Israel Matzav

Video: The company Obama keeps

If this video is correct - and it sounds like everyone involved has admitted that it is - I am amazed by two things. First, that Obama would be foolish enough to think that the American people will elect someone who keeps company like this, and second, that the American people are so apparently indifferent to the fact that Obama keeps company like this. Obama's circle of friends apparently not only includes anti-American preachers like Jeremiah Wright. It also includes out and out terrorists like Bill Ayers.

Ayers published his memoirs in 2001 with the book Fugitive Days. His interview with the New York Times to promote his book was published on September 11, 2001, and includes his reaction to Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen: "He was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,' he writes. 'The rigidity and the narcissism.'" In this interview, he also was quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough." The book has been criticized for numerous important factual inaccuracies, among other things.

Ayers has also edited and written nearly a dozen books on education theory, policy and practice. In the fall of 2006, Ayers was asked not to attend a progressive educators' conference on the basis that the organizers did not want to risk an association of their movement with his violent past.

Ayers serves presently on the board of the Woods Fund, a leftist foundation. Notable members have included Barack Obama who worked there from 1999 to 2002.

And Obama? There seems to be little question that he gladly accepted the support of Ayers and other former members of the Weather Underground.

The relationship with Ayers gives context to his recent past in Hyde Park politics. It’s milieu in which a former violent radical was a stalwart of the local scene, not especially controversial.

It’s also a scene whose liberal ideological features — while taken for granted by the Chicago press corps that knows Obama best — provides a jarring contrast with Obama’s current, anti-ideological stance. This contrast between past and present — not least the Ayers connection — is virtually certain to be a subject Republican operatives will warm to if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

The tension between the present and recent Chicago past is also evident in some of his positions on major national issues. Many national politicians, including Clinton, have moved toward the center over time. But Obama’s transitions are still quite fresh.

Let's go to the videotape.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:07 PM