Unfortunately the Tribune’s search capacity isn’t all that great for those of us who don’t want to pay any $$ but the NYT is currently free. It can help give us some perspective as to what peole were and weren’t thinking about with the Annenberg Challenge:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6DE1539F931A15752C0A963958260&scp=1&sq=Annenberg%20Challenge&st=cse introduces it. The Challenge wasn’t Chicago only nor did Ayers originate it. It was a nationwide program to raise private grants to primarily reduce class size and targe more local involvement in school control (the grants could only go directly to school and not be used to plug any system wide deficits). (Annenberg’s fortune seems to have come from owning TV Guide)….(The announcement was made at the Clinton White HOuse but other search results seem to indicate Annenberg got a ‘Point of Light’ award from Bush I.

This 1995 article goes into some details (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6D71F39F933A05757C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2). Interesting there was at least one rightist critic who was quoted but he said nothing about a radical winning the Chicago grant. Instead his criticism was that the grant was focused on improving the worse of the worse districts while avoiding the problems of the general school system.

What’s more interesting is to search on “William Ayers” and sort the results oldest first. Ayers makes the headlines in 82 and 85 over his criminal activities. He appears in 1990 writing brief letters to the editor on educational issues and is quotes as a professor of education.

This fits perfectly with my forgetfulness thesis combined by an attempt by Ayers himself to enter the mainstream by getting himself noted but avoiding anything that would cause people to start digging into who he was. An example might be this 1990 letter to the editor on an article about drugs and despire in troubled classrooms:

One would hope for more. For example, there are inner-city schools that work. They are places where teachers act as coaches and guides, not as clerks and cops, and where children take an active part in their own learning. WILLIAM AYERS Assistant Professor of Education, The University of Illinois at Chicago

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DB103FF935A25751C1A966958260&scp=3&sq=%22William+Ayers%22&st=nyt

Note the pattern. Address a niche issue with a point that isn’t likely to raise too many objectors nor cause anyone to dig too much into your background.

What this all leads to is:

1. Not only Obama, but the left, right and center all failed to note Ayers ‘reentry’ into the mainstream (or entry given that you can argue he wasn’t in it to begin with).

2, Ayers’s mainstream-ization had nothing to do with anyone agreeing with his past actions or even having sympathy for him but everything to do with the simple fact that no one effectively knew who he was.

If Shannon would like to argue that he was well known he is free to post his evidence. It would seem he was particularly hard to know unless you made it a special project to research his life (even trusty wikipedia would have been off) or had lived through and kept track of his early life (which Obama didn’t because he was a child). Or, of course, knew him personally or his friends and they filled you in on his early life….but as it seems Ayers was making an effort to live a mainstream life when his bombing days ended so he was not one to introduce himself as “Hi, I’m Bill Ayers, the guy who blew up the monument twice and lost two friends in a failed bombing” rather “Hi, I’m Bill Ayers, Education Professor and all around do -gooder in these parts”….

Ayers was the grantee. He selected the board. The Obama campaign just lied about it to Obama’s supporters. Put down the kool aide and back away from the keyboard slowly :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Ayers&oldid=10659763

Wikipedia’s entry on Ayers circa 2005 before the Obama issue arose.

I think wikipedia is a pretty good example of a source someone would use if they heard the ‘English professor next door’ or the guy on the board of some foundation was famous. Note what such a person would have learned (or not learned):

1. Ayers as a “1960’s-era political activist”.

2. He was a Weather Underground member (note not a founder and note the organization is not identified as a terrorist group….)

3. “Ayers went underground with several comrades after their co-conspirators’ bomb accidentally exploded in 1970″ aside from failing to make it clear that Ayers had previously been involved with bombing a monument twice, the article gives the impression that Ayers could have just as easily been unaware or only marginally connected to the building of the bomb.

4. After turning themselves in, “most charges were dropped because of “extreme governmental misconduct” during the long search for the fugitives.”

