I never knew Chicago was harboring so many terrorist sympathizers, and this is only a partial list!
Walter Annenberg (Republican publishing magnate)
Stanley Ikenberry (former president of the University of Illinois)
Arnold Weber (former president of Northwestern University and assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration)
Scott Smith (former publisher of the Chicago Tribune)
Edward Bottum (Venture capitalist)
John McCarter (president of the Field Museum)
Patricia Albjerg Graham (former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Journalism)
The Chicago Symphony
The University of Chicago
Loyola University
Northwestern University
The Chicago Children’s Museum
The Museum of Science and Industry
The Field Museum
The Commercial Club of Chicago
The Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance
The Logan Square Neighborhood Association
These people and institutions were involved in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which the McCain camp has assured us was a “radical education foundation” mostly founded by known terrorist William Ayers! I’m shocked and saddened that this list has to come to light, but as a patriotic American, it’s my duty to warn people who might support any of these.
God bless John McCain and Sarah Palin and the RNC for bringing to our attention that anyone or anything associated with William Ayers “pals around” with terrorists!
Let’s not forget the Woods Fund of Chicago, which Sen. Obama had served on with Ayers. It includes representatives from such noted radical groups as officials from BP America and UBS Investment Bank, plus a major Chicago architectural firm. Scary! :rolleyes:
I said before that Obama’s relationship with Ayers wasn’t such a big deal in and of itself, but the fact that Ayers had worked himself back into liberal political and educational circles in Chicago despite never atoning for his violent past was the real story here.
I’ll say it again - had this been someone who bombed abortion clinics and remained unrepentant about that fact, that person would be unwelcome in any party or faculty or charity board. Why is it different when you bomb the Capitol or Pentagon and plan to bomb NCO dances at Army bases?
Sure, there were respectable people involved in Ayers’ reintroduction to polite society and integration into Chicago civic life. Chief among those respectable people were Tom Ayers - president of Commonwealth Edison, trustee of Northwestern University, confidant of Mayor Daley, and William Ayers’ dad. When he calls people up and asks them to give his wayward boy another chance - people were apt to listen. And yes, that did include an awful lot of Republicans.
Personally, I never saw this as personally damning of Obama too much - sometimes you have to work with unpleasant people to get ahead in life, and Ayers isn’t particularly pleasant to my way of thinking. But Obama tried to be way too cute - when confronted by this (by Hillary Clinton, it must be noted, who knew something about Chicago politics herself) he dismissed Ayers as someone who lived in his neighborhood. That was a rank falsehood - everyone knows by now that while they might not have been very close, their professional relationship was far more extensive than that.
So it became an issue, and it became a far larger one because Obama wasn’t particularly truthful from the start.
I’m not (just) being snarky – I’m actually asking. From everything I’ve read, Obama and Ayers have been on various charitable boards which had perhaps dozens of other members. Having sat in on a few of those types of meetings, it’s well within the realm of possibility that they didn’t know each other in any intimate fashion. Now, if there’s evidence that they wrote a manifesto together or something, let’s hear it.
BTW, like Barack and Michelle Obama and Ayers’ wife, I once worked for the law firm of Sidley Austin. While I never met any confessed members of the Weather Underground during my six weeks there, I’d like to apologize, first to my family, and then, of course, to the American people, for my obvious support and cozening of terrorists.
There’s also the matter of Obama’s political event at the Ayers’ home, which he also avoided discussing. This NPR story treats the subject rather fairly, and does show that the nature of their relationship was more extensive than that admitted to in Obama’s debate with Hillary Clinton.
I think he could have put this to bed a long time ago - just as he could have dealt with the Jeremiah Wright matter in a way far less damaging to him than he did. And let’s be clear - these issues may not cost him the White House, but they do matter among some people, and concerns over them aren’t at all entirely the product of Clinton or McCain campaigning.
I don’t remember you giving a flying fuck about your boy Rumsfeld and Saddam so excuse the shit out of me if I find the sudden concern of you and other right-tards with past associations somewhat, oh what is the word I’m looking for? Disingenuous? Close, but not quite. Hypocritical. That’s the one.
That very cite indicates that the event at Ayer’s house was organized by someone else entirely, Alice Palmer, who’s state senate seat Obama was running for. Obama never even met Ayers until that very year, 1995, about 30 years after Ayer’s radicalism, and 15 years after the charges were dropped. By that time Ayers was a player in Democratic Chicago, as well as a respected college professor.
I’m willing to bet that there aren’t too many Democrat political nominees for any office in Chicago that can’t be linked, however tenuously, to Ayers in some way or another.
Does that automatically disqualify anyone from Chicago from running for office?
I don’t think you noticed above, but for me this is the overriding issue. I don’t think it is particularly right that Ayers is accepted in either place, and I think it reflects poorly on both the Democratic Party and the academy.
Again, I don’t think Obama is particularly tainted by this - but I don’t think it is above question, not by a long shot. And candidates that are products of systems that abide such practices ought to be prepared to defend or denounce them. People will understand sometimes that you were powerless to change some things, but they would like to know how far you went along with them.
Hell, any politician from Pennsylvania running for higher office would have to answer questions about that state’s endemic corruption, anyone from the Northeast gets branded a liberal and has to refute that, urban candidates are often scrutinized by rural voters. Why should this be different?
Then, I’d say you’re willingly buying the hype. Ayers was a radical in the 60’s. - him and about a couple dozen thousand others. Why shouldn’t he be accepted now, all these years later? He was never charged with anything. He went on to earn a decent education, a PhD., and has tried to make a difference in educational policies in Chicago. But none of that counts for anything because of some damage he (or probably more accurately, people from his group) did 35 years ago.
He’s not Svengali, puppeteering the naive from his fortified ivory tower in Suburban Chicago.
This whole “palling around with terrorists” bullshit, is nothing but Republican hay-making and typical fear-mongering.
It isn’t different. It’s all so much bullshit. I still don’t get why an urban candidate has to defend himself to rural voters, as if they’re two different species of human or something.
