Let’s Talk About Bill Ayers for a Moment

Over a number of years in the blogging game, my favorite Chicago columnist has been John Kass. We exchanged some e-mails in 2005 about earthworms, (I won’t go into it now) but he’s always struck me as one of the truly genuine observers of politics in Chi-Town. Some may consider him “one of those conservatives” and might assume that he has an ax to grind with Obama, but I’ve always found him to just be somebody willing to point out the bloody oil in the Windy City political machine, which is almost entirely controlled by Democrats. (At times I still wonder how he’s managed not to contract a sudden case of lead poisoning over the years for his various investigations and revelations.) Today, my friend Ed Morrissey took a look at a column by Kass regarding the perceived normalcy or “main stream” status of Ayers in Chicago society.

John Kass tries to explain how unrepentant domestic terrorists like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn could be considered “mainstream”. It takes a healthy dose of The Chicago Way, but also a healthy dose of infiltration by some of Ayers’ old radical compatriots into the Daley Machine. One of Ayers’ staunch defenders in Chicago, Marilyn Katz, was part of the same SDS that launched the Weather Underground — and who now works on Team Obama

Let me share with you a small portion of the Kass interview with Katz which set my mind to churning.

“What Bill Ayers and [former Black Panther, now U.S. Rep.] Bobby Rush . . . did 40 years ago has nothing to do with [the presidential campaign],” Katz was quoted as saying in the Chicago Sun-Times in April. “[Ayers] has a national reputation. He lectures at Harvard [University] and Vassar [College].”

First of all, allow me to share my internal response when the subject of Ayers and Obama is brought up by McCain supporters such as Ed. It’s a muddle of confusion, guilt and long pauses. The initial response is to say, “Oh… well… of course! I can’t condone a relationship with an unrepentant terrorist! That’s un-American!” And it is a very uncomfortable subject, isn’t it? Ayers escaped punishment through (valid) legal technicalities for very violent actions. He came out as recently as this decade saying that he not only didn’t regret it, but wished they had done more! How could I not condemn anyone who would have any sort of relationship with this man and fail to bolt from the room, grabbing some pitchforks and torches as they went?

(Sorry if this is rather long, but there’s plenty more here.)

Then there’s a part of my ancient self that that thinks back to the bad old days. I can still vividly remember my sister being arrested for blocking traffic and obstructing public affairs while protesting the Vietnam War. She didn’t blow anything up or kill anyone. She just carried some signs and wouldn’t get out of the way when the police told her to.

How many of us got really angry back then? How many of us screamed ourselves hoarse along with Neil Young, chanting “FOUR DEAD IN O-HI-O?” Then again, most of us didn’t blow anything up or kill anyone. But many of us kind of understood what the perpetrators were thinking, didn’t we?

This brings us back to the quote regarding Bobby Rush. For those not familiar, here’s a wiki bio of the man, and here is a conservative, Right wing analysis of his various sins. Rush has been a member of Congress since 1993 serving the Illinois First Congressional District. In the bad old days, he was a member of the Black Panthers and did six months in the Crowbar Hotel on an illegal weapons conviction and was a deserter from the Army. While perhaps not convicted of tossing any bombs, he certainly seems to be a radical cut from the same cloth, no?

How could any person of good conscience sit in the same room with Rush? How could they work together on some board or such? How could somebody such as … oh, just for an example, let’s say John McCain… serve in the same branch of our Federal Government with such a person and not storm out, refusing to be associated with them for the last fifteen years? How could Sarah Palin agree to serve on the same ticket with a man who served alongside Mr. Rush for all these years without protest? As Kass points out, he was commonly referred to as the Minister of Defense for the Black Panthers. How many crimes was he not convicted of beyond the illegal weapons charges? I don’t know. Maybe it was just so far in the past. Maybe they don’t currently have any outstanding warrants for their arrest. Perhaps we just understand that people did things back then which may have been beyond the pale for most of us, but we just sort of understand what was driving them.

Ayers seems to be from the same class. He never did time for his crimes, but the legal system took a shot at it and he got off scot free. As he aged, apparently he took to less violent courses of action. And yet our own Shaun Mullen recently revealed that he used his own home to give shelter to some of Ayers’ associates in the Weather Underground back in the bad old days. Shall we all shun him and refuse to write here at TMV with this unrepentant terrorist sympathizer? Shall I refuse to talk to Shaun or have him on my radio show again? Somehow I’m just not feeling the outrage.

I don’t agree with the violent course of action Bill Ayers and his associates chose back then. But I also have to go back to the question of whether or not I should shun anyone who associated with Ayers many years later. Sorry. No sale here.