Today's New York Times has a story about Barack Obama's friend Bill "Bomber" Ayers, a former leader of the notorious Weather Underground terror organization. The story is slanted, but I have to tell you I'm absolutely thrilled that the Times did what few other mainstream media outlets have bothered to to do--explore the connections between Obama and Ayers.
Interesting that the New York Times chose to publish its story on the slowest news day, all things being equal, of the week--Saturday. But in the print edition, Ayers is there--right on the front page of the Old Gray Lady. When is the Chicago Tribune, or the Chicago Sun-Times, going to dig deep into the Ayers-Obama story, as they have with Obama's equally odious relationship with convicted felon Tony Rezko?
Anyway, the title of the story says it all, Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths.
The pair did more than "cross paths." For starters, let's go to the beginning of Barack Obama's political career--it began in the Hyde Park graystone on the right--the home where the unprepentant ex-terrorist lives with his equally unprentant wife, Bernardine Dohrn.
But before I go further, I have to ask a question? How many of our presidents have counted terrorists, or ex-terrorists, as friends? Where is the outrage?
My friend Dan Curry of Reverse Spin has some questions for the junior senator of Illlinois, including, when will Obama, not one of his spokespersons, answer questions about Ayers.
As for why I'm glad, warts and all, that the Times opened the window on Ayers, it gave Sarah Palin a timely opportunity to place Ayers in the political dialogue, telling crowds this afternoon that Obama is "palling around with terrorists."
Stanley Kurtz adds some fresh air to the Ayers story in the National Review's Corner blog.
Yes Obama, who like myself was born in 1961, was a child when Ayers was taking part in his bombing campaign. But since coming out of hiding in 1980 and becoming a University of Illinois professor, Ayers has held tight to far-left, out of the mainstrem views
And as recently as 2001, at least six years into their friendship, Ayers told the New York Times, "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough."
As for the question whether Ayers would go back to setting off bombs, he replied, "I don't want to discount the possibility."
And Obama is friends with this flag-stomping creep.
Where is the outrage?
H/T to Pat Hickey of ...With Both Hands who adds his own analysis.
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8 comments:
Obama called Hyde out pubiclicly as a "toothless ex-terrorist". If Obama was the educations board chairman and Hyde was the boards advisory on educational issues, how exactly can they avoid not working together? Obama cares too much about education to avoid Mr. Hyde and his indespicable past. If they live three blocks apart, how do they avoid not running into each other? When a campaign has nothing to run on, perpetually flip-flopping, expect smears. McCains erratic behavior will plunge our great country deeper into the pockets of the upper-class.
Rubes,
Kutz has a great passage on Obama/Ayers here:
The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ "small schools" project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.
Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publically endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country. Shane mentions the book endorsement, yet says nothing about the book’s actual content. Nor does Shane mention the panel about Ayers’ book, on which Obama spoke as part of a joint Ayers-Obama effort to sink the 1998 Illinois juvenile crime bill. Again, we have unmistakable evidence of a substantial political working relationship. (I’ve described it in detail here in "Barack Obama’s Lost Years."
The Times article purports to resolve the matter of Ayers’ possible involvement in Obama’s choice to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, yet in no way does so. Clearly, the article sides with those who claim that Ayers was not involved. Yet the piece has no credibility because it simply refuses to present the arguments of those who say that Ayers almost surely had a significant role in Obama’s final choice.
Steve Diamond has made a powerful case that, whoever first suggested Obama’s name, Ayers must surely have had a major role in his final selection. Diamond has now revealed that the Times consulted him extensively for this article and has seen his important documentary evidence. Yet we get no inkling in the piece of Diamond’s key points, or the documents that back it up. (I’ve made a similar argument myself, based largely on my viewing of many of the same documents presented by Diamond.) How can an article that gives only one side of the story be fair? Instead of offering both sides of the argument and letting readers decide, the Times simply spoon-feeds its readers the Obama camp line.
The Times also ignores the fact that I’ve published a detailed statement from the Obama camp on the relationship between Ayers and Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (See "Obama’s Challenge.") Maybe that’s because attention to that statement would force them to acknowledge and report on my detailed reply.
Shane’s story also omits any mention of the fact that access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records was blocked. What’s more, thanks to a University of Chicago law student’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we now know that access to the documents was blocked by an old Obama associate, Ken Rolling, on the day I first tried to see them. And as a result of my own FOIA, we also have evidence that Rolling may have been less than fully forthcoming on the question of Ayers’ possible role in elevating Obama to board chair at Anneberg. In fact, Rolling seems to have been withholding information from a New York Times reporter. I’ve made this material public in a piece called, "Founding Brothers." How could a responsible article on the topic of Obama, Ayers, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ignore the story of the blocked library access and the results of the two FOIA requests? How could a responsible paper fail to aggressively follow up on the questions raised by those requests, and by the documents and analysis presented by Steve Diamond?
Most remarkably of all, Shane seems to paper over the results of his own questioning. On the one hand, toward the end of the piece we read: "Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship." And it’s no wonder, says Shane, since Ayers was caught expressing no regret for his own past terrorism in an article published on September 11, 2001. Yet earlier in Shane’s article we learn that, according to Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt, Obama and Ayers "have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005." Very interesting. Obama’s own spokesman has just left open the possibility that there has indeed been phone and e-mail contact between the two men between 2002 and 2004, well after Ayers’ infamous conduct on 9/11. Yet instead of pursuing this opening, Shane ignores the findings of his own investigation and covers for Obama.
I find the book endorsement in itself disturbing. Doesn't the endorser have to agree to have his comments printed on the book jacket, or wherever it appears?
Guilt by association, huh? McCain better be careful about the lies his trophy running mate is telling. This one can and will backfire.
"Toothless?" Sheesh.
Thanks Pat. Kurtz has done some good work.
Felix...interesting point. During his appearance on the Milt Rosenberg show, you know, the one that the Obama-nuts tried to disrupt, Kurtz' discomfort about Ayers, he said, was about his radical ideas post Weather Underground days.
Anon...
Please point out Palin's "lies."
...you mean the same NY Times that you and your buds here are always complaining is some sort of Obama mouthpiece?
Then again, the article did note that Obama and Ayers aren't close -- because they aren't.
You and Pat Hickey are much closer "friends".
Cockroaches and rats...
Both scurry when the lights are turned on.
Disinfecting light is beginning to send 'em scurrying.
More disinfectant, please.
Rob...I made it clear in my post that I'm glad that the Times wrote an article about Ayers--it revived the story that most Americans still aren't familiar with--but it was still a puff piece.
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