Now perhaps Ayers was more on the minds of people in the Chicago intellectual scene but the fact remains it does appear he was a marginal character in Chicago life who succeeded in ‘getting back in’ the mainstream more through forgetfullness than leftist sympathy for his actions or thought. As I pointed out elsewhere, a few of his critics before the Obama issue were leftists who remember how the violence of his small group tarred the much larger movements who were non-violent.

I do but I often skip around too.

Boonton – I would not hang your hat on this assertion from campaign HQ, the records are now being looked at and not by not just Kurtz.

These assertions, I doubt, are part of any confidential records. It’s been reported elsewhere about both Mayor Daley’s support of the project as well as his later opposition to some of its proposals. That Gov Jim Edgar would introduce it, even McCain praise one of its initiatives is likewise unsurprising. If these things never happened I think it would be quite easy to find sources to refute the talking points email….(and remember the point of a talking points email is to provide a supporter with valid facts that he can use in a debate…not to make him look like a fool by giving him stuff that is easily refuted or outright false). Likewise it also fits the picture. Big program to provide funds to grant ideas for improving schools not funded from taxpayers but a large, well respected foundation? Don’t tell me that isn’t the type of thing politicians of all stripes love to flock too and ‘cut the ribbon’ on.

The question remains on the table. If ‘leftists’ are at fault for ‘allowing’ Ayers to get in on something like this then what about everyone else? Previously I’ve asked Shannon to provide any evidence that right wingers did anything to ever object to Ayers before it was discovered it could be used as a ‘gotcha’ on Obama. To date he hasn’t been able to produce anything. Granted the Chicago Tribune seems to have a pretty horrible search capacity tied to making you pay $$$ to look at results but the question is out there. Did anyone object to Ayers ever in the past? I’m not talking about mounting a campaign or dramatic fight….was there even a backroom attempt by anyone important to counter him? If not it seems odd to charge that Obama, just starting out in Chicago politics, had a duty to ‘bring him down’

“Kurtz claimed on Fox News that William Ayers recruited Obama to the Annenberg Challenge — a flat out lie. Ayers did not serve on the board of the Challenge, and he had nothing to do with Barack’s recruitment.”

Boonton – I would not hang your hat on this assertion from campaign HQ, the records are now being looked at and not by not just Kurtz. Ayers wrote the original grant that Annenberg funded and while he did not “sit on the board” he helped select those who did, being one of the grantees. Here’s a document letter from the original proposal:

http://globallabor.info/Annenberg%20Documents/CAC%20Grant%20Proposal%201994.pdf

Shannon: SDB was right, but I liked your response.

Her Thesis: Ayers was a terrorist and was accepted by the mainstream because leftists like both Ayers’s actions and philosophy. Even though Ayers was firmly established in Chicago by time Obama came on the scene in the early 90’s, he should have known about his past and made a point of staying as far away from him as possible.

My Thesis: Ayers entered the mainstream in a low key way by taking advantage of the fact that people have essentially forgot the 60’s. The generic label of ‘former 60’s radical’ or ‘activist’ allowed him to lump himself in with a host of other people who never advocated, performed or supported violence in the late 60’s and 70’s.

This from the Obama campaign’s ‘talking points’ on Ayers:

Last night on Fox News, Kurtz tried to radicalize an education reform program in Chicago called the Annenberg Challenge. The Challenge was funded by Republican Walter Annenberg, introduced by Mayor Daley and Republican Governor Jim Edgar, and one of its initiatives was even praised by John McCain.

Kurtz claimed on Fox News that William Ayers recruited Obama to the Annenberg Challenge — a flat out lie. Ayers did not serve on the board of the Challenge, and he had nothing to do with Barack’s recruitment.

Assuming the above is true, what does it say about which thesis is correct? If Ayers was known by all as the 60’s terrorist, then how could not only mainstream characters support the Annenberg call but also Republicans? If Ayers wasn’t so known (meaning the information was there but no one cared), why was Obama’s responsibility here higher than simply doing his best on the Annenberg project to support worthy grant requests?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-obama-wgn,0,3744149.story

Oh well….