Obama Comments on Ayers
By Don | October 10, 2008
Barack Obama calls all the talk about William Ayers a "red herring" and says he thought he had been rehabilitated when he first met him.
From ABC News' Jake Tapper.
In an interview with conservative Philadelphia radio talk show host Michael Smerconish today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said his relationship with William Ayers is being questioned and his middle name is being invoked at events for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to distract voters from the economy.
You can listen to the audio HERE, courtesy of Politico.
"This is a red herring," Obama said of the Ayers story," because people don't want to talk about the fact that economy over the last eight years has been mismanaged to the point that we're teetering on a really, really bad situation.
Smerconish asked about the myriad Republicans at McCain-Palin events this week who referred to "Barack Hussein Obama."
"I don't think there's any secret about this," Obama said. "My father was from Kenya so I've got an Arab-sounding name, and I think most people know that I was raised by my mom who was from Kansas, which is why I've got a Kansas-sounding accent…When people are purposely doing this in connection with a theme the McCain campaign's decided they want to pursue in the past few weeks, which is to go after me personally, in some pretty aggressive ways, then, you know they're trying to distract from the economy."
"We've got the biggest economic crisis on our hands since the Great Depression," Obama said, "and Senator McCain's team has said in the newspapers, they've said it publicly, 'If we talk about the economy, then we lose the election,'" Obama said.
Smerconish said his callers wanted to know about Obama's trip to Ayers' home in 1995 to discuss his pending state senate run: why go to his house to begin with?
"I moved to Chicago," Obama recalled. "I didn't grow up in Chicago. And graduating from law school I was involved in a whole bunch of civic activities.
"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois and that's how I met him, was working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and former close friend of Ronald Reagan's and I was sitting on this board along with a whole bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders and he was one of the people who was on this board. And he lives in the same neighborhood.
"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated.
And yet the project's board that Obama was chairing funneled money to Ayers for peace school curriculum and other questionable education activities. Arms length indeed.
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I also have a New Party news clipping on my blog- I took a screen shot in case it was on the list to be “scrubbed” as so many have been.
CAC and Woods both gave grants to ACORN a name that most will recognize as newsmakers with their fraudulent voter registrations that span a decade.
Ayers is pals with Hugo Chavez - visited last in 2006 as far as I know from Ayers blog on wordpress and he is part of the Miranda International Center. He is just as radical today as he was in the 60s only now his goal is to indoctrinate our children starting in early education.
He might be a professor, but he is certainly NOT mainstream - unless all our professors have turned to communism…
Don’t be fooled by rhe article referenced by John Galt. It’s hardly an example of professional literary criticism. As an English professor I would have to give it a C at best.
Similarities do not automatically mean relationships. Or, in the language of science, correlation is not causation. This is the main fault of the article.
Even if you could establish that Obama had read Ayers’s work, the simple question to ask is, “Have you ever heard of the ‘anxiety of influence?‘“ Passages in Wordsworth’s “The Prelude,” specifically the account of his ascent of Mount Snowden, sound as if written by Wallace Stevens, whose later voice has subsumed the earlier poet’s. John Ashbery’s poem “Le Livre et sur la Table” sounds like Stevens too. Sections of Faulkner sound like Joyce, and much of Proust reads like a French John Ruskin. Ghostwriting? Hardly. Literary influence, yes. But again, this relies on establishing a clear set of relationships between the two texts.
And it is not uncommon for writers to suddenly find their voice. Melville’s mature voice turns on midway through “White-Jacket.” Henry Miller discovered his own style by writing letters (compare his early novels to “Tropic of Cancer” and you’ll easily see the difference). The leap from Faulkner’s early work to “The Sound and the Fury” is huge. Dante’s “La Vita Nuova” to The Divine Comedy? Enormous. And nothing in Cervantes (or in the history of the novel) prepares a reader for “Don Quixote.” Leaps happen, breaks occur.
This is actually the most common story with skilled writers. It’s why we have notions like the Muse—the voice that rises up when the human voice cannot.
