Crossing Paths

Crossing Paths

Obama's story about his relationship with William Ayers has changed at least once so far. I believe that the current version is that they were on a board of directors, and that Ayers "is a guy that lives in the neighborhood," but that they weren't ever close. Over at Verumserum, some clever detective work shows that Obama and Ayers actually worked in the same building for quite a while: 115 S. Sangamon Street, in Chicago. Now, this is a multistory building, so perhaps it doesn't mean so much...except that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (which Obama chaired) and the Small Schools Workshop (which employed Ayers) have the same curious address in that building: 3rd floor.

In my experience, when an office has as its address an entire floor, not a suite number, it usually indicates that you have the entire floor. When multiple organizations share the same address, including an entire floor, let's just say that it is implausible that these organizations didn't have substantial overlap in staff and personnel. Imagine if the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the Small Schools Workshop, and ten or fifteen other organizations had no connection to each other except that they all had offices on the 3rd floor--with no suite numbers to differentiate them. Would you find that likely? No, I didn't think so.

If Ayers had actually been "rehabilitated," in Obama's words, then there would be no need for Obama to pretend that they didn't have any connection. But Ayers' defense of his terrorist bombings as late as September of 2001 shows that Ayers is not rehabilitated in the least.

If Obama is trying to distance himself from Ayers now, when they did indeed seem to have a pretty close relationship some years ago, it shows that either Obama was pretty radical back then, or very poor at making personal judgments--rather like Obama's relationships with Tony Rezko, and Rev. Wright.

Hey, we all make mistakes in life--but President of the United States picks Cabinet officers, sub-Cabinet officers, appoints judges, appoints commissioners to FEC, FTC, ICC, FBI director, CIA director, and hundreds of other terribly important posts. Either Obama has had an astonishing run of bad luck with his friends--or his choice of friends shows an astonishing lack of judgment.

Hey, McCain isn't exactly clean on this--for example, Charles Keating, back some years ago. But the mainstream news media make sure that you don't forget about McCain's friendship with Keating. So why are they largely ignoring the inconsistencies (I'm being polite) in Obama's account of his relationship with Ayers?