Somebody Set Ayers Up the Bomb

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

“‘I don’t regret setting bombs,’ Bill Ayers said. ‘I feel we didn’t do enough:'”

”Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,” he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ”Even though I didn’t actually bomb the Pentagon — we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.” He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.

— “No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen,” the New York Times, September 11th, 2001.

Speaking from the well-heeled confines of the University of Chicago’s International House on Wednesday, Bill Ayers said he was “amazed” to see himself on TV “cast as some kind of public enemy” with close ties to Barack Obama during one of the 2008 election’s biggest controversies.

At the event meant to promote his new book Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, Ayers slammed the “opportunistic media” and the “eager campaign staffs of the right, the middle, and even the moderate left” for resurrecting the Weather Underground, a radical far-left group Ayers co-founded which bombed government property and banks throughout the 1970s.

“Bernadine and I had hosted the initial fundraiser for Obama and uncharacteristically donated a little money to his campaign,” said Ayers, reading an excerpt. “We lived a few blocks apart and sat on a couple nonprofit boards together. So what? Who could have predicted it would blow up like this?”

— “Bill Ayers: Didn’t think Obama connection ‘would blow up like this,’” the College Fix, today.

Weatherman hagiographer Robert Redford could not be reached for comment, but John Nolte of Big Journalism could, after Ayers was invited to appear on NBC today:

Monday, after MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” spent about two hours blasting the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Ted Cruz as bubbled, dangerous, and stupid — in other words, a typical Monday on “Morning Joe” — the show hosted Bill Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist. To no one’s surprise, hosts Mika Brzezinski and Time’s Mark Halperin treated the co-founder of the Weather Underground and friend of Barack Obama with extraordinary deference as he hawked a new book.

Pat Dollard is succinct: “After Accusing Tea Party Of Terrorist Bombing, MSNBC Invites Bill Ayers On To Plug His Book.” Or as Iowahawk tweets:

Bill Ayers is only an actual bomb-throwing radical. The GOP is worse, because they’re metaphorical. #howtothinklikealefty

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 14, 2013

NBC has so many metaphorical bombs of their own these days, they don’t mind tossing a few at the GOP’s direction as well.

Update: Great catch by Ron Radosh in his PJM column, who watched Ayers on MSNBC so that the rest of us didn’t have to:

Joe Scarborough, on set for all the other segments, mysteriously disappeared after the break. Ayers was left to be questioned by the non-threatening (not to say Scarborough would have been hostile to Ayers, but as a self-described conservative, he would by nature have offended Ayers’ sensibilities) Mika Brzezinski, and journalist Mark Halperin.

“The only thing left is for MSNBC to offer Ayers his own program. Don’t think that is impossibility. And once again, why did you leave the set, Joe? Were you told to disappear, or was it a private statement of your disapproval of Ayers appearing on the program that bares your name? Your viewers are owed an explanation,” Ron adds.

Read the whole thing.™

More: Tim Graham of Newsbusters adds, “MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski has applauded calling Newt Gingrich a “political pyromaniac,” and suggested Sarah Palin was to blame for the Gabby Giffords shooting. So it was a bit shocking to see her fawning over Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers on Monday morning.”

Lenny and Felicia would entirely approve of her polite bourgeois-bohemian good manners when a radical chic guest stops by to chat.