Mr Rotwang,

why the picture of Cheney?

Little help here? I don't get it.

Rotwag is being too clever for his secret self.

He's telling Bill Ayers to stifle.

Given the interesting update contained within the essay, I think Ayers should be invited to guest post anon by Josh as well:

"When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)

The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.

My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: “Watch out!” and “You deserve to be shot.” And some e-mails, like this one I got from satan@hell.com: “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll water-board you.”

The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot. (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made against me in 1987, after I was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.)"

Want more?

Pet the horsie's rump and all will be revealed...........

;>}

He's talking about Bill Ayers? I thought he was talking about the people who are criticizing an Obama Administration that hasn't been chosen yet!

I concur. Ayers should just go quietly about his business. I did however like his Hughey Freeman t shirt. I got to get one of those.

Boondocks Rocks..

Would sure love to hear Todd Gitlin's take on this, long strange trips, et. al.

I fail to see how Ayers's variations on the "he not busy being born..." theme written for a radical Chicago periodical warrants this - quite literally - asinine response.

Sure, his narrow, shallow and monocausal critique of the failures of the New Left - "serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted out utopian dreams" - smacks of evasive self-justification.

But Ayers argument is sound. The radical right tried to smear Obama through his relationship with a reformer who possesses unimpeachable professional credentials in his field, and voters saw through it. If anything, making hay out of Ayers saying what's on his mind helps legitimize the aggressive ignorance of the anti-intellectuals.

Since when did Mr Rotwang start to channel Bill O'Reilly? As I understand the principle behind freedom of speech, we can let truth and falsehood grapple in the open because truth will win.

Really: a truly horse's ass comment by Mr Rotwang, regardless of the object it ostensibly wishes to intimidate into supine silence.

Poor president-elect Barack Obama. So many of his erstwhile supporters still can't let him speak for himself and others do likewise.

In my opinion it would have been better to eviscerate Ayers for the reasons you just mentioned than to use eight words and three periods. I strongly feel as you do, Rotwang, about his mistakes of the past and his failure to ever admit that maybe he was wrong. It seems like he considers himself a settled down Che Guevara. Like you said, his actions and the actions of the Weather Underground did more to hurt their causes than to help.

I think he deserves credit for one thing. He didn't go on a speaking tour during the election. If he had, you wouldn't be alone in telling him to STFU. I imagine if he had in any way enabled McCain to become president, he wouldn't have been able to show his face in public. Look at what happened to Steve Bartman after that Cubs game. Magnify that animosity by 1000%.

What bugs the hell out of me is that some school actually hired him in a fit of radical chic. Like the liberal arts don't have enough problems.

As of Tuesday he *was* yesterday's news. It's his duty to shut up.

I am not really in favor of shutting anyone up, except for maybe Rush Limbaugh.

But if we truly must ask Mr Ayers to shut up, then the deal should be two-for-one, and Henry Kissinger should never again be invited on a national news program to give his "expert opinion" about anything.

I see it as a messed up thing about America that we have to harp and harp about Ayers' "criminal stupidity" and "immoral acts", but Henry K walks around as a free man after helping kill millions of people. As will George W Bush on January 21. So as much as you are telling the truth in condemning Ayers, it has an air to it of just going along with this myopic view that misses the really big crimes. Just my $0.02. Feel free to resume the Ayers bashing in five... four... three...