Ok. I got rid of the American Muslim post. He’s made his point and seems to simply copy and paste the same one into each thread. So that qualifies as spam. Those who want to know his message can refer to one of many nearly identical postings in previous threads, and I’m including his latest FYI below:
Do you people really believe that your hatred, racism, and Islamophobia can prevail in this struggle?
The entire world demands that Barack Hussein Obama be the next President of the United States. You must cease your opposition to his triumph or suffer the consequences of your actions.
Time grows very short for the unbelievers. Embrace Islam now and live in peace in submission to the will of Almighty Allah (swt).
Your grandchildren will be Muslim.
Allahu akbar!
But to return to Ayers, the real import of the NYT’s article is that the gatekeepers have ruled the issue admissible. One of the most powerful prerogatives of the old media was the ability to rule something in or out of bounds. This power largely depends on making an intimidating assertion to authority on no particular basis. One wonderful example is Ward Churchill’s assertion that anything which impugns his dignity is protected by the 9th Amendment which overrules the First Amendment. Until recently, many media outlets have simply dismissed Ayers as “irrelevant”. Structurally that argument rests upon an assertion. One of the nice things about Ward Churchill, like ‘American Muslim’ is that they are schooled enough in the customs of political correctness to make an argument, but not good enough to make it convincingly, thereby making their arguments a good teaching tool.
Again we can use Ward Churchill as a teaching tool to illustrate what the gatekeepers do when they declare Ayers ‘irrelevant’. Here is Ward Churchill dodging the question of his American Indian-ness, claiming it is “irrelevant”. Later, he says that his basis is self-identification, a fancy way of saying he is an American Indian because he says he is. For a while now, some media outlets have asserted Ayers is irrelevant because they say it is. What’s interesting about the NYT piece is that the subject is on the table. So let’s talk about it.
