Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan
Have you noticed that every article, blog post, or televised rant you hear on the subject of Bill Ayers is structured the following way:
Opening: Obama is tied to anti-American, bomb-throwing, radical terrorist who hates America and probably hates you personally
Middle: series of paragraphs listing “linkages” like they were on the same board, Ayers donated $200 bucks to Obama for a campaign, and they met socially a few times
Conclusion: a series of questions like “what did Ayers see in Obama?” or “what does this say about Obama’s character?” or “what other connections might there be?”
I don’t know. You’re the one freaking out about this. You’re the one who thinks that this is a Really Big Deal worth basing the entire election on. Why don’t you tell me what other connections there are?
The whole thing is preposterous on so many levels, but the absolute icing on the cake is the degree to which these people are completely unable to pose any of their serious allegations as anything other than questions.
As a postscript: get a grip. This was 40 years ago. Bill Ayers isn’t running for any office. He has no role in advising or even talking to Obama. They’re not friends. And even if they were, the guy hasn’t been a radical in any meaningful sense of the word for decades, is pretty well-respected (or was, before this idiocy) in his community, is a professor at a prominent university.
As an aside, I’ll point out that this is really representative of the larger McCain attitude toward Bad People. Namely: if I acknowledge their existence, I will suddenly become responsible for every Bad Thing they have ever done. It’s why he simply can’t wrap his mind around the idea that you can sometimes negotiate with people you don’t like, or who have done bad things, and in doing so prevent further Bad Things from happening. It’s an understanding of life based purely on posture, a ridiculous mapping of schoolyard politics onto the serious business of running a nation.
In fact, it’s even stupider in this instance because (unlike Khamenei, for example) Ayers doesn’t currently have any agenda that we ought take issue with. He’s just a dude who does work on education in Obama’s neighborhood. Shunning him would accomplish nothing, and could possibly foreclose getting something useful done.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in being an apologist for violence. I’ve always found The Weatherman to be a depressing example of what happens when nonviolent radicalism starts to burn itself out. It’s the jaded, ugly underbelly of laudable things like SDS. And Ayers certainly should be more explict and apologetic about that element of his behavior. And if he were running for office, I would certainly take that intransigence as a sign that he maybe should not be trusted.
But Obama has explicitly denounced it – obviously – so what exactly is the problem here?
The real point is that this is just a really ugly example of what happens when a campaign that draws a tremendous amount of support from people with seriously troubling views on race begins to fall apart. All the worst elements burst forth in all their anger and viciousness. And there’s the McCain campaign stoking the fires.
McCain did (finally) go after some of the people unleashing their hatred at a rally – and kudos to him for that. But you can’t just pretend that you didn’t have a part in this. You’re running ads, you’re consistently make a big deal of this non-issue, and you’re doing so in a way that was CLEARLY intended to obfuscate not just the (non)relationship between the two, but also to play on all the racial connotations attached to the word “terrorist” in a post 9/11 world.
It’s like yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater and then justifying it afterwards because someone lit a cigarette.
They knew exactly what they were doing. And for their sake (and for the sake of the country, perhaps) I hope they feel sorry about it once it’s all over.