The Real Issue Surrounding the Daily Caller Dinner with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn: Your Tax Dollars Helped the Illinois Council on the Humanities Sponsor It!
The real issue surrounding the recent Sunday event in Chicago, in which former Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn hosted a dinner for Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson, Caller editor Jamie Weinstein, media mogul Andrew Breitbart, Weekly Standard writer Matt Labash, and a Caller reader, is the legitimization of Ayers and Dohrn. That was not the fault of those who attended the dinner, but of the Illinois Humanities Council, the state’s facilitator and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which is subsidized by your taxpayer dollars.
The reason that Carlson and company were attending the dinner is because they won it at an auction held by the Council. Carlson cast the highest winning bid, which was $2,500. One might wonder why the Council would even think of auctioning off a dinner with two unrepentant advocates of “armed struggle,” who are dedicated in principle to the creation of a revolutionary communist future for the United States. A quick run through the Council’s search engine provides the answer: Bill Ayers in particular is a regular participant in the Council’s programs!
Moreover, they describe Ayers in the following words:
Bill Ayers is a school reform activist and Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is founder of the Center for Youth and Society and founder and co-director of the Small Schools Workshop. He has written extensively about social justice, democracy, and education. His book, Fugitive Days, is a memoir that chronicles the anti-war movement of the 60s.
Notice what is missing. The most prominent omission is that for which Ayers is most well known: as a founder and leader of the revolutionary terrorist group active in the 1960s and 70s, the so-called Weather Underground Organization, originally known as The Weathermen, but which had a name change after its revolutionary women — including Dohrn — criticized the leadership for its “sexism.”
Instead of letting Council readers know what the members believed, they simply praise Ayers for his concern for “social justice, democracy and education.” And anyone who has actually read Ayers’ memoir knows that it is hardly a chronicle of the anti-war movement.
Rather, as I pointed out in the review I wrote of Fugitive Days, he wants to “puke” when he hears anyone say that America is a “fair and decent place.” As I pointed out,
Ayers still looks back with fondness on the violence of what was called in those days the “New Left.” Indeed, in Fugitive Days, he attempts to bring his readers to share his reasoning. He and his comrades were moved, he insists, by the most decent of motives to undertake, not terrorism, but a restrained and purposeful form of “resistance.” Terrorists seek to harm average people—men, women, and children—without regard to the target. For the Weather Underground, “the symbolic nature of the target” was paramount. They were only trying to prove “that a homegrown guerrilla movement was afoot in America,” and thus they bombed police stations, statues to those they considered oppressors, ROTC buildings, draft offices, and corporate headquarters.
What an advocate of social justice, indeed. On the day their group bombed the Pentagon, Ayers writes that “everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon.The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.” And he describes his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, as “admonishing her troops to violence wearing a ‘short skirt and high stylish black boots….Her blazing eyes….allied with her elegance,…a stunning and seductive symbol of the Revolutionary Woman.’”
It is probably worth also noting that Ayers is a long-time mentor of B.H.Obama, gave him his only administrative job with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (a program to promote socialism in elementary schools) and is widely credited with hosting the early organizational meetings for Obaama’s election campaign and, and is, in all likelihood, a ghost czar of Education in the Cabinet. The son of an immensely wealthy family , he gave up armed revolution, not because of principle, but because it became obvious that he would probably either be killed or wind up with a life in prison. So he decided to concentrate on the Marxist indoctrination of children, got a professorship at the University of Illinois thjrough inside connections and is internationally recognized as the leading authority on radical Socialist education. In that role, he has become an instructor and leading fan of Hugo Chavez.
Sounds to me like a smart move on the part of the Daily Caller to make their bid at a figure a lot lower than Ayers’ usual fee. You and Roger should have out-bid them and given us the inside tuff.
With “connections” like Ayers & Dohrn, if Obama weren’t president, he couldn’t pass a security check to take a tour of the White House…just saying.
the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (a program to promote socialism in elementary schools)
Walter Annenberg left a lot of money to improve education in schools, not to promote socialism. Ayers and Obama successfully hijacked the mission to use $160,000,000 obtained through the Foundation to fund radical activists INSTEAD of education. The Annenberg Foundation, and an independent outside group, both determined by their followup studies that education in Chicago wasn’t improved a bit by the hijacking.
Ayers and his ugly wife have always be been stooges for the CIA/KGB?MI5/Mosadd – or who ever is the top bidder for their services.
Even folks on “Left” know is and his ugly wife are not to be trusted, and he is not ‘just some guy from the neighborhood’ as Obama called him….’
No far from it!
I saw Bill Ayers speak at a sparsely attended college event.
None of the kids really knew who he was, they were being bribed with extra credit.
