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"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George." ~~ Barack Hussein 0bama, April 16, 2008

"I don't regret setting bombs," Bill Ayers said. "I feel we didn't do enough."

Revisiting the Guy in Obama's Neighborhood

The "guy who lives in my neighborhood" locution has, suitably, received a lot of attention. Taken as a whole, however, what is most striking about this answer is its garbled incoherence, its historical manipulation, and its appeal to amoral abstraction.

Notice how the answer hedges its bets, in the manner of the best post-Clinton political obfuscation. The "guy in my neighborhood" line, taken together with the "not somebody [whom] I exchange ideas [with]" plea, is clearly meant to imply that Obama does not know Ayers well enough to be sullied by Ayers' "detestable acts." And yet, Obama takes the trouble to insert that Ayers is "a professor of English from Chicago" whose unsavory activities took place "40 years ago" -- in other words, that he's not some extremist, but a "guy" with a highly respectable, essentially apolitical career, who, a very long time ago, did some bad things. If the point were merely to dismiss charges of a close relationship while simultaneously expressing distaste for the man's past activities, why add remarks designed to undermine the view of Ayers as a disreputable character? Isn't Obama supposed to be defending himself? If so, why is he simultaneously defending Ayers? The likely answer is that he is misrepresenting his relationship with Ayers, and must therefore prepare his escape route, should his lie be found out. He is arguing, in effect, "I barely know him -- but even if I do, he's been a good and respectable citizen for most of my life, so you can't pin anything on me."

Furthermore, recall the odd final phrase in Obama's denial of a significant intellectual tie: "He's not somebody who [sic] I exchange ideas from [sic] on a regular basis." What does "on a regular basis" mean? More to the point, does that phrase not, in fact, serve to invert the meaning of the antecedent claim? That is to say, the qualification that he and Ayers do not exchange ideas "on a regular basis" is a tacit acknowledgment that they have, indeed, "exchanged" ideas.

This indirect, perhaps inadvertent, acknowledgment is further highlighted by our modern Sophocles' grammatical clunker "exchange from" instead of "exchange with." It is tempting in this light to read Obama's mistaken preposition "from" as a Freudian slip. After all, what he really needs to deny in this context is not that he has ever spoken to Ayers (exchanged ideas "with" him), but rather that he has been influenced by Ayers' ideas -- that he has gotten some of his own ideas "from" Ayers. Rummaging through his ill-digested mental notes like a flustered C-student, in search of a way to deny Ayers' influence that will retain plausible deniability in the face of future fact-checkers, Obama clumsily reveals exactly what he wishes to hide -- namely, that he has adopted ideas "from" the Marxist terrorist...just not "on a regular basis."

Also remarkable is Obama's reference to Ayers' "detestable acts" as being from "40 years ago." Stephanopoulos' question explicitly identifies Ayers' terrorist activities as stemming from the 1970s. In fact, the Weather Underground was founded only in 1969 -- 39 years prior to Obama's statement -- and continued carrying out and planning bomb attacks until at least 1977. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn turned themselves in to police in 1980.

and then shortly after 0bama moved to NYC in 1981, was the robbery of a Brinks truck in Nanuet, N.Y., in which a security guard and two policemen were killed.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George." ~~ Barack Hussein 0bama, April 16, 2008

And nobody in the MSM ever picked him up on that, did they? He knows what he can get away with, because the voters are so pathetically uninformed. The perception out there is give zero a break, he was only eight...

He wasn't 8 years old when he had his photograph taken with Genevieve Cook, when she was at the Banks Street School and William Ayres was a teacher there.

In fact, the Weather Underground was founded only in 1969 -- 39 years prior to Obama's statement -- and continued carrying out and planning bomb attacks until at least 1977.

The manager of Broadway Baby at that time? Bernardine Dohrn. The place was also a front for fake IDs and passports.

Obama 2009 Federal Income Tax Return posted online on White House Servers on 15 April 2010 proves Obama is using a stolen Connecticut SSN 042-68-4425 which begins with the prefix 042 which was designated only for CT residents when the SSN was issued in March 1977.