Posted on 10/10/2008 1:58:37 AM PDT by markomalley
Have the mainstream media been fair in their coverage of Barack Obama's associations with radical elements of the American left? Here is a useful guide for answering that question: What if John McCain had similar associations with the radical right?
Barack Obama's political career was launched in the home of William Ayers, a left-wing terrorist who spent the 1970s running from the FBI. Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a domestic terror organization that bombed the Pentagon, police departments and the homes of government officials. In a 2001 New York Times interview, Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Not only did Ayers host the house party that launched Obama's political career, but he and Obama served on a nonprofit board together for three years.
Imagine if John McCain's career had been launched at the home of a right-wing terrorist such as Timothy McVeigh. Do you think the media would be shrugging their shoulders?
Barack Obama taught classes for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, represented the group in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois and paid it for organizing work during his presidential campaign. ACORN's Nevada offices were just raided. The state alleges extensive voter fraud.
Imagine if John McCain were closely associated with a right-wing group that state officials say was actively committing widespread voter fraud running up to this election. Would the media ignore it?
Barack Obama spent two decades as a member of a church in which the pastor preached racial separatism and condemned America. If John McCain spent two decades in a church with a right-wing pastor who preached a version of white supremacy and routinely condemned America, would the media suggest that the tie was no reflection on McCain's own thoughts or ideology?
Barack Obama is not Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright. He doesn't look or sound like that kind of left-wing radical. But his voting record -- National Journal named him the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate last year, ahead of Ted Kennedy and Socialist Bernie Sanders -- and his close associations with the radical left suggest that ideologically he is as far left as a politician in America can get and have any hope of getting elected. And they suggest that his beliefs are far more radical than the moderate image he presents in public.
But Barack Obama is not a Republican. And therefore his ties to fringe elements in his party are ignored and discounted by a fawning media that would leave no stone unturned were the candidate with radical associations named John McCain.
I'm pretty sure that if you just whited out Obama's name and party affiliation and put the word CANDIDATE and then listed all of his connections to men like Ayers and Wright and what those men did/stand for, he would receive 0 votes, but for some reason, people don't seem to care about these connections. I believe it is because a majority of people don't understand or know about them. We can thank the Obama-mania media for that I'm sure, but regardless, the voters should be smart enough to do their own research to find out things about a candidate. Some people blame the media. I do believe they are wrong, but I honestly blame the voter. It is their responsibility to find out the truth about a candidate and so many of them aren't and it is truly a tragedy of the American political process.Maybe all of those groups running out to get people registered to vote should re-direct their time to actually educating those that are already registered. I think that would be a much better idea rather than just registering a whole new group of people that don't research or find out the truth of all candidates anyways.
That, actually, might be a very effective line of thought when speaking to an "undecided" person.
Voters under forty, don’t know who the Weathermen were or what they did. They see them as anti-war hippies and potential victims of being drafted into an “unjust war”. That’s what they were taught in school.
but surely the MSM does. what’s wrong with them? are they insane?
> Voters under forty, don’t know who the Weathermen were or what they did.
I reckon that might be a bit lite. I’m 45 and the only reason that I know is that I’m well-informed for my age.
I’d venture that the Weathermen would not really resonate strongly with any voter under 50.
btt
I’m 50, and I remember loathing hippies from the time they first appeared on the scene. I believed then and now the WU was worse.
My kids had no idea what the WU was or did. When I reviewed their history, they were appalled...but only AFTER I explained what it was like in the late 60s/early 70s.
> My kids had no idea what the WU was or did. When I reviewed their history, they were appalled...but only AFTER I explained what it was like in the late 60s/early 70s.
I could tell you stories about being educated during that era. Probably, you could tell me stories about it too.
We were taught by hippies.
Did they ever show you Newsreel clips of the Vietnam War? We got lots of those, complete with an obligatory social studies lesson about the evils of imperialism.
We even went to a protest rally for a field-trip...
No, the MSM knows who they were, but like I said they don’t really understand that they were the aggressors, not the victims. The MSM are almost all young and those old enough to know better, have all drunk the Obama kool-aid, including Bill O’Reilly, who says that he doesn’t believe that Obama is really a far left guy and that when he gets into office he will move to the center, like Clinton did. Yeah, right.
I told my husband that I saw the Weathermen as being almost as bad as the Manson family, right in there in the same category. Then, I read an old comment by Bernadette Dorn, saying that she admired what the Manson family did, that those people needed killing.
I was a military brat educated in schools on military bases. If any of our teachers had tried that, we would have beaten them up. Our parents were in Vietnam...
I just watched them on TV or observed them on the streets. They struck my 10 year old mind as a bunch of dirty, spoiled, third-rate minds having a tantrum. At 10, I was smarter than anyone on the staff of Newsweek or Time!
I remember a couple of years ago having to explain to my daughter that the Black Panthers were not just a civil rights group...
My husband knew one of the Weathermen, before he was a member, that is. He knew the guy that blew up the building on the University of Wisconsin campus and killed someone. He says that he was always kind of a jerk. I think that they were mostly spoiled children of upper middle class parents, who thought that they were smarter than everyone else, and that they were “entitled”, that they didn’t owe respect to anyone, and certainly didn’t owe any debt to their country.
I always thought that they were rationalizing their own fears of serving in Vietnam as an “unjust war”. They were only brave when they were bombing civilians at home.
“...Obama kool-aid, including Bill O’Reilly...”
Yep, he is either refusing to believe the truth or he’s been taken in.
Laura Ingram was on tonight and I thought she was gonna smack him because he just does not get the connections.
You know, the FBI, CIA etc, has to know what is going on. Heck if we can bang on a keyboard and uncover all sorts of dirt, they have to have all the goods on him.
I fear we are simply being sold out. All of this is so bazaar, my family thinks I’m nuts. Ha! Nothing new there.
The story line, connections, the depth of planning and the years of preparation; it reads like one heck of a great epic novel.
Somebody please wake me up!
Laura GETS it...(God love her)
Bill is sometimes too self-absorbed to hear anything but his own voice.
As if the radical right is comparable to the radical left criminals.
If McCain had friends like this, he would already be in prison.
O’Reilly seems only concerned about his loss of money in the stock market in the last two weeks. Why a man of his age would have so much of his money tied up in something so risky is his own fault. He should have had very little in the stock market and most of his money in conservative holdings. He’s not a young man and should have invested accordingly.
Tim McVey would not be accepted among conservatives. Ayers is celebrated among liberals.
This is a woefully naive American.
RACIST!!!!!
I’m writing to my 19 y.o. nephew who asked me why I think Obama’s “association” with Ayers should mean anything... I’m having to write him a history lesson, but I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. I don’t know what will happen when he reads what I have to say... especially after his mother, my sister, gets a hold of it. She’s already cast her (first?) Obama vote in Maine.
The WSJ today reports that McCain refuses to raise the Wright issue, because of fear of being labeled a racist. If true, that really pisses me off. Wright’s voice alone used in TV ads could have made this a landslide McCain victory. I’ve always thought that Obama was not electable because of the Wright tapes. But you have to use them. I’ve been a McCain supporter, but if he loses and fails to use Wright, he can go to hell.
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