Stories relating to Obama's friendship with Bomber Bill Ayers and other America Haters
Why vote for a man who surrounds himself with people who despise America
When George Stephanopoulos so rudely queried Sen. Barack Obama about his long-standing connections to unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers during a recent Democratic debate, many conservative newshounds cheered. At long last, Americans had been introduced to a name that only a handful of right-leaning news sources had previously explored. Obama challenged the question's relevancy, carefully avoided details, and pivoted to another topic of discussion. The damage was done, though, and his campaign was forced to issue a "fact" sheet to debunk any nasty implications the "distraction" of a question may have raised.
Set out below in black text and in italics are the four defenses offered on the Team Obama's so-called fact sheet. Under each you will find rebuttal points from Guy Benson at Town Hall.com. His rebuttal points, introduction above, and concluding warning is shown in blue text.
Defense 1
Obama Turned Eight In August 1969, The Days Of Rage Occurred In October 1969. Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961. He turned eight on August 4, 1969. The Days of Rage, in which William Ayers participated, occurred in October 1969. [Obama Birth Certificate, UPI, 10/21/81]
William Ayers Participated In The "Days Of Rage" In 1969. The AP reported, "In the autumn of 1969, the Weatherman, led by Bernardine Dohrn and Mark Rudd, converged on Chicago and planned a series of demonstrations to dramatize their beliefs. The riots, which came to be known as the "Days of Rage," caused thousands of dollars in damage in the downtown and Near North Side areas and resulted in injuries to several policemen. Rudd and Ms. Dohrn were named in federal riot indictments with ten others -- William Ayers, Kathy Boudin, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Michael Spiegel, Howard Machtinger, Terry Robins, Lawrence Weiss, Linda Sue Evans and Judy Clark. Another prominent activist, Cathy Wilkerson, was arrested on state charges of mob action and resisting a police officer. Some surrendered years ago. Two -- Ms. Dohrn and Ayers, son of the former chairman of Commonweath Edison Co. -- surfaced Wednesday. Charges against Ayers had been dropped in 1978 but Ms. Dohrn still faces charges of aggravated battery and jumping bail." [AP, 12/3/80]
RESPONSE
AYERS CONNECTION IS "PHONY," TENUOUS," "A STRETCH"
Chicago Sun Times: Obama's Connection To Ayers Is A "Phony Flap". The Chicago Sun-Times wrote in an editorial, "But Ayers, it is also true to say, has since followed in the footsteps of the great Chicago social worker Jane Addams, crusading for education and juvenile justice reform. His 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, has been praised for exposing how Cook County's juvenile justice system all but eliminates a child's chance for redemption. Is Barack Obama consorting with a radical? Hardly. Ayers is nothing more than an aging lefty with a foolish past who is doing good. And while, yes, Obama is friendly with Ayers, it appears to be only in the way of two community activists whose circles overlap. Obama's middle name is Hussein. That doesn't make him an Islamic terrorist. He stopped wearing a flag pin. That doesn't make him unpatriotic. And he's friendly with UIC Professor William Ayers. That doesn't make him a bomb thrower. Time to move on to Phony Flap 6,537,204." [Chicago Sun-Times, 3/3/08]
Washington Post: Obama-Ayers Link "Is A Tenuous One." The Washington Post reported in a fact check, "But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?" [Washington Post, 2/18/08]
Woods Fund President Harrington: "This Whole Connection Is A Stretch." The Washington Post reported in a fact check, "Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and 'passion for social justice.' 'This whole connection is a stretch,' Harrington told me. 'Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns.'" [Washington Post, 2/18/08]
Noam Scheiber Of TNR: "I Don't See Evidence Of Any Relationship" Between Obama And Ayers. Noam Scheiber of The New Republic wrote, "Ben says Ayers and Obama were, at best, casual friends. Even that seems to overstate things, though. I don't see evidence of any relationship. The only concrete connection we know of is the meeting, which was attended by a number of local liberals; their contemporaneous membership on the board of a local organization; and a $200-donation by Ayers to one of Obama's state senate campaigns. (Obama also once praised something Ayers had written about the juvenile justice system.) I'm not saying they couldn't have been casual friends; just that there isn't much evidence for that at this point." [The New Republic, 2/22/08]
Birdsell: Obama Links To Ayers Were "Pretty Slender Ties." The New York Sun reported, "'Those are pretty slender ties to a controversial figure,' the dean of Baruch College's School of Public Affairs, David Birdsell, said of Mr. Obama's links to Mr. Ayers." [New York Sun, 2/19/08]
RHETORIC: He was then asked about his association with William Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group from the 1960s and '70s. Ayers was quoted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as saying he did not regret setting bombs and that "we didn't do enough." [Washington Post, 4/17/08]
AYERS COMMENTS WERE PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 11; THE INTERVIEW OCCURRED PRIOR TO PUBLICATIONOn September 11, 2001, A Story About William Ayers' Memoir Was Published In The New York Times; The Interview Occurred Prior To Publication. "'I don't regret setting bombs,' Bill Ayers said. 'I feel we didn't do enough.' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago." [New York Times, 9/11/01]
REBUTTAL
Is it phony that Obama's political coming-out party in the mid-1990s was hosted by Ayers and Dohrn? What about the panel discussions in which Ayers and Obama both took part—that were organized by Michelle Obama? Tenuous? I suppose the goodbye party for prominent Israel basher and Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, attended by Obama, Ayers and Dohrn, is also unworthy of discussion. That Khalidi himself hosted a fundraiser for Obama's first Congressional campaign must be completely irrelevant, too.
