NYT's Ayers-Obama Whitewash

NRO The Corner ^ | 10/4/08 | Stanley Kurtz

[Unam Sanctam]

As others have noted, today’s New York Times carries a story on the relationship between Barack Obama and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers. The piece serves as a platform for the Obama campaign and Obama’s friends and allies. Obama’s spokesman and supporters’ names are named and their versions of events are presented in detail, with quotes. Yet the article makes no serious attempt to present the views of Obama critics who have worked to uncover the true nature of the relationship. That makes this piece irresponsible journalism, and an obvious effort by the former paper of record to protect Obama from the coming McCain onslaught.

The title of the article when it first appeared on the web last night was, "Obama Had Met Ayers, but the Two Are Not Close." That was quickly changed to, "Obama and the ‘60's Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths." Perhaps the first headline made the paper’s agenda a bit too obvious. Even so, the new title simply parrots the line of Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt that the two first met through an early "education project" and since have simply "encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood." Or, as New York Times reporter Scott Shane puts it at the head of his article, since an initial lunchtime meeting in 1995, "their paths have crossed sporadically...at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project (i.e. the Chicago Annenberg Challenge) and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors."

There is nothing "sporadic" about Barack Obama delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of many years to fund Bill Ayers’ radical education projects, not to mention many millions more to benefit Ayers’ radical education allies. We are talking about a substantial and lengthy working relationship here, one that does not depend on the quality of personal friendship or number of hours spent in the same room together (although the article greatly underestimates that as well).

Shane’s article buys the spin on Ayers’ supposed rehabilitation offered by the Obama campaign and Ayers’ supporters in Chicago. In this view, whatever Ayers did in the 1960's has somehow been redeemed by Ayers’ later turn to education work. As the Times quotes Mayor Daley saying, "People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life." The trouble with this is that Ayers doesn’t view his terrorism as a mistake. How can he be forgiven when he’s not repentant? Nor does Ayers see his education work as a repudiation of his early radicalism. On the contrary, Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise. The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ "small schools" project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.

Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publically endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country. Shane mentions the book endorsement, yet says nothing about the book’s actual content. Nor does Shane mention the panel about Ayers’ book, on which Obama spoke as part of a joint Ayers-Obama effort to sink the 1998 Illinois juvenile crime bill. Again, we have unmistakable evidence of a substantial political working relationship. (I’ve described it in detail here in "Barack Obama’s Lost Years."

The Times article purports to resolve the matter of Ayers’ possible involvement in Obama’s choice to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, yet in no way does so. Clearly, the article sides with those who claim that Ayers was not involved. Yet the piece has no credibility because it simply refuses to present the arguments of those who say that Ayers almost surely had a significant role in Obama’s final choice.

Steve Diamond has made a powerful case that, whoever first suggested Obama’s name, Ayers must surely have had a major role in his final selection. Diamond has now revealed that the Times consulted him extensively for this article and has seen his important documentary evidence. Yet we get no inkling in the piece of Diamond’s key points, or the documents that back it up. (I’ve made a similar argument myself, based largely on my viewing of many of the same documents presented by Diamond.) How can an article that gives only one side of the story be fair? Instead of offering both sides of the argument and letting readers decide, the Times simply spoon-feeds its readers the Obama camp line.

The Times also ignores the fact that I’ve published a detailed statement from the Obama camp on the relationship between Ayers and Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (See "Obama’s Challenge.") Maybe that’s because attention to that statement would force them to acknowledge and report on my detailed reply.

Shane’s story also omits any mention of the fact that access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records was blocked. What’s more, thanks to a University of Chicago law student’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we now know that access to the documents was blocked by an old Obama associate, Ken Rolling, on the day I first tried to see them. And as a result of my own FOIA, we also have evidence that Rolling may have been less than fully forthcoming on the question of Ayers’ possible role in elevating Obama to board chair at Anneberg. In fact, Rolling seems to have been withholding information from a New York Times reporter. I’ve made this material public in a piece called, "Founding Brothers." How could a responsible article on the topic of Obama, Ayers, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ignore the story of the blocked library access and the results of the two FOIA requests? How could a responsible paper fail to aggressively follow up on the questions raised by those requests, and by the documents and analysis presented by Steve Diamond?

Most remarkably of all, Shane seems to paper over the results of his own questioning. On the one hand, toward the end of the piece we read: "Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship." And it’s no wonder, says Shane, since Ayers was caught expressing no regret for his own past terrorism in an article published on September 11, 2001. Yet earlier in Shane’s article we learn that, according to Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt, Obama and Ayers "have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005." Very interesting. Obama’s own spokesman has just left open the possibility that there has indeed been phone and e-mail contact between the two men between 2002 and 2004, well after Ayers’ infamous conduct on 9/11. Yet instead of pursuing this opening, Shane ignores the findings of his own investigation and covers for Obama.

The New York Times in the tank for Obama? You bet. And sinking deeper every day.

[Jeff Head]

Bill Ayers and his wife are domestic terrorists and abject American haters who to this day are unrepentant and who still indicate that they wish they had done more and will not rule out doing more violence in the future.

Their current positions of influence in education are a sickening, shameful mostrocity and a travesty.

