4/27/2008

One Response to “An Obamathon of Ayers’ Links”

1. The most important fact is probably one that we’ll never be able to know for sure: what did Obama know about Ayers and when did he know it.

   Consider this: I’m two years and a few months older than Obama. I have some hazy memories of public events in the late sixties/early seventies, but the first real political event I paid attention to was Watergate when I was in high school. At one point we would gather in the faculty lounge and watch the hearings as a group. But not much remains in my memory of earlier events–pictures of the Chicago convention riots, pictures of the RFK assassination (probably in LIFE); a cover of LIFE that showed Harvard Yard after a student riot; LBJ showing off his gall bladder scars (I think I have Mad Magazine to thank for that being so memorable) and lifting up a beagle by the ears; some student demonstrations in France, again courtesy of LIFE; the Kent State shootings, and the names filtering in my head Abie Hoffman and Students for a Democratic Society. (And Patty Hearst and the SLA somewhere in there.) That’s it. I think I heard about the Brinks robbery/murder at the time of Clinton’s Pardongate, but Weather Underground and the bombings it was responsible for were unknown to me until Obama’s connection to Ayers became newsbait. And in our family, the most important part of dinner was watching Huntley Brinkley.

   I don’t know if Obama’s family watched the national news as regularly, but I’d be willing to bet his personal awareness of what went on in those days was pretty slim. Which means that when he first met Ayers he probably didn’t know about the bombings, and may not have known about it for some while after. And when he did learn about it, I would bet it was presented to him in a way that was most sympathetic to Ayers. And of course Obama would also know exactly who Ayers’ father was. So instead of a case of “Mr. Obama, meet Mr Ayers the bomber” and Obama accepting the introduction, it was probably a case of “Oh, Barak, did anyone ever tell you what that nice man Mr. Ayers used to plant bombs, and by the way the only bomb that killed anyone actually killed his old girlfriend?”–and Obama rationalizing his way into not breaking off the relationship.

   One of the commentators at JustOneMinute pointed out that Michelle Obama started working at a law firm in the same year that Dorhn stopped working for the same law firm, and suggested she would have known about the bombings then–entirely possible. And the Larry Johnson post suggests that brief colleagueship was the initial link between the Obamas and the Ayers. Again, entirely possible. But it depends on the exact dates that Dorhn left and Michelle joined the law firm.

   kishnevi (743a8f) — 4/27/2008 @ 8:20 pm