Letter from Bill Ayers

Elections are fueled by two resources - a limited amount of contributor funding and an unlimited amount of media bullshit. The 2008 Presidential Race was no exception.

Barack Obama was such an unknown entity that the attacks his enemies could make against him were tenuous at best. There were accusations of him being a socialist, a black militant and a secret Muslim. Most alarming of all were accusations that he 'chummed around' with infamous domestic terrorist William Ayers.

'Bill' Ayers was a founding member of the anti-Vietnam group 'The Weather Underground.' They launched a campaign of protests and bombings during the 70's - none of which claimed any lives apart from three unfortunate members of the Underground itself, who blew themselves to bits in a cellar in Greenwich Village, while assembling bombs.

The Bill Ayers was a terrorist is not in question. That he is a wildly misguided man with some bloody stupid and offensive ideas is not in question either - for example, on September 11th, 2001 (the day of the Twin Towers attack) he was featured in a wildly inopportune interview in the New York Times:

“I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? “I don’t want to discount the possibility,” he said.

Even today he finds “a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance.”

But was he a friend of Barack Obama? Did they 'chum around' as Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused? No - clearly not. I'm hardly the most cynical man alive, but even I saw the attempts to link Barack Obama to this unlikeable character were tenuous, at best.

As unlikeable as he is, Bill Ayers at least had the dignity to keep his trap shut during the election (something firebrand, racist preacher Jeremiah Wright was unable to do.) But now Obama's where he intended to be (just over a month from inauguration) Ayers has broken his silence to tell his side of the story.

You don't have to like the man, but his editorial in The New York Times makes for interesting reading.

Read it here.