Public Enemy

by Bill Ayers

  I responded that when an earnest and ambitious journalist is knocked for being “irony-challenged” and responds by denying the charge, that’s not a rebuttal. It’s proof. I’d never heard of the guy he kept referencing, never called him an ideologue or conspiracy theorist, had zero interest in the “inside story” of the Obama marriage and couldn’t possibly know his “sources,” but that I would think his reporting would take him to Andersen himself. I told Jamie that I was not the least bit agitated by his crazy question.

  A self-described deep-thinking intellectual named Jack Cashill set out to prove—independent of my denials or affirmations—that I had indeed written Dreams. He sought real evidence through a close reading of texts and a brush with the Internet. He was the great brain who discovered, for example, those infamous maritime references and metaphors in both Dreams and Fugitive Days, a possible testament to my fraught time as a merchant marine. In any case, it was now clear that I had been the seafaring Odysseus to Obama’s father-hungry Telemachus, and Dreams the “record of a personal, interior journey—a boy’s search for his father.” I loved the reflection, and loved imagining my few months on the Atlantic as an epic tale of the human journey.

  Cashill found that Rashid Khalidi acknowledged me in his book Resurrecting Empire: “Bill was particularly generous in letting me use his family’s dining room table to do some writing for the project.” Khalidi directed the University of Chicago’s Center for International Studies, and at a farewell dinner on the occasion of his departure for Columbia University, Barack Obama toasted him, thanking him and Mona for the many dinners they had shared, as well as for his “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” But more important, Cashill pointed out, Khalidi didn’t need a table—a ha!—no, he needed a mentor, a role I apparently played with a wide range of Hyde Park intellectuals and radical writers.

  And he discovered that near the end of my book A Kind and Just Parent, I described bicycling through the South Side and identified a few of my notable neighbors: Muhammad Ali, Minister Louis Farrakhan, the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and the writer Barack Obama. Cashill felt that the “writer” identification was forced and the listing of Obama as prominent utterly absurd at that point.

  “The question is often asked why Obama associated with Ayers,” Cashill wrote on the website AmericanThinker.com. “The more appropriate question is why the powerful Ayers would associate with the then-obscure Obama . . . My suspicion is that Ayers saw the potential in Obama, and he chose to mold it.” Ah, the “powerful Ayers”—it sounded remarkably like the “powerful Oz!”

  Here are three samples from his book Deconstructing Obama of Cashill’s skillful sleuthing on the question of narrative:

  AYERS: “The hallmark of writing in the first person is intimacy. . . . But in narrative the universal is revealed through the specific, the general through the particular, the essence through the unique, and necessity is revealed through contingency.”

  OBAMA: “And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged.”

  AYERS: “The mind works in contradiction, and honesty requires the writer to reveal disputes with herself on the page.”

  OBAMA: “Not because that past is particularly painful or perverse but because it speaks to those aspects of myself that resist conscious choice and that—on the surface, at least—contradict the world I now occupy.”

  AYERS: “Narrative writers strive for a personal signature, but must be aware that the struggle for honesty is constant.”

  OBAMA: “I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

  Empirical proof or crackpot confirmation, you decide, but this little exercise is pretty easy to apply almost anywhere, anytime.

  Here, for example, is a line from Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites, by Tucker Carlson, the libertarian pundit: “Liberals have trouble believing that anyone who disagrees with them politically could be a decent person. Once they decide they like you, they assume you must be a liberal, too—in my case, a closet liberal.”

  And here’s a sentence from Ayers: “Some liberals can’t help conflating intelligence, compassion, and decency with liberal politics. If you’re decent and compassionate they automatically assume you’re a liberal.”

  OMG! I wrote Tucker Carlson’s book too!

  When the Public Square, a tiny but wondrous program of the Illinois Humanities Council, organized an online auction to raise needed funds, Bernardine and I donated two items: choice seats at a Cubs game and an afternoon at beautiful Wrigley Field with an ardent and unruly fan—that would be Bernardine—and dinner for six, cooked by team Ayers-Dohrn. The Public Square was celebrating its tenth anniversary, and we’d been on its advisory board from the start. We’d already done the dinner thing two dozen times over the years—for a local baseball camp, a law students’ public interest group, immigrant rights organizing, and a lot of other worthy causes—and we’d typically raised a few hundred dollars. There were many more-attractive items on the Public Square auction list—Alex Kotlowitz was available to edit twenty pages of a nonfiction manuscript, Gordon Quinn to discuss documentary film projects over dinner, and Kevin Coval to write and spit an original poem for the highest bidder. But what the heck, we’d do what we could.

