Wow. Last week, on election day, Bill Ayers -- unrepentant domestic terrorist, professor of education, and Barack Obama benefactor -- actually spoke to a reporter. And as I read his comments, I am struck by how bland and inane they are.
First up, the photo. Ayers looks grizzled, with a gray beard and a receding hairline. And he’s wearing a T-shirt featuring one of the angry young black characters from “Boondocks” flipping the bird. It’s a fascinating blend of impressions that all combine to say “pathetic.”
Next up, his actual words:
That manifesto is now out as a PDF for free downloading, and it’s downright terrifying. Hell, just the dedication alone should give anyone chills -- it’s a long, long list of people, including many truly reprehensible vermin. The one name that jumps out at me is Sirhan Sirhan -- the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.
Here’s an excerpt from that book’s introduction:
It’s like Ayers and his comrades took all the scary rhetoric of the right wing and chose to embody it. A call to “communist-minded people” to “struggle” and “take action” against the government. Innocuous enough, until you remember that the people making this argument used real bombs on real targets as part of their “action” in the “struggle.”
Anyway, back to today. Or, at least, last week. Another Ayers quote:
He said that he laughed, too, when he listened to Sarah Palin’s descriptions of Obama “palling around with terrorists.” In fact, Ayers said that he knew Obama only slightly: “I think my relationship with Obama was probably like that of thousands of others in Chicago and, like millions and millions of others, I wished I knew him better.” He knew Obama only slightly. Obama chaired a board that Ayers sat upon, for a foundation that Ayers set up and spent $150 million, served on another board together, and Ayers welcomed Obama into his home for his political ‘coming-out party,” yet he only knew him slightly. Ayers, it appears, is remarkably generous with virtual strangers.
I wonder if, for even an instant, Ayers found himself identifying with John M. Murtagh. When Murtagh was nine years old, Ayers’ colleagues in the Weather Underground firebombed Murtagh’s house and nearly killed his entire family -- just because Murtagh’s father was the judge overseeing the trial of some Black Panthers.
“It’s all guilt by association,” Ayers said. “They made me into a cartoon character--they threw me up onstage just to pummel me. I felt from the beginning that the Obama campaign had to run the Obama campaign and I have to run my life.” Ayers said that once his name became part of the campaign maelstrom he never had any contact with the Obama circle. “That’s not my world,” he said.
And please, the “guilt by association” thing is an absolute red herring. The reason your relationship with Barack Obama was so important to so many was because he had made a major “selling point” his judgment. Well, that made a lot of people want to look at who had judged worthy of his time and trust and support, and your name was fairly high on that list.
Here’s a hint for you, Mr. Ayers: you ain’t Martin Luther King, Jr. Neither is Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Again, the “swiftboating” involved taking the words and deeds of the person in question -- in full context -- and quoting them.
Ah, Rashid Khalidi. The fellow who ran the PLO’s press office during its terrorist heyday in the 1970’s. It’s fun to imagine these two former terrorists coaching Little League baseball. “Come on, Skip, throw that fastball like it’s a grenade aimed at the Zionist capitalists!” “Attaboy, Timmy, run those bases as if the imperialists have sicced their dogs on you!” “Way to go, Bobby! Don’t let that second baseman illegally occupy that base! It’s yours! Run him down!”
“While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property,” he said. “We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.” And yet he was not without regrets. He mocked one of his earlier books, co-written with Dohrn, saying that, while it still is reflective of his radical and activist politics today, he was guilty of “rhetoric that’s juvenile and inflated--it is what it is.”
“Three of our people killed themselves.” That conjures up the images of the anti-war monks setting themselves on fire in protest. The reality is considerably less noble. Three of Ayers’ colleagues in the Weather Underground were building nail bombs to blow up an enlisted men’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. And they killed themselves by their own incompetence, when one of the bombs they were assembling went off early -- turning the three would-be terrorists into superb Darwin Award candidates.
I wish you had been a bit more courageous, Mr. Ayers. Courageous enough to engage in your own dirty work, and perhaps even be on the scene when one of your own bombs blew up.
“Meat grinder.” What a grisly, yet apropos image. Ayers’ colleagues were building bombs laced with roofing nails, the intent of which is to cause as much gory injury as possible. “Meat grinder” is not that off the mark.
In the end, it must be recalled that Ayers (and his oft-overlooked wife, Bernardine Dohrn) are simply the ideological counterparts of people like Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh had more courage in his convictions and considerably more competence, while Ayers and Dohrn had their family connections and intellectual backers to give them a chance to have second lives in academia after their criminal trial fell apart.
Note, one final time, Mr. Ayers’ regrets of his youth:
No “I wish I hadn’t been involved in trying to kill people.” No “I wish I had worked harder to succeed without violence.” No “I wish I hadn’t dedicated a book to the man who murdered Robert Kennedy.”
I have wishes, too, Mr. Ayers. I wish you had been present when the firebombs that nearly killed the Murtagh family went off. I wish you had been in that brownstone when your comrades’ bomb went off. I wish the prosecutors in your case had not violated the law in collecting evidence against you. And I wish to hell that you weren’t involved in teaching young, impressionable children today.
But wishes don’t do a damned thing. Instead, all I can do is make certain that you never escape your own evil past, no matter how much you try to minimize it, rationalize it, glamorize it, or gloss over it.
