Saturday, December 06, 2008

The Real Bill Ayers

by Bill Ayers / New York Times

IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.

Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”

Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.

I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.

... more about Bill Ayres and his role.

My comment: Keep in mind that during the 1960s I was a long haired draft resister. I lived in Chicago in 1968 and, though I avoided the Democratic National Convention, several good friends were on site ... one as a medical volunteer patching the wounds inflicted during what was later characterized as a police riot. I was in Chicago during the riots that followed the Martin Luther King assassination ... barricaded in an apartment on the south side with that same medical volunteer ... the door barred, a Mauser and a Baretta nearby as we listened to gunfire outside in the street.

If you weren't a little radicalized during the 1960s, one way or the other, you simply weren't paying any attention.

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