  We paid little attention as the auction launched and then inched onward—a hundred dollars, two hundred, and then three—even when a right-wing blogger picked it up and began flogging the Illinois Humanities Council for “supporting terrorism” by giving taxpayer money to us. He was a little off on the concept since we were actually donating our money and services to them, not the other way around, but this was a rather typical turn for the fact-free, faith-based blogosphere, so onward and upward. No worries.

  There was a little button on our dinner item that someone could select and “Buy Instantly” for $2,500, which seemed absurdly out of reach. But in early December the TV celebrity and self-described conservative bad boy, Tucker Carlson, hit the button, and we were his.

  I loved it immediately. Carlson was a well-known libertarian political commentator whose signature style for many years was built around a bright bow-tie, a shock of chestnut hair, and an ability to noisily mock anything at hand. He was famously bounced from cohosting Crossfire on CNN after an angry on-air confrontation with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Carlson had criticized Stewart for asking softball questions in a political interview, and Stewart responded that his show was a comedy and added, “It’s interesting to hear you talk about my responsibility. . . . I didn’t realize that . . . the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.” After Carlson told Stewart, “I think you’re more fun on your show,” Stewart replied: “You know what’s interesting though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.” Carlson went on to found the conservative Daily Caller, and surely he had some frat-boy prank up his sleeve—his standard gesture a kind of smug and superior practical joke or an ad hominem put down—but so what? We’d just raised more money for the Public Square in one bid than anyone thought was possible from the entire auction. We won!

  Right-wing blogs lit up, some writers tickled with Tucker’s entertaining sense of humor, others earnestly saluting his willingness to enter the den of dodgy enemies of the state and sit in close quarters, an unmistakable act of courage and daring in the service of “the cause.” But a few took a grimmer view: Don’t do it, Tucker, they pled, this will not only legitimize and humanize “two of America’s greatest traitors,” it will also take the sting out of the steady charge that Obama himself is suspect for the crime of knowing them.

  Tucker Carlson got a letter from the IHC: “Congratulations,” it began, “You are the winning bidder for The Public Square’s 10th anniversary auction item: Dinner for six with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Thank you ve
ry much for your payment of $2500 for this item.”

  The letter went on to offer ten potential dates for the dinner, and to note that “all auction items were donated to the IHC [which] makes no warranties or representations with respect to any item or service sold . . .” and that “views and opinions expressed by individuals attending the dinner do not reflect those of the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, or the Illinois General Assembly.” I laughed out loud imagining the exhausted scrivener bent at his table copying out that carefully crafted, litigation-proof language—does it go far enough? How about the governor or the Joint Chiefs of Staff? But then, I’m no lawyer.

  We were besieged by friends clamoring to come to dinner—“I’ll serve drinks,” wrote one prominent Chicago lawyer. “Or, if you like, I’ll wear a little tuxedo and park the cars. Please let me come!”

  Everyone saw it as theater, but not everyone was delighted with the impending show. A few friends called to tell us that Carlson and company were “scum” and “vipers,” arguing that we should never talk to people like them, ever. We disagreed; talk can be good, we said. Others began distancing themselves from us, wringing their hands the moment they saw themselves mentioned on the right-wing blogs, and instantly, almost instinctively, assuming a defensive crouch.

  Things quickly got weirder. Two board members resigned from the IHC—I’m shocked! Shocked! Round up the usual suspects! They complained that the organization was now affiliated with people who “advocate violence,” presumably Bernardine and me, not Tucker Carlson or his friends, not the mayor, the governor, the state legislature, the cabinet, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The paid stenographers at the Chicago Tribune duly reported the two resignations, quoting the outraged quitters and leaving it at that.

  In early January the IHC folks suggested I figure things out with Tucker directly from now on—no need to have them act as intermediary: “It’s your dinner, and our involvement at this point just complicates things.” That seemed sensible to me. We’d scheduled a meeting with top staff and board members, but since the IHC was stepping away, that became irrelevant, and the meeting was canceled.

