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Dear Sarah: The Bill Ayers Well Is Still Dry

Posted by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist in At TMV.
Oct 5th, 2008 | Comments

And so in the first week of the last full month of the 2008 presidential campaign, a desperate John McCain has sent Sarah Paln back to the well to try to exploit the long-ago and passing relationship between Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground fugitive foot soldier, and Barack Obama.

This unholy alliance is back in the news not because of new revelations. We’re still stuck where we were months ago.

That is that Obama, in his rookie run for the Illinois Senate, attended a fundraiser hosted by Ayers, and while they had some incidental contact, it was minor, fleeting and so long ago as to not really matter except where it might matter: Did Obama at any time approve of Ayers’ conduct? Nope. Did Ayers mind-meld with Obama and some of his radical drivel rubbed off on him? Nope.

This has not phased Palin nor Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis, the co-chairmen of the McCain Cue Card Club, who beat the guilt-by-association drum loudly in a recent a conference call with reporters in the kickoff of the campaign’s latest sleazapalooza.

For the record (and dontcha love it when a writer says that?), I knew several of Ayers’ cohorts back in the day and am a longtime friend of one whom I invited into my home when he was a fugitive. Even in the context of those crazy times, the Weathermen were a bunch of zonked-out wannabe revolutionaries who diverted attention from their occasionally worthy causes by doing a lot of really bad stuff.

Ayers himself remains shamefully remorse free for the role that he and his missus, Bernardine Dohrn, played in a 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse bomb factory blast that killed three fellow Weathermen. For what it’s worth, and it’s damned little, Ayers turned himself in to authorities in 1981 but was never arrested.

Among the frequent visitors to the dry Ayers-Obama well are two right-of-center bloggers with normally-keen intellects who should know better.

Both Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air have been all over the Ayers non-story like a pair of cheap suits. Then there is Republican lapdog Stanley Kurtz’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece headlined “Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools” that not only failed to deliver but never even explained what the radicalism was.

Kurtz was so determined to find dirt in the dry well where Palin is now thrashing around that he demanded and got access to the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers helped lead and of which Obama was a board member.

But after sifting through 70 linear feet of material (that’s 70 boxes more or less the same size as a 24 bottle case of 12 ounce beers), Kurtz was unable to find anything damaging beyond this smoking gun (and I hope you’re sitting down): Ayers was one of five people who signed off on Obama joining the Challenge’s board.

Kaboom!!!

It’s easy to say that Kurtz, Moran and Morrissey are desperate to find anything remotely concerning about someone whom they seem to fear if not actively dislike, but that is giving them too much credit. It’s simply a matter of them being so far in the well for John McCain (and Sarah Palin, whom Moran waxes about in boy-crush terms) that they don’t realize nor care that they’re coming up with dust and not dirt.

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JSpencer

Shaun, the fact the well is essentially dry won't be enough to deter these people. Their combination of desperation and end-justifies-the-means philosophy will drive them forward regardless. The big question (of course) is whether or not any attempt to create a fictional depiction of Obama can gain traction beyond the more credulous faction of the republican base. Perhaps if McCain had picked a less polarizing VP, perhaps if he hadn't destroyed so much of his own credibility in this campaign to date, then maybe this attempt to create an association could win McCain a few more votes, but the desperation as motive may already be too transparent for this to work.

Marlowecan

For the record, I don't think there is anything in the Ayres' association with Obama. As Shaun's post suggests, most people who lead full lives have a wide range of associations . . . and removing all those from consideration for office would mean electing bizarro Stepford-pols with no experience of life whatsoever.

That said, Shaun's reference to Kurtz is particularly interesting.
Shaun dumps all over Kurtz for the fact Kurtz came up with nothing for Kurtz' exhaustive work on the Annenberg Challenge files.

This is particularly shameful of Shaun, because Kurtz was doing the job a journalist should do . . . dig, and look for information.

The New York Times and other MSM cannot use the Edwards excuse for refusing to look at these files (e.g., it is a personal matter).