Barack Hussein Obama has willfully linked his politival career and aspirations to individuals who declared war against their own country, our United States of America, in a time of war, and then went about violently prosecuting that war, and in any sane time would have long ago been executed for their treaasonous siding with the enemy during a time of war.

The MSM, the DNC, Obama and his campaign, and Ayers himself all play the American people for out and out fools by trying to pass this nefarious realtionship off as happenstance.

Obama is what he has studied to be, striven to be, and been schoole to be by militant anti-American marxists. He is one himself underneath a very thin shean of venier.

But all is not lost, apparently McCain plans a fiercer strategy against Obama

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon....”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27018572

THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

[library user]

Bill Ayers is a superb writer. I especially like his book “Dreams From My Father.”

[cpanter]

The Times just has to hang on for another 4 weeks...

[mojito]

Our elite media is decadent and corrupt.

They are not to be trusted; everything they write is a lie.

They are allied with a Marxist; their values and operating methods are Leninist.

Their goal is to destroy this country.

[Monti Cello]

The media anal exam into Palin's background should be exhibit 1b in the exposure of Obama. Point out the discrepancy in media interest with well-aimed ridicule to help defuse the late bombs they are sure to throw.

They may find it necessary to put out sanitized versions of Obama's story to save face. This may only emphasize the bias in coverage, and such an effort keeps the story on the front burner, and begs counterpoints, which will make it into the public view.

[Lets Be Frank]

The NYTimes is desperately trying to preempt a McCain attack on the Ayers issue on Tuesday. Will it work? It certainly will in the media, they are already saying “see? even the Times says there isn't an issue here”

[reasonisfaith]

To the liberal media I ask: Do you ever contemplate how your neglect of objective truth can only devalue your work?

What is your first maxim? From which premise do you proceed? That of socialism?

I think your first premise is self. Therefore, you assume that anything believed by you—like the need to elect Obama, or to protest the military, or whatever—is good, and must be advanced against all opposition.

But do you not see how this method—that of making yourself a god with the power to define truth—will only end in your moral demise? And then, that which you value most will become absolutely devalued?

[freespirited]

IIRC, the Slimes also failed to mention that Michelle Obama was responsible for inviting Ayers to speak a panel with Bambi at a symposium she organized while working at U of Chicago.

Seems to me this is a material fact.

[philman_36]

How could a responsible paper fail to aggressively follow up on the questions raised by those requests, and by the documents and analysis presented by Steve Diamond?
And since they didn't doesn't that make them an irresponsible paper.

irresponsible - d: unable especially mentally or financially to bear responsibility

[Condor51]

*** Bill Ayers is a superb writer. I especially like his book “Dreams From My Father.”***

Bill Ayers is a flocking commie maggot who shouldn't be breathing my air.

[anglian]

LMAO! Also From Obama campaign’s disinformation website, Fight The Smears: Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN. http://sweetness-light.com/

[Red_Devil 232]

Looks Like McCain/Palin is starting to unload on the Obama/Ayers connction. Well at least Sarah is!

[alloysteel]

Move along, folks, nothing to see here, everything is under control, we got it covered, statement will be released later, step lively there....

[Son House]

Bill Ayers wife;

Did Bernardine Dohrn Mentor Michelle [Robinson] Obama at Chicago Law Firm?

http://archive.redstate.com/blogs/daveinboca/2008/apr/25/did_bernardine_dohrn_mentor_michelle_robinson_obama_at_chicago_law_firm

The media has been very gentle on Michelle Obama, but one blogger asks a very interesting question about Bernardine Dohrn’s possible mentoring of Michelle at Sidley Austin in Chicago, where

Dohrn worked as a paralegal [her felony conviction meant she couldn’t pass the Illinois bar exam] while Michelle was an intern during summers while in law school.

Michelle was later taken into the prestigious firm when she graduated from Harvard Law. Michelle in turn mentored Obama in ‘89 & they eventually married.

[Son House]

The Weather Underground - DVD

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1354557&skuId=6428877&type=product&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=6428877

For years, the Weather Underground evaded the authorities’ grasp, even as it pulled off high-profile bombings against government targets. Their momentum petered out in the 1980s, as one by one the organization’s members surrendered after years on the run.

[MozarkDawg]

Up a 6 a.m. CST, made the coffee this morning, turn on Fox. I came into this discussion almost at the beginning, the host questioning a McCain supporter (don’t recall the name) and the late Ron Brown’s son Michael as the 0bama guy. They ALL talked about this article as though it did indeed portray the true nature of the relationship between 0bama and Ayres, Brown of course, pooh-poohing the whole thing. I am seriously disappointed to discover that instead of the fact of the matter, the NYT has done no more than toe the 0bama excuse line. Did Fox-boy even read the piece, then?

[ApplegateRanch]

What is your first maxim?

Sell papers? Sell advertising? Sell out America?

Three guesses, and the first two don't count.

[mtntop3]

It has been noted on FR that the NYT author of this inoculation piece, Scott Shane, seems to have worked for the Chicago Sun Times during the 1990’s - when he would have had a very good chance of being acquainted with Obama.

[ColdWater]

RNC should publish a small photo album of Obama and his friends. Small enough to carry around and show to all our ‘undecided’ friends.