Memo to the media -- This relationship IS a legitimate issue
Barack Obama has a past that he'd prefer be unobserved and uninvestigated, but we can't let that slide. The media doesn't want to cover it, and that includes his relationship with former unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Marc Ambinder wonders what the big to-do is about this relationship:
What "radical" ideas did Obama and Bill Ayres come up with to foist on the Chicago school system?
What specific projects -- "radical" projects -- did Obama work on with Ayres? Is there evidence that they collaborated and schemed to ... do anything "radical" together? Ever?
Is the real story here that Obama once served on the board of a liberal education charity?
Over at Just One Minute, Tom Maguire fills in some of the blanks for poor Marc
Steve Diamond, who has been advancing this story for months, has a summary here and a full paper devoted to the Ayers education agenda. From the summary:
Rather, I think there was a more pressing purpose at the heart of the award and the support it engendered among certain elite institutions and individuals in Chicago. Ironically, while Kurtz wants to tar Obama with the red paint brush of the 60s "radical" Ayers, an understanding of the real purpose of the CAC indicates a much closer political alliance between Obama and Ayers.
The grant application itself and much of what the CAC was up to emerged in the heated "Chicago School Wars" underway in that city from the late 1980s until the late 1990s. This war was for the control of Chicago's public schools.
One side in this war was controlled by Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., son of the legendary Mayor Daley.
And the other side was led by Ayers and a small group of reformers that had emerged several years earlier in 1988 during a battle to create a new power center in the Chicago schools, the so-called Local School Councils, or LSCs. The LSCs were an effort to rein in the power of unionized teachers, school principals and school administrators, in the wake of an unpopular teachers' strike in 1987.
This milieu around Ayers also included, as far back as the late 80s, Barack Obama and the Developing Communities Project (DCP) that had hired Obama as its Executive Director in 1985. The DCP was a leading participant in the campaign to establish the LSCs.
Thus, in fact, the "radical" Bill Ayers and his ally Barack Obama, a Democratic political activist and lawyer on the rise in Chicago, were engaged in an anti-union effort to influence the direction and nature of the entire Chicago public school system. It would lead them into a battle with Mayor Daley himself.
While the Chicago Annenberg Challenge did inject a level of left-wing radicalism into the school system, as Stanley Kurtz has discovered by finally gaining access to the CAC records that he had previously been forbidden to examine, it does seem that this directly led to a stand-off between them and the mayor of Chicago.
We agree with Tom Maguire with regard to the real questions about their relationship and why that can't be the focus of the questions. David Axelrod tried to spin their relationship as something other than what it appears to be. The media has dropped the ball on this aspect of Obama's past. In fact, the media has dropped the ball in vetting their favored candidate completely. Back in July Rasmussen reported that the electorate believed the press was biased in favor of Obama, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Well, at least it doesn't to us, but the Left might be surprised to discover that.
This is a legitimate issue, but it's clear that the media has no intention of investigating it. (That also goes back to that Rasmussen poll that showed 45% of those polled believed the press would purposefully cover up anything that might be deemed damaging to Obama.) The media won't touch this relationship at all, and the responsibility of investigation has fallen to the New Media. We're not surprised by that, but it does speak volumes about where the media's loyalty really lies. It's obvious they no longer care about the news. And the moral to this story is that this is definitely the year that the MSM officially died.
HT to Glenn Reynolds
Publius II
What "radical" ideas did Obama and Bill Ayres come up with to foist on the Chicago school system?
What specific projects -- "radical" projects -- did Obama work on with Ayres? Is there evidence that they collaborated and schemed to ... do anything "radical" together? Ever?
Is the real story here that Obama once served on the board of a liberal education charity?
Over at Just One Minute, Tom Maguire fills in some of the blanks for poor Marc
Steve Diamond, who has been advancing this story for months, has a summary here and a full paper devoted to the Ayers education agenda. From the summary:
Rather, I think there was a more pressing purpose at the heart of the award and the support it engendered among certain elite institutions and individuals in Chicago. Ironically, while Kurtz wants to tar Obama with the red paint brush of the 60s "radical" Ayers, an understanding of the real purpose of the CAC indicates a much closer political alliance between Obama and Ayers.
The grant application itself and much of what the CAC was up to emerged in the heated "Chicago School Wars" underway in that city from the late 1980s until the late 1990s. This war was for the control of Chicago's public schools.
One side in this war was controlled by Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., son of the legendary Mayor Daley.
And the other side was led by Ayers and a small group of reformers that had emerged several years earlier in 1988 during a battle to create a new power center in the Chicago schools, the so-called Local School Councils, or LSCs. The LSCs were an effort to rein in the power of unionized teachers, school principals and school administrators, in the wake of an unpopular teachers' strike in 1987.
This milieu around Ayers also included, as far back as the late 80s, Barack Obama and the Developing Communities Project (DCP) that had hired Obama as its Executive Director in 1985. The DCP was a leading participant in the campaign to establish the LSCs.
Thus, in fact, the "radical" Bill Ayers and his ally Barack Obama, a Democratic political activist and lawyer on the rise in Chicago, were engaged in an anti-union effort to influence the direction and nature of the entire Chicago public school system. It would lead them into a battle with Mayor Daley himself.
While the Chicago Annenberg Challenge did inject a level of left-wing radicalism into the school system, as Stanley Kurtz has discovered by finally gaining access to the CAC records that he had previously been forbidden to examine, it does seem that this directly led to a stand-off between them and the mayor of Chicago.
We agree with Tom Maguire with regard to the real questions about their relationship and why that can't be the focus of the questions. David Axelrod tried to spin their relationship as something other than what it appears to be. The media has dropped the ball on this aspect of Obama's past. In fact, the media has dropped the ball in vetting their favored candidate completely. Back in July Rasmussen reported that the electorate believed the press was biased in favor of Obama, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Well, at least it doesn't to us, but the Left might be surprised to discover that.
This is a legitimate issue, but it's clear that the media has no intention of investigating it. (That also goes back to that Rasmussen poll that showed 45% of those polled believed the press would purposefully cover up anything that might be deemed damaging to Obama.) The media won't touch this relationship at all, and the responsibility of investigation has fallen to the New Media. We're not surprised by that, but it does speak volumes about where the media's loyalty really lies. It's obvious they no longer care about the news. And the moral to this story is that this is definitely the year that the MSM officially died.
HT to Glenn Reynolds
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 8:30 AM
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