Ayers: Republicans 'Demonized' Me in 'Dishonest Narrative'

[sabra]

Source: NBC-CHICAGO

He found himself in an unwelcomed position during the presidential campaign, as Bill Ayers' radical past and his relationship with then-candidate Barrack Obama became a target for Obama opponents.

On Friday, Chicagoan Bill Ayers spoke publically in an exclusive interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

He said the GOP attack on him was a "profoundly dishonest narrative ... to demonize me."

Described by ABC's Chis Cuomo as "a son of privilege," Ayers became involved in the radical Weather Underground, an anti-war group, in the 60s and participated in what Obama called "dispicable acts," leading to the deaths of three members of the group.

In Friday's interview, Ayers confirmed that he knew Obama.

"I knew Barack Obama, absolutley. And I knew him as well as probably thousands of other Chicagoans," he told Cuomo. "And like millions and millions of other people worldwide, I wish I knew him better."

Read more: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Ayers-on-GMA-Repub...

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Winterblues]

2. What utter BS

Sounds to me like you know zero about what you are saying...

[Binka]

48. "The old leftist trick" Kinda reeks of TROLL.

What a fucking idiot, fool, asscarrot, this poster is. Expect a pizza soon. He/she has obviously been here before and just doesn't fucking get it. More pizza please mods.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

3. Oh, you think you have it all figured out do you?

What generation you belong to?

Not too cool to generalize and stereotype ...

[smiley]

4. wow

you sound like you just read one of Sarah Palin's spoon fed GOP speeches.

[Tempest]

5. Spoken like someone who obviously wasn't around during the 60s

Nice diatribe, but not accurate in the least.

[EFerrari]

6. Amy Goodman did a very good interview with them today.

You might find it informative.

[RebelOne]

7. Hmmm...notice the post count?

[TankLV]

8. You don't know what the HELL you're spewing. Go back and LEARN before you open your pie hole

and spew ignorance for all to see.

The only deluded hypicrits from the 60's are the so-called "ray-gun" democrats who are a TRAITOR to that NOBLE cause of PEACE.

Ayers was among a group of NOBLE people who tried to change society FOR THE BETTER from the war mongering assholes who were and are now again in power - those who killed HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of INNOCENT victums THE WORLD OVER.

Go back to freak repuke, asswipe!

[qwlauren35]

40. Can't quite agree with you.

I don't think Ayers was trying to change the world. That's being proactive... and positive. I think Ayers was being very REACTIVE, and using very violent means of drawing attention to what he considered injustices.

I have mixed feelings about how his life has changed, i.e. he now has a "secure place in the world". He's not alone. There are Black Panthers who are also living rather mundane lives. However, we can't see inside of their souls. We may think about what we saw them do, but many of us have no idea what it's like to be hunted down like rabid dogs, and have your friends killed for what you consider a noble cause. Now, my recollection is that the 3 Weathermen who died killed themselves in a freak accident while trying to make a highly destructive bomb. Rather karmic.

But for me, the bottom line is that destroying government property isn't the best way to call attention to an issue. I wouldn't call it "terrorism", because I don't think their aim was to "terrify". But political activist isn't quite strong enough. I guess I'll stick with violent protesters. I guess it's the difference between bombing an empty abortion clinic... and killing a doctor who performs abortions. The former is a violent protester... the latter is a terrorist.

[Upfront]

9. Enjoy your short stay

So long rethug!

[nini]

11. LOL

you have so much to learn it's not even funny.

[cliffordu]

15. El Estupido GRANDE!!!!

[pattmarty]

17. AND, who the fuck are you to judge, motherfucker??????

If you're gonna bitch, post your fucking bonafides ass-hole.

[Binka]

50. He Has NO Bonafides He Has Childish Bullshit To SPEW

That post is just another paltry Rush filled diatribe on DU. This jerk is probably all of 22 and definitely full of SHIT.

[Overseas]

18. Only major Republican donors the Annenberg Family support Ayers.

I hope you have written to all the Republican candidates who have accepted donations from the Annenberg family and told them to return all those hundreds of thousands they've received.

[livetohike]

19. 55,000 American men and women died in Viet Nam and you did

what to try and stop it? Assuming you were alive then and not just spewing ignorance.

Young men of my generation were hauled off to war against their will (the draft). Ever hear of it?

[robertpaulsen]

21. "the old leftist trick". Uh yeah, thanks for your concerns about leftists on a Democratic website.

