McCain's Ayers isn't the one known here (Chicago)

[kskiska]

If he was a terrorist in '90s, we missed it

Mike Royko thought Bill Ayers was a jerk.

In November 1990 the late Tribune columnist reflected mockingly on Ayers' days as "flaming radical leader" of a fringe group opposed to the Vietnam War and his transition to "useful citizen."

"With all forgiven," Royko wrote, the former radicals "have rejoined society. … now working for a good cause, improving public education. He's become a leader in the so-called school reform program."

In July 1993, then, the Tribune reported that Royko made nice with Ayers and his wife at a party. "I thought, 'Wow, she's a good-looking chick,' " Royko said about Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn, also a former radical. "Anyway, she was pleasant."

These are only two of about 60 references to Ayers in the 1990s I found in local news archives available on Nexis. Some of them make reference to his unseemly past—it was no secret—but most do not.

He was publishing books on education, helping lead a charge to get grant money for school reform and being honored as Chicago's Citizen of the Year in 1997.

Today, some say this was an outrage. Ayers should have been shunned and marginalized, loudly criticized, not embraced, by the city's political and academic establishment.

But the record shows he just wasn't a very controversial figure. Aside from Royko's "I still think he's a jerk" column in 1990, I found only two objections to Ayers' civic rehabilitation in the decade's news archives: a 1993 letter to the Tribune and a 1999 guest commentary.

more…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-zorn-14-oct14,0,4194430.column

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I would bet that if they listed all his accomplishments, without the name,

Most of those repukes would say he was an admirable guy. Isn't part of the Christian ethic to allow a person to change? To forgive?
This man has done a lot of good since the 60's.

[struggle4progress]

2. knr

:kick: