On being a trust fund terrorist
OK, so by now we’ve all heard the story, right, about Obama’s close friendship with the horrible terrorist. Which goes to show that he’s secretly a scary radical, just like the Weather Underground. And by now we’ve also heard the counter to that, right? Which is, actually, it’s not so much that Obama has some unusually close friendship with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as that they are people that everyone who’s anyone in Chicago rubs shoulders with, so that it’s nothing at all out of the ordinary for Obama to have served on a charitable board with Ayers, or for Ayers to hold a fund raiser for Obama. And, basically, the game in digging them up was, look over the Chicago political scene for whoever would look most disreputable outside Chicago, and then be shocked, shocked that a practical Chicago pol would deal with such people.
The puzzle in all this is why, with a record of setting off bombs and promoting violent revolution, Ayers and Dohrn came to be so respectable. It’s not as if they’ve expressed any profound repentance. It’s true, the bombs were set off way back in the 1960s, and were fairly ineffective bombs, but still.
Michael Kinsley answers that question. It was daddy.
When it became clear even to them that there would not be violent revolution in America, Ayers and Dohrn shrugged and rejoined society in Chicago, where he had grown up. It wasn’t difficult. While he was in hiding, his father was CEO of Commonwealth Edison, the big utility. Ayers the elder sat on every Establishment board in town–Northwestern, the Tribune Co., the Chicago Symphony. Ayers the younger and his wife were welcomed back into the fold.
This is the second insult that emerges from the story of Bill and Bernardine. They set off bombs and talked about killing their parents, and the Chicago establishment didn’t even care. The important thing is that he was Tom Ayers’ boy. In a way, the joke is on Ayers and Dohrn. For heaven’s sake, what does it take to upset these Brahmins? But in a bigger way, the joke is on the rest of us. We thought they meant what they said.
If Obama’s relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others–including Republicans and conservatives…
I guess being the son of a CEO means never having to say you’re sorry.