[devilgrrl]

24. What a stupid post

[mitchum]

25. Yes, but that also has a lot to do with the privileged class from which...

so many of the 60s anti-war activists came from.
Unlike the civil rights movement, the anti-war was really not much of a working class movement. And that's an ugly little truth that many of the sentimentalists try so hard to ignore.

[RobinA]

28. Who Ever Said

it was a working class movement? For that matter, a large part of the civil rights movement wasn't working class either.

[mitchum]

30. The majority of the civil rights movement was indeed working class...

or would you prefer to believe that all of those African Americans at the time were merely taking a semester or two off from Columbia or Hofstra?

[Judi Lynn]

29. Why not share a resource you have consulted to help bring you to this exalted point of view?

You'd be doing DU'ers a favor, by enhancing our education on the subject. Don't let us wallow in ignorance, those of us who were there at the time.

[mitchum]

32. Judi Lynn, if you wwere there (and I do believe you were)...

you are well aware that many of,and particularly the...ahem...leaders of the anti-war movement were indeed from the privileged class.
And many were just engaging in "the church of what's happening now" and later decided to revert to form and pursue more self interest and could console themselves with "Hey, I spent my time in the trenches!"
Of course, that wasn't the case for many in the anti-war movement, but you, just as well as I, can google the bios of many of those leaders.
Hell, many in the Movement long suspected that Ayers and Dohrn were agent provocateurs.

[Ozma]

31. None of my friends were from the "privileged class", unless some being white

is what you mean. Most of us went to state colleges and universities because that's all we could afford, most of us ate peanut butter sandwiches to save money. Some of us worked while we went to school, and worried about being drafted if we didn't keep our grades up. Some of my friends couldn't let themselves get drafted, and left for Canada, where they were not "privileged" but welcomed as long as they made themselves worthy of staying by working. Plenty of my buddies got drafted, too, and they were all skin colors.

[POAS]

55. Wasting your breath!

I was there also and I knew guys that really were from privilege who chose to go over, saw the war first hand and then came back and joined the fight here.

Maybe he refers to the likes of Mary Ann Vecchio the 14 year old runaway made famous in the photo of her crying over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

Maybe he means Allison Krause killed that same day.

Maybe he thinks James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and the 12 injured students at Jackson State were all privileged also.

It is sad to be so cocksure, but then the young usually are!

[jpak]

26. McCain/Palin lost- old leftist trick

[Binka]

51. Good God Damn DUzy!

Pithy baby! Perfect

[LynnTheDem]

37. What total fucking bullshit.

Enjoy your stay.

[Arkana]

42. Free Republic's thataway.

Go spew your tripe somewhere else.

[pilar007]

47. What Are You Talking About???

[cobalt1999]

10. How exactly was he "demonized" & they were being "dishonest"

He set off BOMBS! Bombs at police stations, courthouses, universities, government buildings.

WTF? How much dishonest is required to demonize such actions?

I agree with Obama, despicable.

[nini]

12. He is referring to what he is NOW

of course what he did is despicable. What he is doing now is not.

Some people actually turn their lives around.

[Tempest]

16. Apparently Republicans also thought he turned his life around

Many prominent Republicans have financially supported his work.

[LynnTheDem]

38. Such as RONALD REAGAN's lifelong close personal friend. I wonder, would republics be

screeching about RONALD REAGAN being a "terrorist pal" were he still alive???

After all, not only did he pal around with the man who HIRED and FUNDED Bill Ayers, he gave that man the PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM.

[Tempest]

13. He was talking about the intention of the GOP ads

The ads were not meant to highlight his activities as much as tie Obama to his activities.

In that way they wrere dishonest.

[robbibaba]

14. No doubt, but...

You have to look at what We were doing back then, to the Vietnamese. I'm not defending Ayer's bomb tactics at all, but a lot of us younger folks don't get it. Our government was committing atrocities and we were watching it all on the TV news every night. For people who took their citizenship seriously, for those who had been successfully indoctrinated to think that the USA was special, the best country the world had ever know, the discovery that the government was so criminal must have been intolerable. It must have seen that the government had been hijacked by criminals. And it certainly wasn't responding to peaceful protests.
I'm a bit younger and take it for granted that the government is run by crooks. And is always up to no good. And that I'm more or less powerless to change that. Ayers probably didn't grow up with this soothing cynicism.
Rent the dvd Hearts and Minds for a crash course in US/Vietnamese relations in that era.

