Let’s Talk about Bill Ayers

McCain and Palin are trying to make a big deal about Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers and Obama is trying to play it down. Personally I think the ties between Obama and Ayers were more than Obama’s willing to own up to and I also think it doesn’t matter one iota.

Only the Republican faithful would give a crap. I don’t care if they’re bosom buddies. Ayers was a radical 40 years ago. Those days are over. He’s currently a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois for Christ’s sake. Watch my lips, he’s teaching teachers how to teach.

While Ayers still believes opposing the Vietnam War was a social imperative, he has apologized for his part in the violence. He spent 10 years underground. Both his children were born while he was underground. I think the guy has paid for his mistakes.

More importantly Obama has openly condemned Ayers actions back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when Obama was all of 8 years old.

Keep in mind that no one was killed in these “terrorist attacks.” They were small explosives aimed at property damage rather than killing innocents and therefore fundamentally different from Islamic Terror attacks or the Timothy McVeigh variety of attack.

Most of Ayers and the Weathermen’s activities were big flops. The “Days of Rage” in Chicago attracted no more than 200 participants who, after damaging some cars and shop windows, were rounded up by police and dumped in the hoosegow to cool their heels.

The Weathermen were most dangerous to themselves. When they decided to switch to an anti-personnel nail bomb, they botched it and Ayers best friend, Terry Reynolds, and his girlfriend, Diane Oughton, were both killed.

The charges pending against Ayers and his wife, the former Bernadine Drohn, also a Weathermen (Weatherperson?), were dropped as a result of the COINTELPRO scandal of the late 1970’s. That investigation revealed the extent of illegal FBI activity aimed not only at radical groups, like the Weathermen and KKK, but also at mainstream social activists groups such as the NAACP, CORE and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

So here’s the deal, who cares? I’m sure Obama also smoked grass while he was at Harvard. It’s ancient history that’s going to have no impact at all moving forward. There are no lessons to be learned from 40 years ago that are nearly as important as the lessons to be learned from the last 10 years. The Republicans don’t want to talk about those so why the hell should I care about what happened in the 1960’s? Besides, I was there, and you had to be there to understand.