Why Ayers matters
It is troubling that the MSM has abdicated its investigatory task by being surprisingly uninterested in shining light into some of the more suspicious regions of Barack Obama’s past. And of all those dark corners, the very darkest may be the Obama-Ayers connection.
Why does it matter? Isn’t this just a meaningless game of “gotcha” guilt by association, and a rather tenuous association at that? Can Obama really be blamed for the doings of everyone who’s ever crossed his path?
The official Obama campaign statement about Ayers and the candidate focuses on the charges about Ayers’ terrorist background, the Woods hole connection, and the fact that Ayers is considered a respected scholar on education. It is entirely mum—as Obama has mostly been so far—about their work together on the Annenberg Challenge.
Several people have pointed out that Obama’s 1995-1999 tenure as chair of the Annenberg Challenge has been his most important executive position to date, President of the Harvard Law Review being the other. As for the management of his campaign—the example of executive experience Obama cited the other day—when last I checked, Axelrod held that august and lofty position.
So, why would Obama fail to offer his Annenberg background as an example of his executive chops? I don’t claim to have solved the mystery, but the omission is highly suspect, to say the least, and needs to be addressed.
But don’t sit on a hot stove until Obama explains it. The most he has done is to attack and try to silence Stanley Kurtz, a writer for National Review who has been trying to open up the closed files of the Annenberg Foundation to public scrutiny.
One thing that is clear is that Obama was being remarkably disingenuous when he called Ayers merely “a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English [sic—he’s a professor of education, a fact of which Obama is well aware] in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from.”
Those who argue that the Ayers connection is important because Ayers is an unrepetentant terrorist are emphasizing the wrong part of the Ayers/Obama oeuvre. While it is shocking that Obama welcomed known terrorist Ayers’ support—the latter hosted a 1995 fundraiser for Obama when he was first starting out in Chicago politics—it is also true that politics often makes strange bedfellows. It’s way too much of a stretch to say that proves that Obama was simpatico with Ayers’ terrorist past or with the extremity of his radical beliefs.
Annenberg, however, was a whole nother ball game [bracketed interpolation mine]:
…[I]n 1995 [same year as the fundraiser he hosted for Obama] Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation ”” matched two-to-one by public and private contributions ”” to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.
Caveat: there is some controversy over whether Obama was in fact selected by Ayers or not (see this). If he was not, then the claim that he was could be easily refuted if Obama were to explain how he actually was hired and by whom. But neither Obama nor his campaign have ever tried to offer that information.
Obama’s Annenberg stint is important for several reasons, not the least of which is that it underscores the fact that Obama’s only executive experience was a washout in terms of results. In addition—and whether or not he was appointed directly by Ayers or not—it proves just how much Obama has been minimizing their true relationship.
Theirs was not only a closer connection than being mere neighbors, or serving on a random board together, or that Ayers supported Obama in his race for State Senate. It is possible that they may have also been in some sort of basic agreement on educational goals.
Well, isn’t everyone? Don’t we all want to make education better, and to reach more children?
Well, it depends what you mean by “better.” This is what Ayers means:
As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K”“12 teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.” Ayers’s texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.
This is the cause to which Ayers has devoted himself for the last few decades, the post-terrorist portion of his life. You might say that he has found a peaceful way to advance the same causes he once championed through violence.
Obama needs to fully describe the history of his ascension to the Annenberg board, and to support the release of the papers describing his work there, not denounce those trying to do so. Until we learn the whole story, we are free to wonder whether Obama and Ayers share a commitment—not to terrorism, but to Ayers’ radical educational goals.
[NOTE: For a fuller exploration of Ayers’ educational philosophy, please see this. And here’s an excellent summary of what we know so far of the connections between the Ayers and Obama on matters relating to the Annenberg Challenge. Here’s more, as well.]
Its all starting to tie together, why would he feel the need to downplay it the way he has? just a guy in my neighborhood etc. There is something there, hopefully it will come out, I fear they may have sanitized the records when they were stalling the public access.
That tied with this starts getting scary:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=305420655186700
Wow.. that is messed up stuff
Neo-neocon: you should make a post about the video documentary called “The Weather Underground” about the group.
It’s for free on google video.
In that video is Ayers himself.. declaring that he is still devoted to revolutionaly change in this country to install a new humane system.
the movie is about 5 years old i thikn
Why did Ayers choose Obama to chair the Annenberg Challenge? That very strongly implies a prior relationship.
Good post, Neo. Excellent links. Ayers influence in education is, IMO, a very bad thing because he is attempting to spread his Communistic values through the education system.
