McCain-Palin's supporters just need a reason to hate Obama. Palin came along and gave them one. She's not worthy of the vice presidency. She appeals to those with lizard brains. Sorry, it's true. Then McCain signed on to Palin's campaign to win an election.
McCain tried to reverse the tone of his campaign at a rally today in Minnesota. He tried to talk issues but people wanted to hate on Obama. One woman took the microphone and said Obama is an Arab. McCain shook his head and said no. But it's too late. That woman won't believe McCain. Neither will the rest of them. They're still trying to prove Obama's not a U.S. citizen.
Everyone tries to analyze too much. This is plain and simple deep rooted prejudices. If it wasn't Ayers, it would be something else. McCain Palin supporters are pretty radical. Moderate republicans are running away from McCain, or at least are disappointed in McCain's campaign.
Here's a story by David Tanenhaus, who teaches history and law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of Juvenile Justice in the Making.
Slate: Like Obama's dealings with Ayers and Dohrn, mine centered on local issues. At the time, my research centered on the punitive turn in juvenile-justice policy. Scholars like William Bennett, John Walters, and John DiIulio were warning about a new generation of "superpredators" who were "feral pre-social beings" and posed a grave threat to safety in the nation's urban areas. Between 1990 and 1996, 40 states passed laws to make it easier to try juveniles as adults. In response to this spate of lawmaking, the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation began funding research on adolescent development and juvenile justice. The goal was to restore rational policymaking to this area of law.Ayer's book:
The world's first juvenile court was established in Chicago in 1899, and since the 1920s, Hyde Park had been at the center of the national discussion about educational and juvenile-justice policy. In the 1990s, Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and also taught poetry in the classrooms of the juvenile court to children, mostly African-Americans and Latinos, who might spend the rest of their lives incarcerated. Dohrn directed the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University.
The publication in 1997 of Ayers' book A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court attracted much local and national attention. Drawing on his experience as a father and a teacher, he powerfully contrasted and compared the lives of his children, growing up in privilege, with those he had taught in prison. As he observed, "They are kids after all, and nothing they did can possibly change them into adults." That year, Chicago named Ayers its "Citizen of the Year." In November, Michelle Obama, who was then director of the university's community service center, convened a panel at the law school to discuss Ayers' book and the issues it raised.Who Ayers is today:
In the intervening years, things have changed yet again. Leading Chicagoans, including Mayor Daley, now commend Ayers for his service to the city. "I don't condone what he did 40 years ago, but I remember that period well," Daley said last April. "It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep refighting 40-year-old battles."
I now include the Weather Underground in the history surveys I teach to undergraduates. I do my best to place them in the context of the radicalism of the late 1960s. I sometimes find it hard to believe that the Bill and Bernardine that Barack and I met in Hyde Park in the 1990s are the same people that my students are learning about in class. I know them better as the couple that invited me into their home in 2000 to meet their extended family, make gingerbread-cookie houses, and share Christmas dinner. Our conversation that night, as it almost always did, focused on the future, not the past.
More from Obama:
Politico: In an interview with the sympathetic conservative talk radio host this afternoon, Obama offered the clearest explanation yet of how an extremely careful politician allowed himself anywhere near a former '60s radical who would become a Republican target in this year's presidential campaign.
Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.
In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above, Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.
"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."
Here is the radio interview here.
