Now about those friends of Obama...

[fpb]

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.

Comments

[cette-vie.livejournal.com]

I'm not even trying to defend Bill Ayers as being right in anything, but quite frequently, we regret and repent of things that we've done in the name of what we've thought was right. And change, for that matter, although others call it flip-flopping.

But what I really need to correct you on is Bill Ayers' current position. He's a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a state university, and is NOT a professor at the UofC. I think our campus would have exploded by this point were he there. And Wikipedia says so too, if that's any proof. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ayers)

But I will take that compliment about my school being the best outside of the Ivies, thank you. =)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Ayers is quite unrepentant (he was photographed as late as 2001 with his feet on an American flag), and frankly you are too young (and the wrong nationality) to remember the murderous horror of Communist terrorism in the seventies, which I for one will not forgive. I am however glad to hear that he has no direct connection with UofC. Just as I have personal reasons to loathe former seventies terrorists, so I have personal reasons to admire your institution. Your school has the School of Divinity, which has indubitably the best track record in comparative religion (one of my subjects) outside France, and is prestigious in every other way.