Poor Ayers had a bald head, a droopy earring and bright yellow teeth.
He is a meaningless relic, I almost felt sorry for him.
And soon…. when his usefulness is over, he just be another drunk bragging in some dingy bar how ‘cool’, he was back in the day.
I heard Andrew Breitbart’s interview about their dinner. He said they went w/out a game plan. It probably wouldn’t have helped anyway but, it does seem like they did it as a lark. In that case, they were just contributing to an unworthy cause.
I often wonder what is the bigger tragedy – a public that could be duped into voting for Obama or the media that facilitated it.
In my opinion the media facilitation of this poseur. Without the complicity of the media and the overall cover-up of Obama’s past and the general elevation of his status as compared with the facts at stake presented to the American people I seriously doubt that this poseur would have been elected to leader of the free world. Had the media done their job….as in “the truth will eventually emerge” the American people would not be in this trick bag of duplicity and outright lies. Long Live the King (referring to Elvis of course).
I agree the interview was sad. breitbart seemed to like being in the company of evil. ….those two Ayers and his wife are evil.
The only thing I can hope is that Ayers and Dohrn saw the faces, for more than ten seconds, of real Americans who loathed every pore of their beings. I hope they saw that Breitbart and Carlson do not fear them.
They are predatory monsters and terrorists, and must be handled like the psychopaths they are.
The counter-culture is thoroughly institutionalized, and has taken over the command posts of culture. We no longer even have a language that describes reality, so effective were the terrorist fringes of the New Left. I try to write about it all over my website, but try this one: http://clarespark.com/2012/01/12/the-counter-culture-vs-the-establishment/. Or try this one that contains the NEH mission statement: http://clarespark.com/2009/09/26/nea-neh-and-cultural-freedom-not/.
Ron Radosh’s article could not be more timely. This week’s episode of “Glee” rehabilitated the most ferocious of cultural nationalists, this time with the help of pop star Ricky Martin, a collaborator in the politics of La Raza. I wrote a very short piece here: http://yankeedoodlesoc.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/glee-goes-la-raza/. I am very disturbed that no one has yelled and hollered about it, but perhaps this week is just too heavy with outrages for commentators to notice a television show geared to high school and elementary school kids.
:…racism, slavery and white oppression was the heart of the American character.” Isn’t that racist?
Let’s be honest, we’re not talking about very bright people here and there is no cure for stupidity. Asking these people “why” is like asking your babysitter why the 18th century Deccani Nizam allowed the Hinduization of Muslim festivals in Hyderabad.
Dohrn and Ayers are simply the opposite numbers of the white-lightning’s-still-the-biggest-thrill-of-all crowd, cozening the addiction of alcohol without understanding the far less serious use of marijuana. I laughed at those morons and I laugh at the “Doublethink Duo.”
In listening to the stupid buzzwords they parrot, Dohrn and Ayers show themselves to be every as much the conformist red necks incapable of thinking outside the box as they purport to hate; the main difference between them and a message machine has to do the inner works.
Dohrn and Ayers are famous morons and that is the long and the short of it. The only people dumber are those that employ and listen to them. Their intellectual equals are men like that other great American moron, Ward Churchill. Churchill didn’t have the great good fortune to move in the same circles as Laurel and Hardy 2.0 and so was marginalized into whatever stupid lecture swamp he’s currently struggling around in.
For my part, let me echo the Left’s wish for a temporary suspension of the power of Congress and the SCOTUS, giving the President king-like powers to cut through Gordian Knots with me the Prez. Dorhn and Ayers and Churchill and many others would be summarily transferred to the mythical ship of the man without a country with a pair of binoculars for company.
It’s true America needs a house cleaning and a revolution but for me that revolution would entail doing away with the Democratic Party, political correctness and the incredibly vulgar aroma of the intellectual space they and the Rainbow Coalition share with all hate groups but without being the least bit aware of it.
If you want a pitch-perfect example of not being able to see the forest because of the trees, I give you the NAACP’s race-based Image Awards, the same organization that calls Hollywood and graduation cards that say “black hole” racist. This is the Left, this is Dohrn and Ayers, this is Churchill, this is Melissa Harris-Perry at MSNBC and they are utterly stupid people.
Ron, it shows how the small c communists hide. What they hide behind.
How they fudge the truth. How it is a subterfuge and how they present their “face” to the unwitting public.
You should have been there, I agree.
I like the Daily Caller guys and Breitbart. This is not a slam on them.
But virtually nobody has the capacity to retrieve facts, figures, people, dates, incidents, …and the attempted camouflage of them in this arena than Ron Radosh. As long as this “auction” for a dinner with two despicable cretins was going to take place anyway, and as long as you were willing to waste a night of your well-lived life to sacrifice it to the exposing of the veil of humanity they hide behind, in their cesspool existence…you should have been chosen to go.