Presumably they . . . like Shaun . . . used their ExtraJournalisticPerception powers to know - without bothering to look - that there of course would be nothing in the Annenberg Challenge documents, and thus there was no need to do any reporting there.

Kurtz did a journalist's job...went to great effort, dealt with obstruction from U of Chicago librarians...and did his research. He came up with jack squat.

SO?!! Kurtz did the job a reporter should do.

Yes, he had an agenda. But in his Wall Street Journal article on his research, he did not try to make it a front page story out of nothing (as the New York Times memorably did with their extramarital affair allegations re: McCain on their front page...or the Times did in their front-page story counting the number of nights President Clinton and HRC slept in the same house!).

The Annenberg Challenge files detailed the core relationship between Ayres and Obama. If there was anything in the rumors and allegations, it would likely have been in there.

The MSM should have looked. Shaun mocks Kurtz for looking . . . because he found nothing. This is an appalling thing for a former journalist.

There has been a notable disinterest on the part of the MSM to look closely into Senator Obama's past. Note, for example, the fact that only the Chicago papers pressured Obama to answer questions on Rezko.

This is not a criticism of Senator Obama.
Indeed, Kurtz' research seems to have exonerated him.
Similarly, when Obama finally sat down with the Chicago Sun-Times etc and answered questions about Rezko, that put the Rezko file to rest for many.

But in general, the MSM has refused to look into Senator Obama's background at all. The only exceptions to this disinterest have been Ross at ABC, who broke the Wright story...usually publicly available videos no other reporters had an interest in...and the Chicago papers.

Shaun's post here . . . and his mocking of a person who did yeoman's work that the rest of the MSM refused to do (as they, like Shaun, knew magically there was no story there) . . . is indicative of a media bias that has been more marked in this election year than any other.

Ricorun

I actually agree with Marlowecan. Kurtz did what a journalist should do -- dig. And it shouldn't have taken him as long as it did to gain access to the Annenberg records. But it did because they stonewalled before eventually relenting. Shame on them. Unfortunately for Kurtz, after all that work he essentially came up with what Marlowecan colorfully described as "jack squat".

Yet for some reason Kurtz went on to write a WSJ op-ed piece in which he attempted to transform that jack squat into a narrative of insinuation. And on that level I think it's appropriate to question Kurtz's motives. In it he claimed Obama and Ayers attempted to use Annenberg money to "push radicalism on schools". Nowhere in the op-ed did he attempt to define what he meant by "radicalism", although he did offer this insinuation: The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. Uh... political commitment? How so?

I believe it was on NRO where Kurtz provided some documentation of the Annenberg Challenge by way of an evaluation published in the early 00's. I'm afraid I'm too lazy to try to retrieve it, so you're on your own there. At any rate, the evaluation described the goals of the Challenge as well as the results. The goals were basically to make education more relevant, and strived to include both parents and neighborhood businesses as partners in the endeavor. That hardly sounds "radical", at least not in the sense Kurtz implied. Unfortunately, as I recall, the evaluation didn't think much of the results of the Challenge -- it didn't detectably affect student achievement except perhaps in certain special circumstances. And on that level criticism could be appropriately applied. But radicalism? That's a stretch.

Silhouette

First and foremost, the issues are killing the GOP, so they're taking another stab at tabloidism to distract from the issues.

STAY ON THE ISSUES BARACK! Never falter..
*********
"This has not phased Palin nor Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis, the co-chairmen of the McCain Cue Card Club, who beat the guilt-by-association drum loudly in a recent a conference call with reporters in the kickoff of the campaign’s latest sleazapalooza."

