Barack Obama has been touting himself as a "new-style" politician for a decade, but, in reality, he's just the same ol' Chicago pol we've seen before. David Freddoso published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday discussing how Obama won his first campaign; it wasn't, as he's fabricated in The Audacity of Hope, that people were dazzled by his changeyness. He combed through literally thousands petition signatures, getting them disqualified for things like printing one's name rather than writing it and a married woman using her maiden name.
Unofficial Barack Obama foot-kisser Jesse Taylor is spending a lot of time these days making excuses for Obama (see here and here for this morning's Obama talking points), but the problem is that Obama's record points less to the audacity of hope than to the audacity of Chicago politics.
Now Stanley Kurtz has attempted to lift the rug on the Barack Obama-Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers relationship by sniffing around the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The paperwork is housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Kurtz wanted to see the records (you know, usually liberals slobber at the idea of public records). Mysteriously, Kurtz has been prevented and the Chicago Tribune's John Kass explains why.
"This is a public entity," Kurtz told us Wednesday. "I don't understand how confidentiality of the donor would be an issue."
You don't understand, Mr. Kurtz? Allow me to explain. The secret is hidden in the name of the library:
The Richard J. Daley Library.
Eureka!
The Richard J. Daley Library doesn't want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.'s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.
Obama, wearing the reformer's mantle, has generously offered to extend that reform to Washington, even to Kenya, but not Chicago, because he knows Shortshanks would be miffed.
Ayers, a former left-wing radical accused of inciting riots during the anti-war protests in the 1960s, is now also under Shortshanks' protection. After Ayers finally resurfaced in 1980, he got a job the Chicago Way, as a professor at UIC.
The Tribune's City Hall reporter, Dan Mihalopoulos, asked Daley on Wednesday if the Richard J. Daley Library should release the documents. Shortshanks didn't like that one. He kept insisting he would be "very frank," a phrase that makes the needles on a polygraph start jumping.
"Bill Ayers—I've said this—his father was a great friend of my father," the mayor said. "I'll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of our country. People didn't know one another. Since then, I'll be very frank, [Ayers] has been in the forefront of a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that."
The mayor expressed his frustrations with outside agitators like Kurtz.
"People keep trying to align himself with Barack Obama," Daley said. "It's really unfortunate. They're friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he's been making a strong contribution to our community."
Mr. Kurtz finally got his answer. It should grace the cover of the National Review, with a cartoon of Shortshanks, dressed like a jolly Tudor monarch, holding a tiny Obama in his right paw, a tiny Ayers in his left:
They're friends. So what?
Welcome to Chicago, Mr. Kurtz.
Jesse Taylor is all impressed with Obama's blackness, as if that should be the key factor in who's the leader of the free world. But somehow, I'm at least as interested in who HopeNChange liked to sip his white wine with.
Obama's excuses have taken on a Clintonesque aura:
The Obama campaign says the senator does not have control over these records or the ability to release them, adding that it has made many documents related to Obama's life available to the public and that "we are pleased the university is pursuing an agreement that would make these records publicly available."
Yeah, because the Agent of Change really wants you to know how close he is to Ayers. Riiight.
Tom Maguire at Just One Minute speculates on who could give the go-ahead to make these documents available. I'd say it's probably somebody who would like Obama to win and doesn't think we should see these things before Nov. 4.
|