For some time I've been working on a letter to the editor about the Ayers issue, and I was inspired by fifty7's excellent diary to finish it. I still have to work up the courage to send it to my local paper, The Indianapolis Star, and I'm posting it here as my first diary as a baby step toward that end.
This is my draft:
Forty years ago William Ayers was a leader of the extremist anti-war group the Weather Underground. The group fell apart in 1970, when three of its members blew themselves up while trying to make a bomb. Ayers has since become a Professor of Education in the University of Illinois, and an advocate of public education reform.
In 1993 Ayers co-wrote an application for funds from the Annenberg Foundation. The foundation's sole director, Walter Annenberg, awarded $49.2 million to Ayers' group. Barack Obama was one of eight people asked to be on the Board of Directors of the newly funded Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The other seven included the president of the University of Illinois, the vice president of Ameritech, and a former member of the Nixon administration. Ayers was not on the board, but attended some board meetings in an advisory capacity. The publicly available minutes show that between 1995 and 2001 Ayers had several exchanges with Obama on the merits of various applicants for CAC funds.
In 1995 Ayers and his wife hosted one of several coffee mornings organised by retiring State Senator Alice Palmer to introduce and endorse Obama as her successor. Ayers donated $200 to Obama's campaign, as did several of the CAC's board members. Other CAC board members and associates supported Republican candidates. Walter Annenberg himself supported John McCain's 2000 campaign, and since his death in 2002 his widow has maintained that support. In October of this year John McCain announced his endorsement by Mrs. Annenberg.
There are two ways to view these facts:
One possibility is that Ayers has spent the last 40 years working to redeem himself, and his association with many respected philanthropists, academics and politicians (both Democratic and Republican) is proof of that.
The other possibility is that Ayers is a sleeper terrorist who contaminates everyone he associates with. In that case, we should be concerned about Obama's CAC board membership, and we should be concerned that McCain has accepted money and support from a family that funds terrorists.
Take your pick. Which possibility makes more sense to you?