It was sad that you were not. I think it was a mistake. Maybe they will hold another auction and someone could bid on their souls. Neither has been used in this lifetime.
P.S. I think you meant Richie Daley, not Bill in one of your early paragraphs.
– shirt? The guy really is lodged in the past.
I read a review of that dinner at Daily Caller.
I thought of the questions I would ask Billy and Bernardine, had I been present at that wealthy penthouse guy’s gourmet extravaganza…
Do you still believe the end justifies the means and is it still you (as a self-anointed superior being) who gets to decide what the end should be ?
How do you justify your current bourgeois lifestyle, with all the self-righteous bashing you did of the middle class during the 60′s & 70′s ?
Wasn’t it a little hypocritical when you called the cops to get the Fox news reporter off your lawn ?
Does Bernardine still think the Manson slaughters were cool ?
Why did you tell all the people at the dinner that the idiotic and stupid stuff you did and said 40-50 years ago is irrelevant ?
Are you till coping with the “daddy issues”, Bill? Still an unrepentant jerk?
Chris Kennedy, a son of Robert Kennedy, is one of the trustees of University of Illinois at Chicago, where Bill Ayers was a professor of education. When the issue of Ayers’ retiring as a professor emeritus, Kennedy objected because Ayers had dedicated a book to Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of his father Robert. The Board of Trustees agreed, so that Ayers was denied the title of “professor emeritus.” How he received the title of “Distinguished Professor” I do not know.
A “Distinguished Professor” is a faculty position that provides a substantially higher salary and research benefits than the typical professor. These positions are usually funded by a benefactor and very specific in nature. Ayers received a chair position based on his education research which is focused on social justice.
I think this was just a dry run Ron Radosh.
Next auction could coax a much better story. I say Pat Dollard wins and takes the quaint Revolutionary Boomers off to an Irish pub on the Northside – along with a couple of grown adult children of victims of the sexist Weathermen – and we find out – once the doors are locked;
1) Who really wrote DREAMS FROM MY FATHER – and its team of editors
2) Obama’s actual SAT scores – and his transcripts from Occidental thru Harvard
3) The mortgage ‘arrangement’ for his Hyde Park residence written on a series of Morton Steakhouse napkins with a certain broker now in prison
4) The complete log on White House visits – as well as O-Man pilgrimages back to their living room – either by proxie or in person since taking office
5) A complete chronology on Obama’s political tutelage once he settled in chicago – you know – the one never vetted since ’92?
All before Pat is done with his second pitcher of Budweiser. Or Bernie or Bill finish their Caeser Salad.
Certianly a far more instructive interview than the show put on for Indian Tv.
these people have deep psychological issues- they are permanent malcontents with a middle class upbringing (probably some mommydaddy things going on as well)
they become obsessed with power and, at the same time, become conflicted as they become the very ones they railed against in the first place; i’m also certain they were horrible dodge ball players and any acquaintances from their childhood years would probably say they were a$$hole$ back then as well
More likely they were the kinds of kids that when they came up to row to go to the pencil sharpner, you stuck you foot out and tripped them just because you could. ‘Course, some of them are young enough that the communist-trained teachers had put all the desks in circles just to keep people from tripping the future Democrats.
“As for what happened at the dinner, it is clear that Tucker Carlson did not get his money’s worth. He had intended to have a discussion on what the relationship was between Barack Obama and Ayers and Dohrn when Obama lived in Hyde Park.”
Really? What a surprise! The right has been beating this dead horse since ’08. But who can blame Carlson, Radosh, et al, for trying to toss some mud at Obama, hoping it will distract the public from the hard truths the GOP candidates are tossing at each other.
Obama’s already plenty deep in Chicago style mud.
His original “fixer” Tony Rezko finally got sentenced. His other fixer, campaign manager David Axelrod, is a vulgar creature who will say anything.
His chief worshiper and faithful sycophant Valerie Jarrett has her own Chicago story of corruption in housing in that city.
Rahm had to go back home and run for mayor ! (that’s the best the city could do ?) That little twit constantly locked horns with Valerie.
Even Mayor Daley’s kid finally had enough.
Chicagoans one and all, just like little Billy Ayers
Valerie Jarrett is a slumlord who bilked the U.S. government of hundreds of millions in “housing subsidies” to fix up the slums she owned. She pocketed the money and left the tenants with toilets that still back up and other niceties like that. 0bama made it happen for her as Illinois state senator.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/
Thanks. Long article.
So far, I’ve gotten the impression that Senator Obama’s approach to public housing in Chicago parallels Solyndra and other “green energy” boondoggles during his administration.
