Stanley Kurtz: "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools"

Stanley Kurtz has a piece up now in The Wall Street Journal's Opinion section about the Obama/Ayers relationship and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. He says that "documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC," and that they "worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda." According to Kurtz, the ultimated goal of this pedagogical agenda was basically to "infus[e] students and their parents with a radical political commitment" in order to "provok[e] resistance to American racism and oppression." Instead of striving to improve educational standards, the point was to foster a radical agenda. Money tended to be given to entities involved in stuff like "political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism" rather than stuff like math and science. The result: "no evidence of educational improvement."

Kurtz surmises that Barack Obama, then "a former community organizer fresh out of law school," couldn't have been chosen as the chairman of the CAC without the approval of Ayers, and he concludes that the real story here is that "[a]s CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle." Whereas "[t]he Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association," the real issue here "isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation," which would be "a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

There doesn't seem to be much here that Kurtz didn't already say on Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg, but this is a platform on a different level and it will be interesting to see whether this develops into a major story in the mainstream press, and how it will be reported if it does.

a poem for the first day of fall

"Beautiful Woman"

The spring

in

her step

has

turned to

fall

--A. R. Ammons

Superman vs. the Hulk?

Long ago, and oh so far away, in a place called January, 2008, Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart fed the following thoughts into their webcams:

Peter: I have to say, just the prospect of a McCain-Obama race…I mean, I have to say, that could be one of the greatest races in American history.

Jonah: [laughs]

Peter: I mean, can you imagine an Obama-John McCain race, I mean really, I'd wanna, like, take out my American flag and start waving, I mean…

Jonah: [laughs]

Peter: …the thing would just be…the thing would be unbelievable, and I couldn't think of a more compelling race…for almost any two people out there in American politics today than seeing John McCain go up against Barack Obama.

Jonah: No, for political junkies it's sort of like what comic geeks used to talk about: "Imagine you have Superman fight the Hulk!"

Peter: That's…that's right.

Jonah: You know, it's one of these great sort of matches. I agree and it would, it would…maybe we should do a whole segment on imagining what that race would look like.

Peter: Yeah.

Jonah: I could, I could see getting a little bit sick of the, uh, the you know, 'cause neither of them would get, I mean, the n- where the negativity would surface, eventually I guess it would have to, it'd be interesting to try to figure out.

Peter: Yes.

Jonah: But for a long time it would be like, a lot of, sort of, it would be the Yakov Smirnoff, you know, election of, "what a country!"

Jonah: That would get a bit old after a while, the sort of spirit, you know, if we, if we all work together we can make this the best yearbook ever!

Peter: Uh-huh

Jonah: It [would] start to grate on me.

Peter: Uh-huh

Jonah: No, I agree that would be fun. It'd be nice to feel good about the country. I think…I think that is, that is one of the reasons why a Hillary campaign is so off-putting to a lot of people. They feel like it would be a standard issue nasty campaign, and an Obama race wouldn't.

Answered prayers, folks. Answered prayers. Fast-forward fast-forward fast-forward, we're bearing down on October, and the one comic book superhero "has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," while the other is "cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history."

Shapow!

So now Peggy Noonan sees her "beautiful election" entering "its dark phase." And she's wondering aloud whether maybe "we are all making believe this is a life-changing election because we know it's not a life-changing election," that maybe "the presidential election doesn't matter as much as we think," that maybe "[w]hoever wins will govern within more or less the same limits, both domestically and internationally."

Me, I don't know. I do know that politics is the mark that history makes on the present, that "History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors / And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, / Guides us by vanities," and that the owl of Minerva's wings unfurl only with the falling of the night. So, although my hunch all along has been that things overall will probably turn out better with an Obama administration for the next four years than with the alternative, and that the outcome of the election in November might possibly maybe even make a significant difference, world-historically speaking, one way or another, a sceptic like me can't have a notion about the matter that amounts to belief that's true and justified.

I usually know what I like, though, and what I don't. And though the blood-sport spectator in me enjoys the show, and the doubter in me knows that how the game is played and who comes out on top might not make much difference, there's a part of me that's more than a little disappointed by the "standard issue nasty campaign" the two camps have gifted us with. It could have been done differently, and very much for the better. But then again, nature is as nature does.

Kiraman Katibin

In Sura Qaf (16-22), it is written:

We indeed created man; and We know what his soul whispers within him, and We are nearer to him than the jugular vein.

When the two angels meet together, sitting one on the right, and one on the left, not a word he utters, but by him is an observer ready.

And death's agony comes in truth; that is what thou wast shunning! And the Trumpet shall be blow; that is the Day of the Threat. And every soul shall come, and with it a driver and a witness. 'Thou wast heedless of this; therefore We have now removed from thee thy covering, and so thy sight today is piercing.’

(The translation is A. J. Arberry's.)

Whether their names are or are not Ateed and Raqeeb, these two angels (or "receptors," "guardians," or "honorable recorders") are known jointly as the Kiraman Katibin. In the fullness of time, their transmogrifications have populated cultural productions as diverse as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Eminem & Dr. Dre's "Guilty Conscience," Tank Girl, South Park, and--repeatedly--The Simpsons.

And now they're here.