Cashill Is Either Completely Crazy or an Absolute Genius Regarding His Attack on Hillary Clinton!!!"

WorldNetDaily,http://www.wnd.com/ (April 21, 2008), staff profile of author.