Oh, look who’s in the news again:
Bill Ayers says people can’t equate the bombings that he and others in the Weather Underground did 40 or so years ago with the April 15 twin bombings in Boston that killed three people.
There is no relationship at all between what Weather Underground members did and the bombings that two brothers allegedly committed on April 15 in Massachusetts, Ayers said in response to a reporter’s question. No one died in the Weather Underground bombings.
Three Weathermen are killed when bomb manufacturing goes awry. The organization becomes the Weather Underground as key players including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Kathy Boudin go into hiding . . Kathy Boudin resurfaces to participate in an armed robbery in Nanuet, New York, which results in the shooting deaths of three men.
Ayers goes on to say . . .
“How different is the shooting in Connecticut from shooting at a hunting range?” Ayers said. “Just because they use the same thing, there’s no relationship at all.”
First, it’s good to see that Ayers sees the futility of cracking down on lawful, responsible gun owners because of the actions of the Newtown shooter. Secondly, show me the safe, responsible use of a pipe bomb.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., committed daily war crimes in Vietnam “and I get asked about violence when what I did was some destruction of property to issue a scream and cry against an illegal war in which 6,000 people a week are being killed,” Ayers said. “Six thousand a week being killed and I destroyed some property. Show me the equivalence. You should ask John McCain that question . . . I’m against violence.”
“I’m against violence,” said the bomb-builder. Finally, the reporter covering the event feels the need to point out the glaring gaps in Ayers’s story of himself as a misunderstood hero:
In his talk to the crowd, Ayers mentioned that in 1970, he lost three friends in the Weather Underground, including his lover, Diana Oughton. He did not explain in his talk how they died — they were killed when nail bombs they were making in a Greenwich Village townhouse blew up.
Telling the crowd the circumstances of those deaths would have been “inappropriate,” Ayers said afterward. “Everybody here knows,” he said.
Authorities said the bombs were intended to be used at a dance at the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey.
But remember, Bill Ayers is totally, totally different from the Boston bombers, honest!
Ayers recently elaborated on his relationship with Barack Obama and his political allies earlier in life:
David Axelrod said we were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was “a guy around the neighborhood,” that was true.
As Ben Smith summarized:
Ayers and Dohrn, who have been semi-officially rehabilitated in Chicago but still inspire a wide range of feelings, played a modest but real part in launching Obama’s political career.