Dec 06 2008
William Ayers New York Times open-editorial
Just a little note today, link here.
Remember this guy? After the campaign season how could you forget? According to Steve Schmidt, Ayers was going to be the key to John McCain’s victory. Good call on that one Steve…
Bill Ayers comes out to answer to the press and explains why he was so reluctant to do so during the campaign. Here’s a couple of interesting notes to take away from the article, story quotes in bold:
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”
I love the point Ayers makes here. You know Barack Obama has probably been one of the most vetted presidents we’ve ever had, but if you listen to Fox News you’d probably still think this question was unanswered.
“With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.”
And fair enough, in the media-frenzied state that we witnessed anything Ayers said was just about guaranteed to be taken out of context. Ayers goes on to explain/defend what his role with Weatherman Underground was and whatnot. I want to skip ahead to the end of the article though.
The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.
President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.
Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.
Ahhh how I love the sound of social activism…
Aw, the New York Times is a blatant socialist rag that will print anyone’s tripe…Just ask Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney, and John McCain.
I’m going to have to agree with Three here. I don’t believe that it always was. But that is all that it is, now.
@ aetherwild - I believe threedegrees comment was a bit in jest. I was more interested in what Ayers had to say than who he was saying it through.