Sunday, December 07, 2008

Ayers Still Unrepentant And No Pal Of Obama

Domestic terrorist William Ayers pens an opinion column for the New York Times today to explain why he remained silent while his good buddy Barack Obama was being pilloried for his association with him. Ayers insists he is not a terrorist. Yeah, I set off some small bombs at the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and elsewhere, but I'm not a terrorist he says. Just as unbelievable is Ayers' attempt to distance his relationship from Obama. Here's a little of what Ayers said:

Unfairly Linked to Obama
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”

Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.

I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing . . .

With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.

I Am Not A Terrorist
I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations . . . In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense . . .

But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

I am not an Obama pal
President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.

2 comments:

Downtown Indy said...

Perhaps someone would like to try an 'I am not a reckless driver, I didn't kill anyone' defense after a massive car crash, to see how that works for them?

jbargeusa said...

You know, after the Ayers issue gained traction (Fox, Hannity, Limbaugh and even Sara Palin getting the "mainstream" media to acknowledge it) I wondered why the American people didn't rise up in high temper about it. Or Reverand Wright, for that matter.
Why, oh why didn't the American People think that Barack Obama was an American-hating, terrorist-loving kind of guy?
Now, if the election was close, I would say, well, the media is behind it.
Ater all, even though Bush's approval rating can drop from 80% post 9-11 to negative seven, hey, people just can't think for themselves.
NOT.
Now granted, there's plenty of dumb people out there, but dumb people vote both ways.
And Barack won by seven per cent - a thumping margin.
Heck, he even won Indiana.
I mean, not even Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Mondale, Humphrey, McGovern, Stevenson, or plucky Harry Truman pulled that off.
So something bigger was happening than the media bias so beloved of Fox (#1 ranked cable news show) and Rush (tens of millions of daily listeners).
So why didn't the linkage between Ayers and Obama resonate more with the American voting public?
It was the temperment.
The cool steady debate performances.
The unflappable campaigner in action.
In the end people saw the relationship for what it really was.
Ayers was a fairly prominent academic in Obama's neighborhood.
Young Barack had no idea of his past.
When he found out, he naturally assumed that some sort of atonement had occured and when the infamous quotes from Ayers happened in 2001, he realized his error.
And Barack cut him loose.
That's all.
But perhaps next time you'll be more successful - maybe unpaid parking tickets will finally derail him in 2012.