********

Have Obama surrogates come forward to denounce McCain's "guilt by association" tit for tats. Emphasize how he intends to use tabloidism to smokescreen the issues that he and his GOP buddies are responsible for. Now might be the time to trot out some evidence linking McCain to Bush, Palin to Cheney and how the Bush/Cheney machine lied to Congress, and how the bastard child of that lie (the Iraq invasion), both McCain and Palin support in spades.

ie, now might be the time to initiate the warcrimes trial in the media. Anyone who overtly associates themselves with an illegal and immoral agenda like invading a nation, killing its people on false pretenses, hiding greed, should start to slip in the polls, I would think.. I would say, make the Iraq invasion the hub, the turning point of this election. Tie the billions of dollars expenditure sucked from our economy to maintain it, and the fact that it profits no one but the already audaciously $et BigOil and you'll really make McCain/Palin look like a horse's patootie. Palin's little "drill baby drill" mantra will start to look like "kill baby kill". You know how Palin feels about killing babies...

say...I wonder...do you think any babies or children have died directly as a result of the invasion of Iraq? Hey Sarah, do they count? Or don't they because they were born of non-"christian" parents in land far away with funny customs and such..?

Just some more thoughts.

shaun

Marlow et al:

Your view of Kurtz is charitable in the extreme.

Even if he was merely doing his job, the product of that job appeared on the WSJ's notorious op-ed page, home to many an anti-Obama hit piece, and the headline was downright -- and I would suggest intentionally -- misleading.

Marlowecan

Exactly, Ricorun!

That is what surprises me about these stories. You are quite right about Kurtz' agenda. When I read his story, I initially thought there was something dark and sinister about the "Obama radicalism" hahahahahaha....

But as you say, Ricorun, it was just insinuation. If one read the article closely, Kurtz' research actually exonerated Senator Obama!

Yes, Ayres is a nasty piece of work. Bernadine Dohrn is perhaps even nastier. I recall reading a book by 60s radical Abbie Hoffman - of Yippie fame - back in my punk days, and Hoffman declared that if he knew where Dohrn was (she was in hiding at the time) he despised her so much that he would happily call the FBI to grass on her.

But as Ricorun notes, Obama's work seems to have been generally laudable in terms of promoting schooling.

So why can't MSM reporters actually do some digging to show Senator Obama up for the appalling rabid Pro-education ideologue that he is?!

Marlowecan

What you say is true, Shaun.

Kurtz definitely believed he was on to something. His article insinuated dark radicalism.

But, if one read the article, there was clearly nada. Kurtz effectively exonerated Obama.

My point is: why was Kurtz the only person to bother to look? He did solid work, especially in dealing with secretive librarians who obstructed access to the files (perhaps because they love fueling right-wing conspiracy theorists).

Major news organizations SHOULD have looked. Obama is running for president, after all. They send dozens of reporters all the way up to Alaska to run down every wacky story from that bizarro Wasilla town. . . which seems like a Peyton Place in the Snow.

Here the Annenberg Challenge files are in the heart of Chicago. If there was a connection between a known 60s radical terrorist and a candidate for the highest office in the United States, it would be there. Someone should have looked. No one in the media had any idea what would be in the files.

No one bothered (except Kurtz). Why?

JWeidner

Hey Marlowe, no one can truly answer your question except the reporters themselves. However, it may be that they DID look. And upon realizing that there was no story...actually decided not to run a story. At least until recently when the NYT ran their exhaustive report on the supposed relationship between the two men.

Of course, it being the NYT means the right wing can immediately dismiss it. But we do have at least one instance of a news organization running a pretty thorough report.

Marlowecan

JWeidner...With regard to the Annenberg Challenge files, Kurtz was the first one to look.

You can Google for the backstory on this. It is fascinating. Kurtz was the first person to look, and he was cleared for access by a lowly library assistant who thought nothing of it . . . and sent Kurtz the collated summary of the files.

Then the Head Librarian at U of Chicago got wind of Kurtz interest, and flipped out.

He was immediately told he could not look at the files as he had no clearance.
Kurtz responded with his clearance documentation.
The Librarian then replied that the files had not been collated, and a summary had not been done. When this had been done, he could of course access the files.

Kurtz responded that he had the summary in his hands.
The Librarian then responded that there were privacy issues involved, and the donater of the files had to be notified.

In brief: Kurtz was the first, and I think only, person to have reviewed these files. He did despite the lies and secrecy of the Librarian, who was terrified of getting into trouble.

And...best of all...the documents seemed to have cleared Obama!

My point was...nobody sent a reporter to Chicago to look. Not even the Chicago papers.

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