“Throw money at it and walk away. Dissemble and detach or blame someone else (maybe “Bush” can be worked in here) when it goes belly up.”
Valerie Jarrett is more than just a “slumlord.” She’s an ultra-high-end real estate developer too.
Jarrett just so happens to be developing the most coveted parcel of land in Downtown Chicago — Wolf Point, which is a mere few doors down from Donald Trump’s sparkling new Trump Tower (more here) — as part of a joint venture with the Kennedy family of Massachusetts (it’s a little-known fact that the Kennedys are big, albeit behind the scenes political players in Chicago).
The Kennedy/Jarrett Wolf Point development stalled when the real estate market went south in ’07, but it was recently announced that the project is back on.
What a squandrance of perfectly good dollars!
All that money would have been better spent on copies of Cashill’s “Deconstructing Obama” or Larry Sinclair’s compelling book.
Ron,ever hear of serendipity? No, Tucker Carlson did not get to talk about what he wanted to know so his question was not answered but he got a slew of questions that may be far more valuable.
Lets start with the NEH and find our why, as a taxpayer, I should be funding such an organization.
We now have something concrete to to work with and,as in all science, we must first have the question.
If Bil Ayers is confident in the validity of what he believes why does he shield it?
If Bil Ayers is confident in the validity of what he believes why does he shield it?
Because it’s always been the phony shtick of a spoiled brat rich kid who craved attention…?
The same psychological make-up of self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” in general.
But Billy was a coward, like others of his ilk. He sent his minions to do the deed, the bombings etc. while he stayed safely behind the scenes.
After skipping out of the legal consequences on a technicality, he bragged that he was “guilty as sin and free as a bird.”
One thing you cannot accuse Ayers of is “shielding” his commitment to Comunism. He flaunt it. His website shows the Red Star rising over the arc of the globe. He openly admits to having got away with murder and being free to preach his cause: “Is this a great country or not!” He is surely still one of Obama’s closest friends and advisors – they have just told him to keep a low profile, which he finds hard to do.
that money should go to the victims/victim’s families of the criminal activities of the sundry marxist terrorists like the weather underground and the black panthers. the injustice- besides that many never paid the appropriate price for their murder mongering (being given instead a pass and fulsome praise for their revolutionary criminality. and the ones who were banged up are now sad little harmless misunderstood kittens who deserve to be released and forgiven for murdering human beings.)- of this is we all know who these two trolls are but how many can name anyone who died in the name of their demented ideologies?
stop paying attention to them-that’s all they ever wanted anyway. revolutionary stunt queens with severe narcissistic personality disorder- to the point of sociopathy. stop feeding the trolls.
Brietbart & Carlson & others in attendance may have considered the get together a lark, but I considered it troll feeding.
“When Bill Daley was mayor of Chicago, he awarded Ayers the distinction of being Chicago’s citizen of the year in 1997.”
Bill Daley was never mayor of Chicago. Two different “Richard” Daleys were though. And both presided over dynastic, Machine-style regimes. The younger Richard Daley served in office from 1989 until 2011. He was succeeded by Rahm Emanuel a little less than a year ago.
But Bill Daley was never mayor of Chicago.
…And he describes his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, as “admonishing her troops to violence wearing a ‘short skirt and high stylish black boots….Her blazing eyes….allied with her elegance,…a stunning and seductive symbol of the Revolutionary Woman.’”
Yikes-Yoi-Yikes!!! Apparently the “Revolutionary Woman” was dressed like Wonder Woman? What designer made said “high stylish black boots”? Should good communist girls be more substance than style? (Let’s face it ladies, when using explosives, black thigh high boots are a must! Don’t bomb without them!) Is the reader to deduce that women are sexy when they kill?
We let these people teach our kids… God save us!
Obama’s answer in 2008 to the quesion about his connection to Ayers: “He’s just a guy in the neighborhood” ranks high in the history of campaign lies.
I am not impressed with the sad efforts of Tucker Carlson and Andrew Breitbart.
they treat the Ayers’ like some kind of misguided radicals who can be reasoned with or humiliated.
I would have asked why they live in the USA when there are plenty of countries with the ideology the espouse where they are welcome to live in …….and leave those who like the USA (who are the vast majority) alone. I WOULD NOT STAY FOR A REPLY.
I would have asked why they live in the USA when there are plenty of countries with the ideology the espouse where they are welcome to live in…
Because they’re hypocrites for whom self-righteous posturing is the order of the day, not actually living according to what they spew.
Same reason you’ll never see Michael Moore move to Cuba, that place he has so exalted for its “healthcare” and other attributes.
Likely even unctuous Bill and nutty Bernardine are smart enough to know their theoretically idealized societies are, in fact, hellholes of oppression and state control.