Phillip Weis went to college with Geoffrey Garin, Hillary Clinton's new top pollster, and recalled him as having been quite the radical. And thanks to the Crimson's extensive archives, you can actually read his old op-eds calling for, among other things, the violent overthrow of the government. Which is not, obviously, a good reason to vote against Clinton but it does put her campaign's Ayers-related attacks in a certain perspective.
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29 Apr 2008 07:52 pm
Comments (59)
Hahaha apparently there's hope for me in establishment politics yet!
Believe it or not, that actually makes Clinton MORE attractive to me. But you being a more moderate Lefty, I'd not expect you to understand.
*Insert elitist used-to-be punk anarchist cliché here*
Which is not, obviously, a good reason to vote against Clinton but it does put her campaign's Ayers-related attacks in a certain perspective.
I suppose it would be similar to the kind of perspective on say, HITS, one might get if one were to pull up some of your blogposts from 2002 supporting the war in Iraq??
In other words, I don't think 35-year-old Harvard Crimson columns by Geoff Garin actually provides any useful perspective on the Clinton Campaign's commentary about Ayers.
To put it another way: Garin (circa 1973) is to Ayers as the 101st Keyboarders are to the 101st Airborne Division.
That said, in general, I think the Ayers issue is a complete waste of time and is further proof of the Boomer strangehold on our national political debate.
Unfortunately, the link doesn't ask Garin what his thoughts are now, and he didn't write an editorial on 9/11/01, and he's an employee not what appears to be a patron as in the Obama case, so there are some differences MattY might just want to note.
And of course Bill Ayers plays no role in the Obama presidential campaign, and certainly doesn't lead it, which you might just want to note.
The analogy would be apt if Garin had written in the past seven years that he regretted not having set off bombs or committing other violent acts. As it is, not so much, which isn't to say that the Ayers thing is a big deal. I just thought it odd that a guy with outsized poitical ambitions wouldn't distance himself immediately from a guy, after the guy writes in the NYT that not committing enough terrorist bombings was a regret. D'ya' think if Dennis Kozlowski penned a piece in the Wall Street Journal saying, "Ya' know, misappropriating 400 million wasn't enough, and I wished I'd done more", most guys with Presidential ambitions might say, "Hmmmm, maybe I oughta try to avoid being placed on an organizational chart with that fella."?
Stanley Greenberg was Bill's pollster for the duration, and he was an academically prominent Marxist theorist. It has always amazed me that he never took any heat for this, not that he would have had any trouble explaining himself (academic Marxism isn't very dangerous stuff).
Ayers didn't say he regretted not setting off more bombs; he said he regretted not doing more to stop the Vietnam War. There is a difference, which has been lost in the Faux News/Clinton-McCain campaign spin.
Yeah, sure, mbtogut, your not spinning at all.
The quote.....
''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.''
....parse away!
what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Dear god people, get your information straight.
Ayers didn't say in an editorial on 9/11/01 that he regretted not setting off more bombs.
1) It wasn't an editorial, it was a quote.
2) It wasn't on 9/11/01, it was before 9/11.
3) He said "I regretted not doing more." That could mean any number of things, such as organizing, protesting, civil disobedience. Since the Weathermen's bombs were collosal failures, I imagine that his regrets have little to do with not setting more of them.
Alice Palmer--who hand-picked Obama as her successor then decided to campaign for the same seat after she lost the race to Jesse Jackson Jr. for a congressional seat--is the one who introduced Obama to Ayers, and she is now campaigning for Clinton. So Clinton is full of it.
Dear god people, get your information straight.
Ayers didn't say in an editorial on 9/11/01 that he regretted not setting off more bombs.
1) It wasn't an editorial, it was a quote.
2) It wasn't on 9/11/01, it was before 9/11.
3) He said "I regretted not doing more." That could mean any number of things, such as organizing, protesting, civil disobedience. Since the Weathermen's bombs were collosal failures, I imagine that his regrets have little to do with not setting more of them.
I know this is hard for you Matt, but the guy you dug up wrote words. Ayers planted bombs. There's a slight difference between the two - but I can see how you might have difficulty with that difference, based on the massive intellect you typically bring to bear on things.
Dear god people, get your information straight.
Ayers didn't say in an editorial on 9/11/01 that he regretted not setting off more bombs.
1) It wasn't an editorial, it was a quote.
2) It wasn't on 9/11/01, it was before 9/11.
