Whom Do You Believe?

You must be bored with my writing about politics. But I can’t help getting upset when people keep forwarding e.mails with right-wing garbage attacking Obama. Most of it is distortions, innuendoes, and outright lies.

Just this week I received another diatribe which accused Obama, among other things, of being a disciple of Bill Ayers, who as a young man was a member of the radical Weather Underground, which bombed buildings as protest against the Vietnam War.

I am plowing through “The Bridge,” David Remnick’s biography of Obama. I’m up to page 283, still not half way through.

This afternoon I read the passage on Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers. It is a long section. Here are some brief excerpts.

Republicans are still saying “Obama had a dangerously radical background, that leaders of the Weather Underground had ‘launched’ his political career. Which was ridiculous.”

Remnick quotes Rosellen Brown, a friend of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn: “Some of us draw a line between what Bill and Bernardine did when they were young and now, when they are doing unimpeachable work in the community. . . . . Hyde Park is a pretty, small, insular community, and everyone, from Studs Terkel to school teachers working on juvenile-justice issues, came to their house to meet interesting people.”

Remnick states that Ayers and Dohrn “viewed Obama as someone far more to the center than they were.” He quotes Ayers: “. . . Obama . . . struck me . . . as the smartest sort of guy. He was a moderate, middle-of-the-road Democrat. How into him was I? Not very. I liked him as a person.”

Remnick concludes, “But no matter what one thought of Ayers’s past – and Obama said that Ayers had been guilty of ‘despicable’ acts during the antiwar movement – the notion that the two men were close friends or ideological soul mates was false.”