But, I'm flabbergasted [not really] that he doesn't hold the same degree of outrage regarding Palin, her abuse of power charge--you know, the one she keeps lying about--her close association w/ the Alaskan Independence Party, McCain's friendship w/ G. Gordon Liddy, Singlaub and the US Council for World Freedom. But the Right is quite deft at dismissing w/contortionist skill those associations.
It's curious the Left has no sustained interest in that game. I like to think it's because we have more moral grounding, but admittedly, I'm partial. It's probably just that we know we're not gonna sway any nutwings with that argument. They couldn't care less about just equivalencies.
But, this obsessive, tireless Ayers thing is making me pace, throw kitchen utensils and mutter furiously to myself. In other words, I'm in a constant state of pissed-off-ness--and becoming miserable to myself.
This thing keeps getting repeated and repeated--incorrectly. So, I'm pleading, dear reader [no matter how few of you there are] to pass along a message to all your hater friends and relatives.
For crazy Uncle Pat and followers, the Ayers argument--distilled from Faux News, Palin multitudes and right wing talk-radio--hinges on two issues: (1) that Ayers hasn't said he was "sorry" and (2) Obama's career was "launched" in unrepentant Ayers' living room.
To the issue of repentance ... from Wikipedia
Statements made in 2001
Chicago Magazine reported that "just before the September 11th attacks," Richard Elrod, a city lawyer injured in the Weathermen's Chicago "Days of Rage," received an apology from Ayers and Dohrn for their part in the violence. "[T]hey were remorseful," Elrod says. "They said, 'We're sorry that things turned out this way.'"[19]
Much of the controversy about Ayers during the decade since 2000 stems from an interview he gave to The New York Times on the occasion of the memoir's publication.[20] The reporter quoted him as saying "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough", and, when asked if he would "do it all again," as saying "I don't want to discount the possibility."[15] Ayers has not denied the quotes, but he protested the interviewer's characterizations in a Letter to the Editor published September 15, 2001: "This is not a question of being misunderstood or 'taken out of context', but of deliberate distortion."[21]
In the ensuing years, Ayers has repeatedly avowed that when he said he had "no regrets" and that "we didn't do enough" he was speaking only in reference to his efforts to stop the United States from waging the Vietnam War, efforts which he has described as ". . . inadequate [as] the war dragged on for a decade."[22] Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to imply a wish they had set more bombs.[22][23]
The interviewer also quoted some of Ayers' own criticism of Weatherman in the foreword to the memoir, whereby Ayers reacts to having watched Emile de Antonio's 1976 documentary film about Weatherman, Underground: "[Ayers] was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism.' "[15] "We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."[3]
In a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune, Ayers wrote, "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter. "Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response."[24]
Views on his past expressed since 2001
Ayers was asked in a January 2004 interview, "How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?" He replied:[25] "I've thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it's impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful? ... I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable."
On September 9, 2008, journalist Jake Tapper reported on the comic strip in Bill Ayers's blog explaining the soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"[26][27]
Sounds like repentance to me, how 'bout you?
To the second issue of "launching" Obama's career in Ayers' living room [which, of course means they must be blood-brothers.] Nutwings drool and shoot their load over the idea this meeting was some sort of dark, plotting social-radical cabal. I mean, *gasp* what could they have said to one another? Oh, I know!
Ayers: "Hey Barack! I just had the most brilliant idea! Why don't we come up with a plot to turn this immoral, redneck country we all hate into an elitist, socialist nation ... or we'll start blowing things up! Kinda like I used to!"
or
Ayers, again: "Hey, I know [to nameless other socialists in attendance], let's get Obama to run for president and seize the reins of power! He'll do it! He'll do anything! ...we command him!"
Obviously, I'm being glib, but the point is this: first, Obama's career was launched plenty well on his own, thank you. He'd already been president of the Harvard Law Review [where he'd developed coalitions b/w conservatives and liberals] and a professor at the University of Chicago.
Second, this was a "coffee," or rather "meet the candidate" event where Ayers introduced Obama to other politicos in his bid for the Illinois State Senate. Who was more connected and established with conservatives AND liberals on the scene in Chicago at that time? Ayers. This is what's called "networking," folks. We've all had to suffer those kinds of meetings before, right?
Finally, that coffee took place in 1995 ... long before 9/11 after which the country developed a rabid hyper-vigilance against anyone quietly working for social and educational justice, who had the word "terrorist" attached to his distant past yet who appeared "rehabilitated." I'm sure, at the time, it was easier to look beyond such things--if Obama even knew then--as it may have been for most of us. We homo-sapiens tend to evaluate people by what/whom we think we see standing before us in the immediate moment. Including, I'm only guessing, the very political Pat Buchanan--especially if that former, rehabilitated terrorist standing before him was on the far right instead of the left. Who was it that said the simplest explanation is usually closest to the truth?
And, oh ya, how about this--wasn't there a famous dude from oh, say, 2,000 years ago who embraced anyone--thieves, prostitutes, murderers, anyone--as long as they were repentent, wanting to better themselves and build a more humane, compassionate society? How is it the Christian right, time and time again overlooks the most important lessons of Christianity.
