fpb | Oct. 29th, 2008

To me, the most curious and interesting thing about William Ayers is this: how does one parlay an adult life experience that can be summed up in twenty years hiding on a demonstrably criminal and murderous cause, then a few more getting a degree in education from a very minor New York City college - how does one parlay this into a full professorship in education at The University of Chicago - probably the most prestigious American university outside the Ivy League - and a permanent place among the great and the good of America's third city? I'd really like to know. Because, you know, I rather fancy an academic career, and I don't think that my CV is any worse than that of Professor Ayers when he set out on his.

Another point: how does one get away, like his consort Bernardine Dohrn did, with completely refusing to cooperate with a criminal trial into the violent death of two policemen and a guard, in spite of serious grounds for suspicion; and why should a judge then send her free even from a measly sentence for contempt of court?

These two things cannot be explained unless the Dohrn-Ayers couple had pretty serious friends somewhere in the very "Amerikkan" establishment that they as terrorists planned to destroy. And that certainly makes Obama's friends as interesting as Obama himself.

P.S.: Obama was also an admirer of the execrable Edward Said, who was a professor at Columbia at the same time as Obama was a student. There is a photograph, I gather, of the two of them together. To anyone who remembers what I think of Edward Said, this is another interesting friendshiop.

Delfino Borroni, former Bersagliere and the last surviving Knight of Vittorio Veneto, passed away last Sunday. The Order of Vittorio Veneto, of which both my grandfathers were members, was probably the largest, but certainly the most exclusive order of chivalry in the world. Its membership was restricted to the members of the Italian armed forces which, recovering from the nearly annihilating defeat of Caporetto one year earlier, took on the great armies of the Austro-Hungarian double empire in the great battle of Vittorio Veneto, between October 24 and November 2, completely annihilated them, and effectively ended the First World War (the sober last communique' of the victorious commander, Field-Marshal Armando Diaz, mentions 300,000 prisoners, 5,000 field pieces captured, whole general staffs surrendered, and of "the remains of what had been one of the greatest armies in the world climbing back in disorder and despair the valleys down which they had marched in arrogant certainty"). This man was the last of those who took part in the greatest and most glorious victory in the long history of the Italian nation. Whatever may be thought of that war or of its results, something great has slipped away from us for ever; and as for me, I feel as if I had lost both my grandfathers again.