And reading through the essay on education reform, I find I have to ask a question: Are any of you who comment on this issue educators? Do you have any idea what it’s like to teach in a classroom? Do you have any insight into pedagogy, or background in these things at all? Do you understand that “radical” teaching methods and “marxist” approaches are usually ways of encouraging students to simply think on their own? To take an active role in their own education? To find ways of appealing to their particular learning styles? In fact these teaching methods take power out of the hands of teacher and attempt to distribute it to students, as a way of fostering their independence.
Traditional teaching methods typically affirm only the TEACHER’S power, and assume that students are passive little sponges that absorb information. If you want something really dangerous and authoritarian, something that will mainly manufacture programmable citizens, teach them in traditional ways. I have fifteen years in the classroom to back up my claims.
Jumping on the keywords “marxist” and “radical” without an understanding of how these things actually play out in the classroom, and then declaring Obama “dangerous” as a result, is just abject stupidity. The degree to which people are attacking things they simply don’t understand is alarming. Do you really want a return to the McCarthy era? Because this is where we’re heading. The comments on this page—and on so many others—are like the rantings of torch-bearing villagers headed to Frankenstein’s castle. They represent a rabblement of lemmings.
At least classical conservatism was elitist—assuming a high degree of education, reason and critical thinking. This populist strain is interested only in rehearsing a pathetic catalogue of logical fallacies. No wonder the abysmal Sarah Palin is the patron saint of this movement. Her ignorance is transcendental. And these are the qualities you want to enthrone.
Dear Fools,
Please try to think clearly for a few minutes. You live in the real world, not a movie or a novel. The Cliff Kincaid website and the comments thereon is no more than a paranoid fantasy world. Do you REALLY believe that Obama is the twisted, conniving, insidious monster portrayed here? IF SO, THEN WHY AREN’T YOU PREPARING TO EITHER FLEE THE COUNTRY OR GETTING READY TO GO INTO THE WILDERNESS AND BECOME A PARTISAN?
Be serious, really serious. If you believe the nonsense spewed out about Obama and his supposed connections, you would be taking serious action. But you arenàt, are you? You are just wallowing in fear and self-pity like a little0 child. Admit it. Either grow up and recognize your folly or - if you actually accept this ridiculous version of events, TAKE ACTION. But I know that you won’t. You are silly infants playing in a mental crib.
Brian R. Sullivan
It appears we’ve struck a liberal nerve.
I take action everyday, Mr. Sullivan, I blog. I wouldn’t think of leaving the country of my ancestors although most of our land has disappeared since Europe inhabited the land.
Anyway - it’s liberals, mainly celebrities like Streisand and Baldwin who threaten to leave the country—I notice they’re still here.
Ayers is a radical-always was and probably always will be. The grants that Obama and Ayers gave were to radical groups. Most grants were given to people they knew or were friends of in their community. I will name them on my blog.
I read the files…I didn’t depend on opinions.
But, pecanpii, you still have no idea what “radical education” actually amounts to. Your whole thesis hinges on this. You’re not going to scare American voters by telling them that Obama wants students to think for themselves. You’re really chasing down the wrong things here, but you’re too blinkered to know it.
Naming names is a McCarthy-era activity; understanding pedagogy is another thing entirely.
I look forward to dismantling whatever you put up. Just make sure the comments are left on.
Ive seen actual photos of Obama drinking the blood of Christian babies and laughing! You’ll never see THAT in the mainstream media, even though they all know about it, they’re all in on it. They want to take your guns, make you have abortions and then marry a transgender Marxist octoroon, AND THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING!
People, there is nobody on Earth who poses as much of a threat to the human race as Obama does. You may not know it, but his middle name is Hussein! Need I say more?
Can’t we have more of the ‘relationship’ G.W. has with the now King of Saudi Arabia instead?
The photo-ops of kissing and hand holding were So…. Oh! An ‘The Desert Retreat Dinner’ would be so… Fox Neuzish.
October 10 at 1:34 pm | #1 | Link
He doesn’t mention that Ayers ghostwrote his first book: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html
He also doesn’t mention that he’s really a member of the Marxist New Party: http://politicallydrunk.blogspot.com/2008/10/web-archives-confirm-barack-obama-was.html
or that his and Ayers’ “education reform” is simply Marxist versions of Wahabbi madrassas: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html
This guy is a clear and present danger to the US.