Ayers Hedges his Dedication to Sirhan Sirhan

He tries to weasel out of admitting it, but Bill Ayers' dedication to Sirhan Sirhan by any other name is still a disgrace.

During a stop on his book tour, when Ayers was directly confronted by a woman about Prairie Fire, a book he co-wrote with fellow members of the Weather Underground, and its dedication to Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, Ayers couldn't come up with a coherent response.

He says that he regrets the book's dedication to Sirhan Sirhan, but then he claims that it wasn't a dedication at all.

QUESTION: Professor Ayers, um, you had an unusual dedication to Sirhan Sirhan in your previous book. Do you regret that?

BILL AYERS: Absolutely, but that wasn't a dedication. Where? Show me.

QUESTION: No, I'm just asking you.

AYERS: You heard it. You heard at... somewhere. No, the dedication in Prairie Fire in 1974 which was, you know, a kind of a manifesto, uh, was to political prisoners, to all prisoners, and if I were writing a book like that today, I would dedicate it to 2.1 million people in prison. I think that it was a stupid thing to single him out, but I also think that we have created a monster in the prisons and we ought to abolish the prisons. That's what I believe.

He makes no sense whatsoever.

"[T]hat wasn't a dedication."

"I think it was stupid to single [Sirhan Sirhan] out [in the dedication]."

Ayers is a coward and a fraud.

In his first public event since the election, William Ayers, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-founder of the Weather Underground, spoke to more than 250 people in Washington’s Universalist All Souls Church Monday night as part of his book tour. The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for bombing government buildings in the early 1970s and the McCain campaign used Ayers’s early associations with Barack Obama to accuse the president-elect of “palling around with terrorists.”

“I’m a little overwhelmed,” began the soft-spoken Ayers, squinting into the light of several television cameras and speaking over the chatter of camera shutters. “When I set this up six months ago, I pictured ten people sitting around a circle.”

But he took full advantage of the newfound attention to discuss his teaching philosophy, laying out the importance of education in the struggle for social justice. Of course, Ayers could not avoid his “unwitting and unwilling” role in the presidential election, but he expressed mostly bafflement at seeing his public image caricatured by conservatives.

“There was this demonization of me, as if somehow I killed people or I’m a violent person — which I’m not,” Ayers said. And he decried the conservative attacks on Obama as “guilt-by-association… with a subtext that you’re only supposed to talk with people who have already passed your political litmus test.” As for his real association with the president-elect: “I had the same relationship with Obama that he had with thousands and thousands,” Ayers said. “And like millions, I now wish I knew him better. Don’t you?”

Ayers is lying. He most definitely did not have the same relationship with Obama that thousands and thousands of people did.

"Thousands and thousands" didn't sit on boards with Obama. They didn't have speaking engagements with Obama. They didn't host a political gathering in their homes with Obama as the guest of honor. They didn't live in the same neighborhood.

Furthermore, Ayers is sanitizing his activities as a member of the Weather Underground. He promoted the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Of course, he's a violent person. There's no demonization involved. His past is his past.

Ayers is attempting to construct a new reality and a new persona, one that will be more profitable to him.

Ayers spoke at the church after an event at the Georgetown Law School earlier in the day. A handful of protesters associated with the conservative Web site Free Republic gathered outside the building with signs calling Ayers a Marxist and comparing him to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Inside, Ayers stayed largely on the topic of education but wasn’t shy about current events, remarking on the excitement of being at Chicago’s Grant Park for Obama’s acceptance speech, expounding on the rhetoric of “Yes We Can,” and twice mentioning life in Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood — “a wonderful neighborhood, very tight-knit, a lot like Wasilla.”

So, the neighborhood that Ayers shares with Obama is "very tight-knit, a lot like Wasilla."

Does that mean that Obama did pal around with Ayers in their tight-knit neighborhood?

I guess so.

Ayers is really milking his association with Obama. He whines about conservatives and the guilt-by-association thing at the same time that he's profiting from his association with Obama -- newfound fame and fortune-by-association.

Why has Ayers become a curiosity now, a bit of a celebrity, getting media attention and selling books?

None of that would be happening if not for Ayers' association with Obama.