There are so many things about Obama that are not available. His Occidental College records. Who paid for that education? Who paid for his stint at Harvard. His ability to waltz from one elite school to another is quite amazing. I was a poor kid and had to work like a Trojan to put myself through just four years. Course we didn’t have access to student loans in those days.
Tavis Smiley is another bright black man with a gift of gab who managed to put himself through college, but it was a struggle. He did not waltz through the experience, nor did he opt to go on to higher education because of the difficulty of financing four years.
All of Obama’s good fortunre may not be remarkable, but why doesn’t he release the details? If nothing else as a guide for other enterprising young men.
Anderson Cooper just did a big ‘expose’ on ‘Troopergate’ – but has any reporter yet asked Barack what celebrating “Juneteenth” had to do with improving public education in Chicago. What about that grant? Did he vote against making that grant? Why did the project to improve algebra scores NOT get the grant? Does he approve of using large Foundations and grant money to fund activist causes?
There are lots and lots and lots of questions to be answered, and trying to shut Kurtz down tells us alot.
Juneteenth, made possible by the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, at the cost of 360,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more maimed. The Stars and Stripes are still “the flag that makes you free”, and Democrats ought to wise up and remember that.
Among the questions Neo raises focusing on the Obama-Ayres relationship — something I hope will indeed be just one of the numerous “mysterious” areas of Barack Obama’s background that begs for more open and truthful discussion in the public arena, I draw attention to a relatively brief allusion to Barack Obama’s increasing tendency in the last two weeks of pointing to his “running of his huge campaign” as evidence of his most successful executive experience. I want to yell through the television for all to hear: uhhh, that’s what David Axelrod and David Plouffe are getting the big bucks to do (and probably keeping quiet about it so Obama can lay claim to their work)
Then, Thurs. night on Bill O’Reilly’s show, when O’Reilly debuted a portion of his interview with Obama — something he had been fairly drooling over for more than a year, Obama, when asked about comparing his exectutive experience to Gov. Palin’s. Obama patronizingly spoke of her mayorship of her hometown of Wasilla (which he couldn’t even get right calling it “WaSILLY” which may or may not have been on purpose), comparing the $12 million annual budget of the town to the budget of his campaign. He completely ignored the issue of her 2 yr. tenure as Governor of Alaska, throughout which she worked serving her state, rooting out corruption, returning portions of budget surplus to every man, woman, child in the state, and striking a deal for the single largest construction project in the history of the U.S.: the new Alaskan pipeline; a deal which has been unequivocably hailed by all as an excellent deal for her state and the country.
Maybe he doesn’t want to go there because his own tenure as Senator has been spent primarily on the stump for his own candidacy as opposed to serving his constituency.
The comparison is absurd. (As is, of course, comparing Palin’s experience to Obama’s when one is running for V.P. and the other for President! Further, the Democratic supporters speak as if McCain is on his deathbed, when Biden, not all that much younger than McCain but in the Congress significantly longer, came as close to dying as is possible pretty much, when he was approximately Obama’s age and the victim of a double brain aneurysm. Surgeions have said his survival was basically by the grace of G-d, and highly unusual in such circumstances.
I certainly don’t know what will be revealed in the 3 remaining portions of the interview to be aired next Mon-Wed. on O’Reilly, but I do know that I thought, after 2 yrs. of O’Reilly attempting to land an interview, that Obama and his “people” saying OK — on the final night of the RNC scheduled for McCain’s big night and acceptaince. This being especially disappointing after McCain making sure hiw compaign kept a low profile during the DNC, and even spending precious ad money to air an ad running all day and evening congratulating Obama on his nomination and wishing him well.
In my book, this tells volumes about the two men in contention.
Michael Lonie reminds me of the irony many people miss about Bill Ayers and his mission to radically alter the political system he loathes as oppressive yet seemed to work out in his favor.
And I guess all capitalists are evil greedy heartless bastards unless they happen to be your father bailing your ass out of trouble.
What a horrible horrible nation we live in.
Perhaps it’s not about being ideologically simpatico after all; this is Chicago, remember? The Annenberg Challenge was a $100+ million pot of money, there for the taking, and the Board that Obama chaired was responsible for tracking the grant awards and finances. If you’re Bill Ayers, why NOT put a thirty-three-year old with political ambitions and no experience (who owes you a favor) in charge of the bank vault you plan to loot? Obama is not personally corrupt (well, not by Chicago standards), but he does have a history of turning a blind eye to it.
Sometimes, you just need to follow the money.
The thing about Ayres is – if you are President you have to protect your Country from people who would bomb it, bomb its buildings, kill its elected officials and police officers. YOu have to protect the people of your Country. That is your highest responsibility.