[PassingFair]

23. They didn't make THAT mistake again....

we saw precious little footage of our
take-over and occupation of Iraq...

[Overseas]

20. Republican donors the Annenberg Family thought Ayers had served his time

and paid his debt to society for his associations and they were willing to fund his projects.

And I never heard any Republicans call upon their fellow party members to return all the campaign contributions from the Annenberg family. That is totally dishonest in my book.

[JuniperLea]

41. I don't get why this point wasn't brought up!

I think I heard it once, and I think it was from Bill Moyers... but it seems to have been ignored by everyone else!

I think it would have put the smackdown on the whole stupid thing. Ronald Reagan was in bed deep with the Annenberg family!

Ayers did well this morning I thought. Funny thing is, my b/f and I netflix'd the documentary on The Weather Underground... it went on our list before this whole thing got pumped up. It's worthwhile getting the facts from the mouths of those involved.

[Overseas]

58. If we had a really free press, it would have been.

With interviews of the Annenbergs and more.

But we only have 5 giant media companies now and they are in conservative hands.

http://www.corporations.org/media /

[superduperfarleft]

36. Really, BOMBS????!!!!

Not just regular bombs but ALL-CAPS BOMBS!!!!

Maybe if the war was "brought home" more often Americans wouldn't be able to wallow in the privilege of their own ignorance as to the horrors that are being done in their name on a daily basis. But I guess blowing up a building is worse than all the third-world yellow people that were being massacred by our brave soldiers.

I 100% admire Ayers in what he did and don't blame him the least for not being sorry.

[Ian David]

22. If he was good enough for Ronald Reagan's Ambassador Annenberg to appoint him to The Board...

... who are the Repukes to question him?

[LynnTheDem]

39. BINGO...but when did you last hear the MSM mention that little part???

Or the FACT that Ron Reagan awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his close friend who FUNDED and HIRED Bill Ayers.

Nope, ya don't hear the MSM mention that tidbit.

[percussivemadness]

27. whilst I love the music of the 60`s, especially the 67-69 period, I have to say

that the so called "counter-culture" movement was merely rebelling into conformity. It is typical of your generation to attack anyone who dares criticize your "movement", but in all honesty, whilst I have no doubt a percentage believed in what they were protesting against, it was not the "glorious social movement" that we are spoon fed today.

[Ozma]

34. I guess you had to be there, and you weren't!

[DBoon]

35. You do not face a military draft

you are in a very privileged position to be criticizing those who did

[mitchum]

43. And one of the many tragedies was that sympathetic professors...

inflated the grades of students in order to keep them out of the draft. And, of course, many of those coddled students went on to graduate school. There is a reason that most of the baby boom/Vietnam era professors who I later encountered were...less than scholarly- "Keats is hard...let's bring movies and comic books into the canon"

There...I have thrown even more gasoline onto this fire, but it is the goddamn truth.

[POAS]

45. Be careful what you label as truth

your entitled to your own opinion, not your own truth.

[mitchum]

46. No, truth can be derived from empirical evidence

it may conflict with someone else's delusions or justifications, but that does not mean it is not the truth.

[POAS]

49. As I said, your entitled to your opinion

and that is what you are stating, your opinion.

Your evidence seems much more subjective than empirical but then you may be too close to be objective.

Dare I even mention your sweeping generalizations? No, I guess I don't really need to point out the obvious!

[mitchum]

52. Dare I even mention your misspelling?

No, I guess I don't really need to point out the obvious!
Or is that just my opinion?
Sophistry is fun!

Methinks I touched a nerve with my original assertion.
Eh?

[POAS]

54. You can, sure go ahead

an elitist thing to do, but you already knew that!

End of a very poor conversation! Wish you had done better but your still young, you will learn!

Now off to ignore with you!

[mitchum]

44. How dare you challenge self-righteous nostalgia?

I agree with you; for many it really was just singing in the amen choir at the church of what's happening now.

They have already spent enough time navel-gazing; there is no need for me to peer at their wrinkled and paunchy wonderfulness.

[Binka]

53. YOU are full of crap

And I have nothing else to say to you. Plonk.

[POAS]

56. Thanks I almost forgot

to add that moran to my ignore list.

Might have missed him in the melee if not for your succinct post!

[DU GrovelBot]

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[question everything]

57. Dedicating his book to Sirhan Sirhan?

I watched the interview and was taken aback by that fact. At least now he admits that he should not have, sort of.