The New York Times offers a flabby push-up, as opposed to rigorous work-out on Obama's long, close, dangerous and uncomfortable association with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Chicago's complex and cowardly web of convenience that weaves radicals, Private Foundations ( Woods Fund, Joyce Foundation, MacArthur and others), law firms ( Sidley & Austin,,Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, Bluhm Center, Peoples Law Office) real estate opportunists ( Tony Rezko, Allison Davis, Cullen Davis), universities ( UICC, Northwestern, and University of Chicago), and the media ( WGN, Chicago Tribune, Medill School of Journalism) and gutless and cynical politicians ( Daley and Blagojevich) provides the cover for this long, close and dangerous association.
This corporate weave is the 'dumb-down comforter' that wraps Ayers and his odious wife in such warmth that they can stare down from their stoops at America with contempt and allow Billy the Bomber, who polka-ed all over Old Glory in the Tribune's glossy and chi-chi Chicago Magazine, to give AMERICA THE FINGER. Even a Huffington Post Obamabot Michael Shaw noticed that.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-emny_b_131855.html
Obama is rooted to William Ayers and his political ascendancy owes more to Ayers than it does to the urban myth - Obama as Chicago Machine Politician. Obama is no more a Democratic Machine Politician than Tony Rezko is a philanthropist, or the Chicago Sun Times is a newspaper.
For all the protestations from Obama's journalists - worldwide - there has never been a serious inquiry, much less valuable study of William Ayers and his dangerous influence upon Obama by any Mainstream Media -including the cut-and-paste work of Sean Hannity.
Professor Steve Diamond and National Review's Stanley Kurtz have conducted the only real examinations of Ayers and the many other radical mentors of Barack Obama.
The Annenberg Challenge which was funded by Ambassador Walter Annenberg, himself a publisher of sorts -TV Guide and such - and the off-spring of real Chicago Gangsters - Moe Anneberg and the nephew of Max Annenberg. The lazy media dismiss the Annenberg Challenge as a Republican cover -'not just Ayers but Republicans too.'
Nuance!
Ayers and Dohrn were helped to toss their crimes against Americans into the Orwellian Memory Hole, through political convenience. Dorhn has been helping radical lawyers bring suit against Illinois taxpayers through her studies of children being assaulted by a racist Justice system that promotes police torture of blacks, inadequate legal representation for minorities at Northwestern Law School. Dorhn can not practice law. However she can yield power and influence over our courts through radical agitation methods and heavy, heavy lawsuits - Sue the City, Sue the County, Sue the racist People of America. I wish she would have stuck to C-4 as she would have done much less damage to lives and property.
Ayers bombs minds at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They got these jobs and cover of academic propriety through Law Firms - notably Sidley and Austin, where Michele Obama worked.
Obama took the path to White House holding the hands of Ayers and Dorhn.
Normal people and politicians do not keep contacts with criminals unless it's part of their job or they are members of their immediate family(e.g. criminal lawyers or parents).
ReplyDeleteBy criminals, I mean murderers, terrorists, traitors. You know, the capital crimes. One could add Rezko's type of crime to the list.
People with this kind of attraction for criminals should choose another career: criminal lawyer, priest...
BA
William Ayers has never been either a major or a minor influence on Barack Obama. Ayers was a radical weatherman in the late 60's and early 70's but since the 80's has been devoted to improving urban education. I do not know him, but I know that he is a different person now than he was almost four decades ago. The picture of him stepping on an American flag was a stupid thing to do which I surmise was to accompany a story of his radical past. He was stupid and foolish to have done it, but anyone who really thinks that Ayers has any influence, let alone undue influence on Obama is wrong. The connection they had on the Annenberg challenge was purely about urban education, Chicago in paarticular, anbd was well received by many neutral parties including the Chicago Tribune.
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for Wright and Rezko.
The visual and sound images are indeed frightful but they are equally misleading and belong in the Willie Horton political bag of dirty tricks.
Phil,
ReplyDeleteYour spirited defense of Ayers as a 'different person' today speaks well of your heart and sense of American fair-play.
However, Ayers, in my opinion, is much more dangerous today than he was a punk bomb tosser - he bombs young minds with radical poison.
Obama is hand-in-hand with Ayers:
'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.'
from Stanley Kurtz' study of Obama/Ayers