Sol Stern On Obama And Ayers Again

What follows is Sol Stern’s rejoinder to our response [below]. We are giving Stern the last word here. Our position was laid out in the original post, Is the educational right capable of debating Obama’s educational program? and in our response, and there is nothing new to add to the discussion at this point.

Let’s recall that you started this by charging that in my City Journal article of two months ago I “smeared” poor Barack by associating him with Bill Ayers’ Weatherman days. In my response I showed, point by point, that my article was all about Ayers’ current views, not his past, and I challenged you to cite a single sentence in the article that might substantiate your claim of a “smear.” You failed to meet that challenge. Instead of doing the honorable thing and admitting that you goofed, you are now obfuscating with a lot of nonsense about how my account of Ayers’ current education views and his role in a destructive movement that harms children is somehow illegitimate. You say that this has no place in any discussion about Obama’s virtues as a presidential candidate and that my position on this is “unreasonable.” But you yourself provide one good reason why Ayers’ activities are relevant when you point out that he served together with Obama on the Annenberg Challenge, one of the most important recent education ventures in Chicago. What if it was revealed that Senator McCain and Charles Murray sat together on the board of some conservative education group? Wouldn’t it then be legitimate to ask McCain what he thought about Murray’s education views? How is the Obama/Ayers education connection any different?

I can’t help concluding that the reason you launched this factually unsupported attack on me, is that the union is now shilling for Obama, as it previously shilled for Clinton. You still haven’t explained why you never said a word about the Clinton campaign’s overt efforts to link Obama with Ayers’ terrorist past, but then decided to dredge up an old article of mine which never even came close to making that link. I guess it’s all politics Leo, and politics makes for strange bedfellows. In that regard I see that one of your new boosters in this argument is none other than that good friend of the UFT, Mike Klonsky. Don’t you think Al would be turning over in his grave?

 Print