Ah yes. In such matters, we often tend to engage in excessive armchair psychoanalysis and sociological syntax twisting. Occam’s razor applies here--the simplest explanation is most likely correct.
Senator Obama associated with these people for so many years for the same reason that “average white people” associate with others: They find their company comfortable because they share common interests, goals and beliefs. Few people choose to spend their personal time with people whose beliefs, views and personalities they find loathsome. In fact, most people would not choose to spend any time with admitted criminals under any circumstance, particularly criminals who attempted to commit mass murder at any time of their lives and who continue to brag about their crimes, or people who are serial racists and crackpots. Thus are “average white people,” and average people of any color, distinguished from their liberal elite betters and left to wallow in their gun-driven bitterness and reliance on religion. What unenlightened lives such average people must lead when they choose--voluntarily--to separate themselves from bombers, racists and crackpots. How much more exciting could the bland lives of such pathetic denizens of fly over country be if they could only experience such stimulating company!
That Senator Obama did not immediately repudiate these criminals and poltroons is hardly surprising. They are his kind of people. He sees himself reflected in them. He shares their backgrounds and beliefs. He admires them and supports them, and probably is, on at least some levels, genuinely surprised that anyone would take exception to his relationships with them. How could anyone object to those whose beliefs, behavior and politics are so reasonable, so pure, so righteous?
On the other hand, there is an element in his relationships--all of them--that simply does not exist for average folk: Political calculation. A man like Obama considers his political well being before anything else. As he worked his way up as a “community organizer” (just what is the job description for that by the way, what does it pay, and who issues the paychecks?) he surely engaged these people because of their political utility and only abandoned one of them because he became a political liability, an unbelievably destructive political liability that could not possibly be ignored any longer. Notice that none of his friends appear to be conservatives, and certainly none who are demonstrably unhinged or criminal. This could be mere coincidence, but if it walks like a community organizer, talks like a community organizer and quacks like a community organizer…
One wonders if this photograph (some photos really are worth a thousand words, aren’t they?) will cause the good senator to finally, at long last, repudiate a man to tried to commit mass murder, failed due to incompetence, escaped justice on technicalities and continues to brag about his involvement. We’ve become so numbed by Clintonian behavior and spin that some don’t even consider this sort of thing to be objectionable ("Well, OK, he did murder the troop of girl scouts, but he didn’t eat them"). But consider this: How many average folk, if presented with a complete and unvarnished resume of Ayers, replete with flag stomping photos, would willingly choose to befriend him? How many would say to themself: “Self, that’s my kind of guy. I wonder if he’d date my daughter?” How many would not immediately ask in astonishment why no one ever practiced enlightened penology on Ayers by locking him up and throwing away the key?
Ah, but Obama won’t let the average be satisfied with their average lives. He’ll demand so much more from us, and do so much more to us.
