A Senator who apparently just doesn’t pay attention
We noted the other day the grotesque rantings of the “uncle” of one of the leading Presidential candidates during their close relationship of two decades. Today we were reminded by Mona Charen of another, more casual, relationship of Senator Obama, a certain William Ayers. Though this is old news, we looked in on an article in the NYT about this fellow that appeared on September 11, 2001:
No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives…”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…
In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ”Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach.”…
Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight — antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ”conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.” Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.
During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara’s picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century…
Even today, he finds ”a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,” he writes.
Swell fellow, this Ayers. Of passing interest perhaps is that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted a critical introductory event in 1995 for the current Senator from Illinois, and that Ayers and Obama served on a board together after that for a few years. Ayers also is a contributor to Obama. Hmmm. Upon further reflection, we’re pretty sure that this relationship of Senator Obama means nothing at all. After all, his relationship with Tony Rezko meant nothing. Obama only received an unsolicited job offer from Rezko in 1990. Indeed, they only had lunch “once or twice a year,” Obama only got $168,000 from Rezko and his circle, and Obama’s accepting of the essentially free backyard from Rezko was a “mistake” that was nonetheless “handled ethically.” So we’re pretty sure that neither the Ayers nor Rezko situations require any further scrutiny. (Nor does the strange case of the earmarks and the raise — nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen.)
The ultimate proof that these relationships obviously meant nothing at all is that Senator Obama apparently pays little or no attention to what his associates think or say. After all, though Pastor Wright was Obama’s “spiritual mentor” of 20 years who provided not only the title of one of his books but some of the content of his 2004 DNC speech, Senator Obama never heard of the outrageous things he was saying over the course of their long relationship and the hundreds of sermons he attended. As Obama wrote: “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.”
Evidently, Senator Obama hasn’t gone to his church’s bookstore to see the readily available DVD’s, or even read the autobiography that Obama himself wrote or the article in last April’s NYT for which the Senator himself was interviewed. (Apparently, a sermon full of profanity and references to “Bush administration bullshit” does not count as sufficiently offensive, since Senator Obama was seen at one of those.) NYT:
Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy…He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views…[Wright added: “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”]…
Mr. Wright issued a “War on Iraq I.Q. Test,” with questions like, “Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.?”…Mr. Wright’s political statements may be more controversial than his theological ones. He has said that Zionism has an element of “white racism.”…On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later he wrote that the attacks had proved that “people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns.”…
Mr. Obama says…He was not at Trinity the day Mr. Wright delivered his remarks shortly after the attacks…
Curious. Many Americans, even those who don’t go to church regularly, attended services on September 16, 2001, and in the weeks thereafter. Apparently Senator Obama is just never around when his supporters are doing or saying outrageous things.