Continuing to demonstrate the inability to just give the news without editorializing, Yahoo news leads with this.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday of “palling around with terrorists,” in the latest sign the campaign is turning increasingly nasty.
Just a question: if Obama has actually “paled around with terrorists”, is it a sign the campaign is “turning increasingly nasty” to point that out?
Not until the sixth paragraph do we get anything about the nature of Obama’s relationship to the terrorist Bill Ayers: (the earlier ones are all devoted to he said/she said type reporting)
Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.
Ah, the NYTimes, that bastion of Olympian fairness, has decided Obama is not “close” to Ayers, a self-admitted terrorist and bomber. Apparently, the NYTimes thinks you aren’t “close” to someone unless you share a toothbrush or something.
Just a question, for the reader: do YOU even know someone who knows someone who knows a terrorist?
I didn’t think so. Here’s paragraph NINE of the story:
Obama served with Ayers on the board of a foundation in Chicago, and has said he was only eight-years-old when the Weather Underground committed its best-known bombing. He has also noted that former President Bill Clinton pardoned two members of the group during the last days of his presidency.
Clinton also pardoned some Puerto Rican terrorists and Marc Rich. This is a recommendation?
This is not simple “guilt by association”. It isn’t like they both went to Denny’s at the same time and happened to be placed at adjacent tables. Obama and Ayers served on boards together, were associates who worked together for “education initiatives” in Chicago, etc. Obama chose to continue his association with Ayers, and the first campaign kickoff for Obama was at Ayers’ house.
In the following video, Obama wants us to believe that Clinton is worse for having pardoned Weather Underground terrorists than Obama is for having associated with Ayers, one of the terrorists who WASN’T pardoned, but got off on a technicality because the FBI botched the investigation. Ayers: “Guilty as sin and free as a bird.”
Try to understand this. Even Obama admits knowing Ayers was a terrorist, an unrepentant one, and tries to pass off his relationship as “being on a board together”, and minimizes Ayers’ evil behavior as “something that happened 40 years ago”, as if evil done 40 years ago and not repented for is less evil, and his association with the perpetrator less suspect. In fact, they worked closely on that board, and in other organizations, and Ayers was a prime supporter launching his political career.
The “40 years ago” approach is masking something that is revealed by changing a couple of details, in a sort of thought experiment. What if Ayers had been a virulent racist, enthusiastic member of the KKK, burning crosses on lawns of black people, beating them when possible, encouraging lynchings, and the like? What if he was now unrepentant about it, and said, “We didn’t do enough.”? Would Obama pass it off as “something that happened 40 years ago” and essentially ignore it?
You know the answer, and so do I. The only reason the “40 year ago” excuse works in his mind is because he doesn’t think having been a terrorist bomber and killer of police is all that bad. So since it happened way back there somewhere, we can just sort of ignore it.
Except that we can’t. And if you can…. well, I have some words for your judgment that I can’t really commit to print right now.
As for the quality of reporting in the article referenced above, it’s just more evidence that the media is morally blind, dumb and deaf, and totally in the tank for Obama. Imagine if McCain had that racist friend just suggested in the “thought experiment” above. Would the NYTimes conclude “they weren’t that close”?
Hah.
UPDATE: To no one’s particular surprise, Stanley Kurz has done an excellent job covering this entire matter, and gives his analysis of the NYTimes “reporting” here.
UPDATE: In the meantime, Tom Brokaw wants us to believe that unrepentant terrorist Ayers, who recently said, “We didn’t do enough,” is really just a “school reformer”. Maybe Brokaw means that Ayers should be in “reform school for terrorists”, but somehow I doubt it.
