Who Is Bill Ayers? (Letter to NYT)

[dtotire]

To the Editor:

Re “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths” (front page, Oct. 4):
The 1950s McCarthy-era “guilt by association” is rife in this campaign season. Anyone a candidate knows or has talked to can be used to credit or discredit him. This is a dangerous return to a time when reputations and careers were ruined because of suspicions about the political persuasion of one’s friends or associates.

Most anyone in the nonprofit field in Chicago knows and admires Bill Ayers for his knowledge and commitment to quality education. A respected professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he is beloved by his students. Most of us met him long after his time as a radical Weatherman in the late 60s. Certainly, we don’t condone his behavior at that time.
Barack Obama was 8 years old when Bill Ayers was violently protesting the Vietnam War. That they now live in the same neighborhood and share deep concerns about education has nothing to do with Bill Ayers’s past, and shame on the McCain campaign for suggesting that it does and going back to the horrendous tactics that were so repulsive in the 50s.

Judy Wise
Chicago, Oct. 5, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/opinion/l07politics.html?ref=opinion

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[goddess40]

1. McCain, and republicans, don't believe in rehabilitation

Why don't they, because they know they haven't been rehabilitated. That's why the Keating 5 is so important.

[Waiting For Everyman]

2. It is kind of McCarthy-esque, isn't it?

[barbtries]

3. another good one just under it:

To the Editor:

You quote John McCain, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?” He was referring to Barack Obama’s acquaintance with the former Weatherman Bill Ayers, but the same question might be put to his own supporters.

A Vietnamese friend once described to me the scene of carnage he witnessed as a child after a United States bombing in Hanoi. He and his family fled through a landscape strewn with the body parts of innocents.

An argument could be made that the pilot who flew 23 bombing sorties over Vietnam and the former radical were both doing what they believed right — one in support of a war and the other in protest of it — and that both were wrong.

Kevin Lathrop
Brooklyn, Oct. 4, 2008

[OakCliffDem]

4. Kick