You have to, at the very least prosecute them, jail them, maybe even kill them.
Obama obviously doesn’t comprehend that. Worse than that, he may agree with Ayres.
While there may have been some actual corruption in the doling out of the Annenberg Challenge funds, there is another angle to consider.
As a former teacher who went to teaching as a second career, it is my observation that the ability of Education School people to convince themselves and others that mere conjecture is actually fact is phenomenal. They aren’t BS artists, because they actually believe the nonsense they are preaching. The Ed School fad of the year or of the decade is forgotten in 10 years time.
If Obama had some experience in public education, he might have been able to discern that some grant proposals just wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Obama never even attended any publicly funded schools in the US, let alone taught in them. I see Obama’s failure in the Annenberg Challenge in his not being able to separate the wheat from the chaff, to let himself be flim-flammed by the Ed School true believers, to discern which grants would work and which would not. That does not speak well for his negotiating with Putin or Ahmadinejad.
Even if one had someone experienced in education been in charge, it would still be possible to waste $100 million ( whatever) in grant money. The nonsense level in Ed Schools is that high. However, there would have been a much better chance of getting some worthwhile results than in handing the job to a naé¯f like Obama.
It is accepted wisdom that politicians will not talk about anything potentially damaging unless they have to. They leave it alone and hope it goes away. The exception is when you are pretty sure you are going to have to answer it eventually, in which case it is better to get out in front of it. Figuring out which is which is a guessing game they hire political consultants for. But prediction is hard, especially about the future.
From what I read about Ayers, I dont think he’s the kind of guy who would just piss the money away… I think he’s a true believer in his cause and wants it to change the society. I could be wrong though.. it’s jsut my impression.
Does anyone know where the money came from originally?
Hey, Neo! This Ayers guy thing is a red herring. The thing isn’t that he did or did not try to blow up this building or that. The thing is, what the hell is this guy doing designing education programs for America’s children?
When my daughter was in middle school I encountered one example of Ayersism. She was doing a paper which contended that America was starving shildren in the third world by selling them cigarettes on credit and then taking the loan payments out of their world bank loan allotments.
I asked my daughter where she gotr her info and she said a teacher gave her a book. I demanded to see it. Yup. I went to the school, talked to the principal, and said that I would give $500 to the school if she could document one material assertion in that book, and, if not, that she should not allow it’s being given to students.
I didn’t lose a penny on that deal. But the book is probably still being used.
And this is the kind of idiot we have designing education programs for OUR CHILDREN? Are we just really stupid? Or just civilizationally suicidal?
nolanimrod
That’s exactly what I’m worried about. There are more than enough of these idiots now.. the future is scary if it grows much larger
Assuming this is actually a conversation as opposed to an echo chamber, allow me to dissent. If one looks at the tax documents of the Annenberg Challenge, it’s board was loaded with conservatives (or at least non-radicals).
Examples:
Nancy Searle (socialite/philanthropist)
Scott Smith (publisher of Chicago Tribune)
Edward Bottum (head of Chase Franklin)
John McCarter (pres of Field Museum of Chicago)
Contributors to AC include the Pritzker Family Foundation (one of the country’s wealthiest families) and Bank America Foundation.
Also, I just looked up Walter Annenberg, who started the five-year, $500 million foundation, and he looks to be pretty darn conservative. Nixon Administration conservative.
So you are describing this group as some sort of radical front organization, when its pedigree is actually extremely conservative. You can see right in their tax documents everyone they gave grants to. It’s a huge list and they seem like pretty good organizations. I didn’t see the Young Marxists for Thrash Metal and Forced Abortions on there, in any case.
Are you alleging that all of these board members are secret radicals, or only BO? It would seem that an equally valid take-away from the Annenberg kerfluffle is that BO is a secret conservative, at least based on the board.
PS: I don’t know what the above references to Juneteenth mean, but Ralph Ellison is a helluva writer and it hardly seems inappropriate to commemorate the emancipation of the slaves.
So then, have at it, peeps.
kamper: I am by no means asserting the group was loaded with radicals. I am saying the following:
(a) why doesn’t Obama mention it as his executive experience, if there’s nothing to hide?
(b) why is he trying to stifle Kurtz’s attempt to make the documents public?
(c) why not just explain how he got appointed, if it wasn’t by Ayers?
Furthermore, I’ve been on boards and committees and I’ve noticed that most of the names on the list never even attend—they are merely window-dressing. The actual work is done by a (usually small) core group that comes to all the meetings and makes all the decisions. It is quite possible that all those moderates on the board really had very little to do with its workings. Obama was the chair, however, so we can assume he was fairly heavily involved. The bottom line is, we just don’t know.
It would be good to know what really happened there. Maybe everything was on the up and up. But since Bill Ayers was heavily involved with the Chicago Annenberg group, and we do know that both his past and current educational philosophy can only be described as radical, aren’t you curious to know more?
There’s a movie coming called “Hype – The Obama Effect” by Citizens United:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZexzHjUuKk
This is an excerpt from the movie of the section that links Obama – Ayers. It describes who Ayers is.. and what his recent views are. And they are just as radical as they were when he was bombing all over the country.
Then you see Obama’s various weak attemps at pretending he barely knows the guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_lnQ2j3_tg
He’s hiding something? What is it.. why?
After spending years chairing the CAC board and spending one hundred mill unsuccessfully, Obama should at least be able to talk about where our educational systems need to go. However, all he seems to offer is more money and better teacher training. He gives no indication that he has personally come to grips with social justic education. In fact, he never seems to intellectually challenge any convertional wisdom. When confronted with errors in his thinking (the surge), he distorts his initial position.
I am beginning to think that his problem is less a lack of experience than an inability to look honestly at his eperiences and learn. He spins a web of words around hard lessons to protect his psyche.
Rose raised a great point above. I’d love to hear an interviewer ask Obama if, as President, he’d support prosecution of Ayres if new, untainted evidence of his crimes came to light (presuming that the statute of limitations didn’t preclude prosecution).
In fact, I’d spring for that interview on pay-per-view.
Alternatively, I’d love to see Obama asked if he’d pardon Ayres if he had been convicted back when. Indeed, the answer to any such question asking Obama in essence whether he’d do his duty or cleave unto his communist pal would be enlightening. He’d have to disavow comrade Ayres, or infuriate loyal Americans, and perhaps some Democrats too.
Obama does not HAVE TO explain anything. He is a master dissembler. It’s up to journalists to get the word out, and we all know the MSM ain’t gonna do that.
Ayers is a classic Gramscian, and they’re winning; the Gramscians in fact may already have won. Gringo’s post attests to that. BHO is on board.
(Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian communist party, advocated its domination of education and media to achieve the revolution, inter alia).
B.O., as a mature adult, launched his political career from Ayer’s livingroom. Ayer’s and his wife have advocated and conducted armed terrorist insurrection against American institutions and targets, as well as non-violent activity with the same intent. Ayers is and always has been an unrepentant traitor. Everything else is smoke and mirrors and lies. That’s why it matters. The judicial department needs to conduct a formal investigation and confirmation of B.O.’s birth certificate and most basic qualification to become POTUS.
When you dig into the past of Leftists and Democrats, you often find more than you bargained for.
Obama doesn’t “need” to explain the Annenberg Challenge or anything else. I mean, 95% + of the American people would have no clue what he’s talking about. That is, I mean, he doesn’t have to explain it, or anything else, as long as MSM looks the other way. And they’ll keep looking the other way as long as they can, and as long as it helps him and hurts his political opponents.
(I see now that Tom has said as much, but I already typed all of that….)
Are you alleging that all of these board members are secret radicals, or only BO?
Why don’t we let a good forensic account go over the books before we start drawing conclusions?
Besides, many people will allow a lot of leeway when to people who make the claim but it’s for the chillllllldrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnn!
This fits in nicely with his state senate office records being destroyed. I’ve known about this connection with Ayres for some time and it is good that more are asking about it, but I doubt that the McCain campaign will bring it up. I have written them asking why not; Doubt if I will ever find out.
I believe I read some quotes from something Obama wrote promoting a book Ayers wrote on his educational philosophy.
It was a book on criminal justice. See #7 http://globallabor.blogspot.com/2008/08/obama-ayers-top-ten-10-highlights-of-20.html
“In 1997 Bill Ayers published a book that criticized the treatment of juvenile defendants in the criminal justice system including the practice in some states of trying these individuals as adults. Barack Obama praised the book as a “searing and timely account” in the Chicago Tribune. “
amr: have faith in the campaign.
Kamper: One quick note re: names on boards that “sound “conservative.” (ummm, is that alphabetically or phonectically?)
Either way, inaccurate way of determining. To wit, Penny Pritsker, of the Pritsker Hyatt Hotel fortune, and who is based in Chicago (surprise!) has, from early in the Obama campaign, one of his chief fundraisers, and there were plenty of news stories announcing this.
Can’t speak for rest of ’em, but assuming from names on a list isn’t going to win any prize for intelligence!