3) He said "I regretted not doing more." That could mean any number of things, such as organizing, protesting, civil disobedience. Since the Weathermen's bombs were collosal failures, I imagine that his regrets have little to do with not setting more of them.
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!
I know this is hard for you Matt, but the guy you dug up wrote words. Ayers planted bombs.
I can see how you'd have difficulty since trying to screw Obama for something someone else did a long time ago is such a mental drain. You've probably gone crazy.
Nice half-truth, Nate. Or is that 3/3 of a half truth?
Alice Palmer--who hand-picked Obama as her successor then decided to campaign for the same seat after she lost the race to Jesse Jackson Jr. for a congressional seat--is the one who introduced Obama to Ayers, and she is now campaigning for Clinton. So Clinton is full of it.
Interesting.
I know this is hard for you Matt, but the guy you dug up wrote words. Ayers planted bombs.
Jimmy,that guy is a paid official for the Clinton campaign. Ayers is a guy who lives in Obama's neighborhood that Obama crossed paths with at some point in the recent past.
I don't regard you as having a measurable intellect that you bring to bear on these issues, so I didn't really expect you to understand the distinction.
Matt, your silence on Obama's press conference today is deafening. I know it's a cliched thing to say about a blogger, but today, it's true. Sorry.
I love my Mac except when it whigs out and triple-posts. In anycase, everyone in Chicago knows Ayers. This is becoming six degrees of Barack Obama, and it's really pathetic. Dig up some real dirt.
You guys are amusing. I'm hardly a Clinton backer; I've never voted for a Democrat for President in my life. I would have a hard choice between McCain and Clinton, given how much I loathe McCain and his disdain for free speech - it's conceivable that Republican Senators might locate their spines under a Clinton administration, thus making Clinton less dangerous on balance than McCain. Possibly; it's a hard call.
Obama is just downright scary; his messianic "unity" theory can't possibly end well. At best he'd have a failed Presidency on the order of Carter; at worst, he might accidentally give our enemies hope (based on perceived weakness), and yield far worse consequences.
Nice half-truth, Nate. Or is that 3/3 of a half truth?
I watched the Weatherman documentary and I watched it a second time with Ayers doing commentary. I expected a bunch of regretful commentary and "those were the times" sort of stuff and I didn't get it. However, there is no way you could listen to him talk for two hours about it and think that he thought the bombings were effective or that if they were more viscious it would have went anywhere better. He goes into fairly elaborate detail about how politically naive he was to think that he could try and replicate some sort of national liberation campaign in the U.S.
southpaw: lol. I consider Paul to be a hypocritical nutcase.
nate, I already said I don't think it's a big deal, just a bit of an oddity, that's all, for a guy with Presidential ambitions not to quietly disassociate himself from someone who states that he has no regrets about mounting a domestic terror bombing campaign. Hell, at least O.J. Simpson denies the crime! Why not solicit him for a donation!
Look, I'm not voting, because I can't decide which U.S. Senator I have more contempt for, but Obama actually gets a little bit of a break from me for not having served in The World's Most Fatuous Deliberative Body as long, or simply not being on the national scene as long. I'm sure, given time, I'll come to despise him every bit as much. I mean the guy is already about the biggest ethanol whore in town, which automatically means that every word that comes out of his mouth is extremely suspect.
Ed, as you can see from by previous post, I stand 2nd to few in my contempt for our government. Having said that, people who live in a country where they get to vote, disseminate messages, pool resources with others (thanks for not yet completely outlawing it Senator McCain!) for the purpose of disseminating messages, and face little chance of violent assault for doing so, as Ayers did not (Freedom Marchers were a different story), and who then resort to setting off bombs, because not enough people agreed with them, are lazy, disgusting, pieces of fecal matter who are not fit to collect rubbish. For this fecal matter to write years later that he didn't regret setting off bombs indicates that he is still covered with flies.
You Obots are sounding awfully desperate.
Obviously it's not going to be pretty watching him get so close and then go down the drain. Even if he tanks, I'd support Obama for Veep.
Mr. Allen,
The right to vote, to disseminate messages, and to pool resources (in other words, to have the rich buy advertising and control the elections) mean nothing if your choice is between two factions of the same corrupt and amoral liberal-capitalist oligarchy whose ruling ideology is based on utter falsehoods. I might add that i don't think much of elections anyway.
I disagree with Ayers' tactics and I think that he was wrong, in the society that was the US in the late 1960s, to set bombs. Violent revolution is a path to be undertaken in extreme situations, and America in 1968 wasn't in a sufficeintly extreme situation. But he was dead on in seeing through the farce that is liberal-capitalist 'democracy'.
ON THE OCCASION of the 100th anniversary of the Tea Party in 1873, a group of Boston's finest citizens, including Harvard President Josiah Quincy, gathered in Faneuil Hall to commemorate the deeds of the South End Mob. The organizers wanted to find some appropriate way to mark the occasion, so they came up with the idea of having a tea party of their own. After a series of patriotic speeches, including one by Frederick Douglass about women's suffrage, women went up and down the aisles of the hall and served the celebrants little cups of tea.
The Josiah Quincy gang probably believed they were justly honoring the first Tea Party with their dainty little tea service. Violence was not mentioned in any of the speeches nor did any of the speakers refer to the oppression which led to the celebration. For the celebrants in Faneuil Hall the struggle was over and done with; all that was left was to sit back and enjoy a cup of tea.
Perhaps in Josiah Quincy's day the country could afford to do that. But not now. Freedom is on the wane in this country and repression is on the rise all over the world. We can no longer sit back and swap stories about the good old revolution. We have to start worrying about the present. On this anniversary we must recognize that the patriots of Boston acted wisely in overthrowing their oppressors and the time is come to express our confidence in what our forefathers did by doing it ourselves.
Most likely, there will be no new revolution in America for a long time to come. But these are revolutionary time around the world, and we must support the struggles of all people seeking freedom and self-determination. America has shamed itself by failing to do so, and its leaders have disgraced themselves by supporting the forces of oppression. When President Allende nationalized American mining interests in Chile, President Nixon denounced him for failing to respect the rights of property. Will Nixon say tomorrow that Boston's patriots should be condemned for failing to respect the property rights of the East India Company? Will he condemn them for their violence. Surely not.
Nixon and his Bicentennial Commission will ignore these issues. They will ignore what the American Revolution was really about and what it took to win it. They, like Josiah Quincy a hundred years ago will sit back and sip a cup of tea and say, "Let's keep revolutions in the history books where they belong." - G. Garin, December 15, 1973
Well, hector, then Ayers should have gotten off his dead ass, put his goddamn shoulder to the wheel, and strained every last effin' sinew he had, to nudge that wheel 1 inch per day, year after year, until enough people shared his views, and thus provided a viable different option. Instead he was a disgustingly lazy piece of refuse who presumed to take a shortcut by setting off bombs.
Look, I'm no democarcy fetishist. But rule is accomplished by either ballots or bombs, and until I'm threatened with bombs for trying to influence ballots, I have no right to resort to bombs myself.
Will is right that the NYT article starts with: ''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.''
But it wasn't an editorial and it was published – not written – on September 11th (which was just a coincidence)
At the end of the day this is like a guy Obama met a few times and was on a panel with (along with Richard Posner). Why is this an issue?
Robertson, you may be interested to know that McCain now has a guy who supported the IRA (IIRC even sent money to them) on staff.
"I love my Mac except when it whigs out and triple-posts. In anycase, everyone in Chicago knows Ayers. This is becoming six degrees of Barack Obama, and it's really pathetic. Dig up some real dirt.
Posted by Nate | April 29, 2008 9:31 PM"
OMG somebody in Chicago politics knows someone bad! It's amazing how little people seem to know about Chicago. It's a bit like when older Irish Catholics in Boston read "Black Mass" and realize that half the book is about people that were in their math classes growing up who grew up to be hitmen and extortionists.
It should also be pointed out the amount of distance that often exists between fundraisers and politicians. Kerry in 2003-04 hosted his top Massachusetts fundraisers at his home several times and couldn't even remember their names.
The point is not the righteousness of William Ayers' cause. He may not be Osama Bin Laden, but the things he did were absolutely wrong. If he wanted to fight for the Vietnamese, he should have gone to Vietnam.
The point is that William Ayers has nothing to do with Barack Obama. The point is that this game of judging people by the things done by people Obama has at some point met or hung out with, especially things done decades before Barack Obama met them, is stupid, trivial, arbitrary bullc*ap.
I'm almost one hundred percent certain that John McCain has had some kind of association with convicted felons who did bad things. Heck, that's fish in a barrel - he served in the *same congress* as Mark Foley! How many meetings and confrences did he attend with that guy? And Jack Abramoff, for Pete's sake! Has John McCain never met Jack Abramoff?
You don't win this argument because your candidates' degree of association with Bad Guy X is slightly smaller or his crimes are slightly less maevolent. Your candidate is still, also, guilty as h*ll of the great crime of being associable with some bad person. This is a game for stupid dip*hits, and you lose by playing it, because you reveal that you are a stupid di*hit.
The only relevant part of any of this is if the association can reasonably be traced to any bad behavior or possible bad policies on the candidate's part. No one thinks Barack Obama is going to argue for pro-domestic-terrorist legislation, do they? So, seriously. Shut up.
"If he wanted to fight for the Vietnamese, he should have gone to Vietnam."
I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm curious how far you'll extend that logic. Were the Americans in Vietnam inherently not fighting for America?
but the guy you dug up wrote words
And was hired by Hillary as her chief pollster - a top campaign adviser.
Whereas Ayers has nothing to do with Obama's campaign and has minimal links to him at best.
And then, as everyone knows, there's this:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06EED7133CF931A15752C0A9679C8B63
Matt - wasn't Lanny Davis pretty condemnatory toawrd the US in the 60s while at Yale with Gee Dubs? Check the Yale Daily archives. Lanny is pretending a bit too much lately to be upset at Obama over Wright.
Repeat after me: this doesn't matter at all. It makes absolutely no difference who Senator Clinton or Senator McCain worked with in the past, no matter how much scrutiny Senator Obama's past comes under.
Why?
Because the media won't talk about it. End of story.
This is a great blog, and there's a lot of great observations to be had, but outside of this bubble, the established narrative lumbers on.
If you want to change the conversation, you're going to have to shout this from the rooftops.
The smug sanctimoniousness of certain posters here makes me want to fucking puke. I don't approve of the Weathermen's tactics, but at the time, for those of you too young to remember, the US government was involved in the one of worst atrocities in modern history. The evilness of it is only eqlipsed by the country's history of slavery, oppression of AA and native Americans. The repercussions from it has given us the political landscape we have today.
My regret is that the murderous motherfuckers most responsible for Vietnam have never been brought to justice, not that Bill Ayers blew up a Pentagon bathroom. And since some of you seem so ready to take what you've heard second-hand and what was written in the NYT, that veritable fount of journalistic integrity, you might actually want to let the man speak for himself. As he does here:
Matt - this is one of your dumbest posts. Aiers had a deep involvement in a group that comitted violent acts. Geoffrey Garin apparently wrote some extremist (and somewhat silly) op-eds IN COLLEGE, WHEN HE WAS 20.
I think Weiss has a problem with a certain kind of Jews - something I've found strange and creepy for some time. But it helps run a jihad against Hillary.
What's dumb is the fact that the Clinton campaign chose to help stir up this smear by association in the first place. Much like they contributed to the Wright controversy. Its Republican style down -in-the-gutter poliics, and I, for one, am sick to death of it.
Ayers and Dohrn have been law abiding citizens and respected scholars for the past 30 odd years. That and Ayer's contention that his remarks were misrepresented and distorted in the NYT article on 9/11/01, lead me to believe that this is nothing more than sleazy innuendo based on the flimsiest of pretexts.
HC is going to regret it. Its opened the door to what is going to be one of the ugliest campaigns imaginable, and she may well see her own political career wreaked as a result of it.
Again, as I said, anybody who thinks the Weathermen were some kind of significant group is just an idiot.
They were morons. They were "preppy terrorists" without a frickin' clue.
Comparing them to any even half-way serious terrorist is just a joke. And most terrorists are jokes to begin with. Even Al Qaeda is mostly a bunch of incompetents. Carlos was an idiot. I was an idiot, for that matter.
You'd better pray no competent terrorists ever surface, or this country is dead meat.
Meanwhile, to suggest that the fact that Obama knows somebody who used to be a Weather person thirty years ago is somehow significant - well, only a moron could do that. Anybody who brings up Ayers as a problem for Obama is a complete and utter moron - or a POS Clinton supporter - or both (pretty much by definition as any Clinton supporter at this point has to be a moron).
Obama is just downright scary;
That makes one of you. "Scary"? Compared to McCain? Please, don't make me laugh. You're simply trying to rationalize a vote against Obama by trying to whip yourself into a psychological fervor about how "scary" you find him. Don't expect me to take you seriously.
To the rest of you haters, read the trenchang comments here:
The point is that William Ayers has nothing to do with Barack Obama.
Ayers has nothing to do with Obama's campaign and has minimal links to him at best.
Got it? Figured it out? Now shut the fuck up.
You don't understand, Tyro. When Obama even marginally associates with uppity people like Wright and Ayres, that shows that he too must be... uppity. And Those People don't win elections, you see.
But we're not racists, really! Some of our best party members are black! (Just don't run against a white woman of privilege.)
Do our political pundits have any shame at all? Any low in pointlessness they are willing to avoid? This sort of tit for tat "gotcha" is such a waste of any reader's time. This campaign season is beginning to convince me that Right Wingers' rantings about how our system of higher education is letting us down may have some validity. Looking at the nonsense pouring from the keyboards of our elites, I'd say we have a crisis.
Is there a single scrap of intelligent purpose in your observation, Matt? Or is the only purpose pointless gossip among cohorts? If so, why should I, or anyone, pay to subscribe to such drivel?
I'm embarrassed for MY. Garin was writing with some passion in his twenties while Matt has chosen to be a cog in a disinformation machine.
Matt has chosen to be a cog in a disinformation machine.
It's a bit rich to call someone else a "cog in a disinformation machine" when you've been repeating the Ayers tripe.
Any informed person who doesn't realize by now that Hillary is a Devil Monster is just too fucking stupid to live. Simple as that.
Please, please Hillary, put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. Only by suicide can you redeem yourself in America's eyes.
Incidentally, given that any mention of Ayers and Wright appears nowhere on the Drudge Report, I think we can officially declare this a "non-story" among Drudge's primary audience who are the ones most interested in repeating the two stories: lazy journalists and cranky Republican uncles.
Fun while it lasted, I guess.
Geoff Garin was my roommate in college for one year. He was a gentle sort of guy, very intelligent, good sense of humor, didn't take himself too seriously.
Let's not be any stupider than neccessary. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, et al didn't advocate radical ideas: they blew up buildings and made a good-faith attempt to kill people. It's a tough distinction I know, but try to get it
Let's not be any stupider than neccessary. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, et al didn't advocate radical ideas: they blew up buildings and made a good-faith attempt to kill people. It's a tough distinction I know, but try to get it
Very sorry about the double post
I think Ayers and the Weathermen are totally irrelevant.
But its sad to see MY happily pandering to stupidity with this Garin nonsense hoping to score a few points.
So what's the charge again: Obama sat on some panel with Ayers? Is that all you got? Lame!
You know who the guy on the right with the helmet and the guy with the raised fist about to hit the policeman is? Yeah, it's Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister and vice-chancellor for 8 years, consitently polling as one of the most popular politicians the country has ever had. He also was one of the organizers of the streetfighting in Frankfurt and it is disputed if he approved the use of Molotov cocktails. Oh, and his car was involved in the transport of a weapon that was used in a murder committed by members of the Red Army Faction, albeit without his knowledge.
Let's not be any stupider than neccessary. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, et al didn't advocate radical ideas: they blew up buildings and made a good-faith attempt to kill people. It's a tough distinction I know, but try to get it
It's probably not a good idea to use "good faith" in a post supporting an effort to smear someone for something someone else did 40 years ago. Someone might think that you've gone insane rather than simply that you're a schmuck.
Re Richard Steven Hack
Actually, Osama bin Laden is far more competent then Mr. Hack. Mr. Hack got caught and spent 9 years in the federal slammer in Leavenworth. Osama is still on the loose 7 years later.
Yeah, but, hey, SLC, you've gotta admit: San Francisco cops are smarter than the US military.
Not much smarter, but smarter. Besides they had help from technology - bait money radio transmitters. Had I known about those, I'd still be out there (probably not, I'd probably be dead by now), and you'd have a bullet in your head just for being late to the debate.
Bwahahahahaha!!
| 
Heads in the Sand
Thanks for the link, which links to this. Let me be the ten-thousandth to say: "huma-na huma-na!"
Unfortunately, the link doesn't ask Garin what his thoughts are now, and he didn't write an editorial on 9/11/01, and he's an employee not what appears to be a patron as in the Obama case, so there are some differences MattY might just want to note.
Posted by TLB | April 29, 2008 8:06 PM