Bill Ayers

This is not a political blog -- except for my passionate feelings about the plight of Tibet -- but I am greatly irritated by the stupidity of the media, and the Republican smear tactics over the Obama/Ayers tenuous connection - I'd probably like Obama more than I do if he had a very strong connection with Bill Ayers.

Bill Ayers is a distinguished professor, he is a humanitarian. One need only go to the many Google sites to see that. Why am I in a rant? I have never met Bill Ayers. But I have met his wife, Bernardine Dorn although only briefly. A very good friend of hers [now deceased] is someone I knew very well, and knew of Bernardine through her. Yes, both of them were radicals in the '60s. Anyone old enough to remember the '60s knows there was a lot to be radical about. I'm only sorry we haven't had a redux of the anti-Vietnam sentiment over the Iraq war and America's atrocities there. But that's beside the point. Both are far better citizens, more caring, more informed and better intentioned [I believe] than the Gov. of Alaska has shown herself to be.

The Republican tar and feather machine and many in the press would have us believe that one's youthful passions cannot ever be tempered and that those who are seomtimes too passionate cannot harness their moral outrage into a constructive and exemplary life. How many who are over, say 50 would wish to be defined by the person they were at 25? Don't we beleive in the value of life experience?

The big bad word today -- and for the past several years -- is "terrorist." That's the word that has deprived many innocent people of their civil rights, and even sent them to be tortured in hidden hell holes. That's the word that convinced Congress to spend enormous amounts of money for a war we went into fraudulently. It's an ugly word, and in it's ugliest form it indicts those we don't understand or who we want to harm -- by applying it to upstanding citizens the users are themselves terrorists.