Kamper: One quick note re: names on boards that “sound “conservative.” (ummm, is that alphabetically or phonectically?)
Either way, inaccurate way of determining. To wit, Penny Pritsker, of the Pritsker Hyatt Hotel fortune, and who is based in Chicago (surprise!) has, from early in the Obama campaign, one of his chief fundraisers, and there were plenty of news stories announcing this.
Can’t speak for rest of ’em, but assuming from names on a list isn’t going to win any prize for intelligence!
cSimon,
I never used the phrase “sound conservative” in my comment.
I do note that I used “it’s” when I should have used “its.” I regret the error.
kamper: See this for my analysis of “it’s” “its” confusion.
Neo,
You hit the nail on the head with that post.
It’s (ha!) an absurdly easy rule to remember; if you are not saying “it is” then use its, but it’s the possessive that catches me up if I’m not paying attention.
Teaching my kids to read, spell, and now to write coherent sentences I appreciate how absurd and capricious our inherited grammatical rules can be.
I greatly enjoy your blog.
Thank you for this post and the links. I have been surprised and frustrated at how lean the sources are on this subject.
How can it be that the New York Times has only mentioned “Annenberg Challenge” once in 18 months, and that just in passing?
There is something criminal in the silence of “the Fourth Estate”. Otherwise, such a sexy, tantalizing story like this would have long ago been hammered out over months, and then, like “Romney is a Mormon”, echoed in a gazillion soundbytes and “insert Background paragraph here” copy blocks.
Something is really wrong here.
I’m a little confused. Was there a NATIONAL Annenberg Challenge Foundation and a separate Chicago Annenberg Challenge Foundation, or was there only one foundation? It would be very odd indeed if the NATIONAL Annenberg Foundation allowed a 33 year old novice to take the reins of the organization and dole out the money to his Chicago cronies. On the other hand, if the Chicago Challenge Foundation was a SEPARATE from the NATIONAL Annenberg Foundation then the theory that Ayers appointed his own bumbling Elmer Fudd to guard the proverbial hen house from the Chicago Fox Machine makes a lot of sense.
Excellent post by the way and the comments have all been very insightful as well. Can anyone clear up the confusion I mentioned?
James: I think this will clear up the confusion.
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Wouldn’t Axelrod’s position in his campaign be more like secretary of state? In the end, Obama’s at the helm.
There is a very simple explanation for the presence of mainstream figures on the CAC board next to Ayers protege Obama.
The CAC was a “teacher bashing” (as one prominent teachers union activist put it) group set up to bolster Local School Councils and other organizations against the power of the Chicago Teachers Union.
The classic mistake that neo-con and the right fall into is seeing Ayers as a leftist. He is not, he is an authoritarian who came out of the New Left. The New Left had many good democratic activists in it but it also had a strong authoritarian current. They joined with the Black Panthers, for example, to fire teachers in NYC in 1968 setting off a controversial strike by mostly white teachers.
In Chicago in 1987 another strike, this time by black, hispanic and white teachers, led to the formation of an Ayers and Obama backed watchdog group called Local School Councils in 1988. Ayers got the Annenberg money to bolster the LSC’s among other project. Business groups, including one founded by Ayers father, prominent CEO Tom Ayers, supported the establishment of the LSCs.
By the mid-90s however student achievement had not improved, and the LSCs were faltering. Ayers saw the CAC money as a chance to prop them up. But the CAC board actually fought over this with Ayers and Obama on one side and mainstream board members like Arnold Weber, former President of Northwestern University, on the other. Meanwhile Ayers, Obama and Ken Rolling, the ED of the CAC (who had been at the Woods Fund where he funneled money to the LSC reform effort in the late 80s) were also up against Mayor Daley who wanted to gut the LSCs’ power and recentralize control over the schools in his hands (which he largely succeeded in doing by 2000).
Ayers’ “social justice” agenda is a recasting of his earlier neo-stalinist authoritarian world view. He still advocates violence and supports the authoritarian populist regime of Hugo Chavez.
It’s October 8 today … I applaud your insight.
Your article was the first I heard this angle. Now I’m hearing this everywhere.
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Ayers did NOT select nor appoint Obama to his position on the Annenberg Challenge Board, and that is well known. You can find this information in any number of places. Please quit cooking up crap and do some simple research.
Ayers is a red herring! After 8 years of mostly total Republican control, we teeter on the brink of a Depression-and you’re hung up on some radical from the 60’s! You need to do what Palin says and look forward, not backward! McCain associated with skniheads & Palin sleeps with a Secessionist! BIG DEAL! Oh yeah, Biden assocaites with McCain–AND LEIBERMAN!!!!!