Then there's the pesky fact that Obama and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund for three years—and continued to do so even after Ayers was quoted in the New York Times fondly recalling his days as a bomber, and despairing that he hadn't "done more." (This quote, the Obama fact sheet reminds us, comes from an interview that just happened to be published on 9/11—Ayers had made the incendiary remarks earlier. I don't know about you, but that makes me feel a lot better). The funds Obama and Ayers helped control at the Woods Foundation funneled thousands of dollars into both Khalidi's organization and the now-infamous Trinity United Church of Christ. Irrelevant, phony distractions? So what if the Obama campaign's top strategist concedes that the Senator's relationship with the terrorist is "friendly"? I apologize for even devoting this much attention to such tenuous and unimportant information.
Defense 3
Ayers Is A Professor Of Education At UIC. According to his website at UIC, "William Ayers is a school reform activist, Distinguished Professor of Education, and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he teaches courses in interpretive research, urban school change, and youth and the modern predicament. He is the founder of the Center for Youth and Society and founder and co-director of the Small Schools Workshop. A graduate of the Bank Street College of Education and Teachers College, Columbia University, he has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education. His interests focus on the political and cultural contexts of schooling as well as the meaning and ethical purposes of teachers, students, and families." [Ayers UIC Site, Ayers Personal Site, Accessed 5/31/07]
Ayers Advised Chicago Mayor Richard Daley On School Reform Issues. Bill "Ayers is now mainstream -- an educator with distinguished professor status. He has written three books about education and has advised Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley on the subject of school reform." [AP, 10/14/01]
Terkel: Ayers Is A "Sensitive And Gifted" Writer And Teacher. Studs Terkel wrote, "William Ayers is as sensitive and gifted a chronicler as he is a teacher." [Beacon]
Bill Ayers And Bernadine Dohrn "Became Respectable Fixtures In Mainstream Liberal Chicago Years Ago." Alexander Cockburn wrote in and op-ed for the Las Vegas Review Journal, "Late last week, the Clinton campaign was leaking stories about support for Obama from the former Weather Underground couple Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, both of whom became respectable fixtures in mainstream liberal Chicago years ago." [Las Vegas Review Journal, 3/2/08]
REBUTTAL
Maybe most preposterously, the document pronounces Ayers and Dohrn to be "respectable" members of the "mainstream" community. After all, it has been seven years or so since Ayers said he didn't regret setting bombs. That's ancient history. Today, these folks are pillars of the level-headed, mainstream Chicago community. Enter the audio.
I happened upon this content as I conducted some basic research into Ayers and Dohrn for a special report my boss, Sandy Rios, was planning to run on her daily radio program in Chicago. The former terrorists both gave speeches at a reunion of aging radicals in November of 2007, and the audio is available on the web for anyone with a computer to hear. Considering that The Sandy Rios Show is a relatively small operation without a small army of researchers at our disposal, I initially assumed that the intrepid journalists that populate our mainstream media had beaten us to the punch on this story. They hadn't. The audio linked above clearly demonstrates that the terrorist tandem is neither respectable nor mainstream by any reasonable definition.
Dohrn refers to America as "the beast" and "the monster" while rambling on about the United States' obsession with empire and our white supremacist way of life. She says she believes the US government to be the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Ayers, not to be outdone, cheers an ongoing "spirit of rebellion…and resistance." He favorably quotes Mao Zedong's premier, Zhou Enlai. He calls contemporary America a place of "great stress, and oppression, and authoritarianism," and bemoans "a kind of rising incipient American form of fascism." (Jonah Goldberg, call your office). Does Barack Obama expect Americans to believe these deranged rantings represent anything close to mainstream commentary?
Defense 4
1979: Charges Against Ayers Were Dropped Because "The Government's Case Was Based On Illegal Wiretaps." The New York Times reported, "William Ayers was a fugitive, too, for nine of those years, but the Federal charges against him, Miss Dohrn and other members of the revolutionary organization were dropped in 1979, when it was ruled that the Government's case was based on illegal wiretaps." [New York Times, 12/5/80]
Ayers "Served No Time." "William Ayers: Surrendered and pleaded guilty in 1980 to possession of explosives and served no time. Teaches early childhood development at the University of Illinois." [Boston Globe, 9/19/93]
REBUTTAL
Absolutely true. Except a minor detail was omitted: Ayers openly admits he is "guilty as sin" but "free as a bird." Charges were dropped because federal authorities overstepped their legal bounds in pursuing the Weathermen, not because the charges were unfounded. Perhaps this distinction was too nuanced for a man who found it appropriate to compare his racist pastor to his own grandmother, and an unrepentant terrorist to a respected United States Senator. The Obama campaign also curiously chose not to "fact check" Bernadine Dohrn's criminal record, which includes a seven-month stint in jail for refusing to cooperate with a murder investigation.
As more and more facts about Obama's relationship with Ayers and Dohrn emerge, expect the Obamites to intensify their insistence that such matters are "distractions," "old politics," or—as Andrew Sullivan has already labeled this issue—part of the right wing "freakshow." With all due respect, I'm not sure "freakshow" is the most effective pejorative to hurl at those being critical of two unrepentant anti-American terrorists. As the Obama campaign continues in its efforts to kill this story, they'd be well served to avoid issuing any more "fact" sheets riddled with half-truths, lies of omission, and falsifiable claims. Might I suggest a high-profile speech from Obama to open up a "national dialogue" on the roots of domestic terrorism?
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