Cry For Me, Bill Ayers

The New York Times has given a platform to Bill Ayers, yet again, in which he takes the opportunity to lay claim to victim hood. Little Green Footballs had a great byline for the op-ed piece in the Times: New York Times Hits Bottom, Digs.

I have opined plenty on the question of how such a character could enjoy his status as a "respected professor" of the University of Illinois at Chicago. I've often wondered if Jeffry Dahmer, had he survived, would have been offered such prestige at an American campus. Parents of University of Illinois Students are wondering the same thing.

In his plaintive tome, he claims that the right made up stories about him and painted him unfairly as a domestic terrorist. Here's part of what he had to say:

Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:

I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.

"The character invented"? Library archives are rife with news clips easily accessible to anyone with enough curiosity to find the truth about the Weather Underground. One could also ask John Murtagh, now a Yonkers, New York city councilman, how he feels about Bill Ayers' "harmless pranks". Or, one could watch the video below:


Ayers says that his group placed "several small bombs in empty offices". John Murtagh's home was neither empty nor an office.

Ayers goes further to portray his groups actions as a noble endeavor that failed to succeed, while simultaneously being benign in nature.

Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

Is that so, Bill? Intent and success are separate entities. The three WU comrades who blew themselves up were busy making a nail bomb that was intended to rip to shreds soldiers and their dates at a Fort Dix, NJ dance. In a townhouse at 18 West 11th Street in New York City on March 6th, 1970, three would-be bombers made a fatal mistake. It was only after this blunder that the Weatherman decided to target only empty buildings.

Surely the Times must know this history and yet they allow Ayers to write his rubbish on their pages. No wonder circulation is dwindling. As for Ayers, he can stop whining now. Anyone with a memory or the ability to read knows that the truth of history cannot be washed away so easily.

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