  They’d dissociated formally, but it soon became clear that behind-the-scenes bickering and back channel kibitzing, emergency meetings and heated exchanges continued apace. Some winced and stooped a little deeper, and apparently few were moved to speak up publicly to defend the idea of dialogue and conversation as essential to the culture of democracy generally and to the vitality of the humanities specifically. No one condemned the most knee-jerk instances of demonization and far-fetched guilt by association.

  Dinner with Tucker seemed cheery and worthwhile compared to counseling a bunch of cringing liberals. Where is the backbone or the principle? No wonder the tiny group of right-wing flame-throwers with a couple of e-mail accounts feels so disproportionately powerful—liberals seem forever willing to police themselves to the point of forming an orderly line right off a cliff.

  I wrote Tucker a quick letter telling him we looked forward to seeing him for dinner in Chicago and what we assumed would be a spirited and enlightening conversation. I saluted him for making such a generous contribution to the Public Square, a tiny program that works mightily to promote public dialogue as an essential way forward.

  I mentioned that I’d heard him on the radio kidding around about the dinner with Dennis Miller and saying with a laugh, “When I hear the word ‘humanities,’ I draw my gun.” It was a joke, of course, but I urged him to leave his guns at home.

  He promised he would.

  A few days later Tucker sent the guest list: Jamie Weinstein, Andrew Breitbart, Matt Labash, Audrey Lowe, and Buckley Carlson. “Entertaining, civil people all of them, guaranteed,” he concluded.

  Jamie and Matt were his young associates at the Daily Caller, Buckley his brother, and Audrey was a random reader who had won the privilege in some kind of contest Tucker had held online. Andrew Breitbart was a founder of The Huffington Post and an apostate from the liberal camp—I can picture Arianna Huffington and Andrew passing in the hallway, her fleeing her right-wing past, him retreating from the liberals. He was a self-described “media mogul,” the founder of several conservative websites and a practitioner of right-wing guerrilla theater, always playing the role of the grinning and menacing bomb-thrower. His record included active assistance in the demise of ACORN, efforts to damage Planned Parenthood, and the deeply dishonest discrediting of Shirley Sherrod at the Agriculture Department, which led to her being fired (followed by an administration apology and her reinstatement). Breitbart had several screws loose or missing, I thought, but we’d see soon enough, up close and personal. Entertaining and civil! Guaranteed!

  A couple of nights before the dinner I was hosting a meet-and-greet coffee at home for a young friend and former student running for the Illinois Senate. (True: he told me he too had aspirations to be president someday—the first Mexican American in the White House—and a coffee at our house seemed like the perfect launching pad!) Bernardine was away for work, so I was on my own. As the event wound down and people began to drift away, an old and dear friend took me aside and told me it was foolish of me to have offered the dinner to the Public Square in the first place—an act of “left adventurism,” she called it—and going through with it now would be provocative and stupid.

  “What?” I said, my voice rising and cracking. “We’ve done this dozens of times, so how is this particular dinner donation adventurism?”

  “Oh, please,” she said, annoyed.

  “And we’ve been on their board for a decade,” I continued, “and they asked us to do it, so how is that provocative?”

  “But not in this context,” she explained. “They’re vulnerable, and this is not good for them.” I was stunned.

  “I’m innocent and I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, but that sounded whiny and ridiculous the moment it left my mouth—I’m not “innocent” in the least, and I do wrong things all the time. Still, this dinner just didn’t seem like one of my many terrible or even tiny transgressions. I felt rattled and alone.

  But this all had a clarifying effect as well. Friends came into sharper focus, well-defined and evident, and those who understood the importance of standing on principle—friends or not—on issues like resisting the grotesque demonization of individuals and whole social groups, or fighting the toxic use of guilt by association in political discourse, also became dazzlingly obvious. Those who were confused or confounded, duped or bamboozled, faded into the background. It occurred to me once more that the good liberals I know would surely do the right thing if zealots began burning young girls as witches in Massachusetts, for example, or if the government said, in a time of fear and threat, “We’re rounding up all Japanese Americans and placing them in prison camps.” I’m sure they’d all cheered watching the movie Spartacus as every slave who’d been lined up on the field stepped forward in solidarity and said, “I am Spartacus,” and when in Point of Order the courageous Joe Walsh stood up to the bullying Joe McCarthy and, in a voice breaking with emotion, uttered the famous line, “Have you no shame, Senator? At long last, have you no shame?” If only we’d lived in that more perfect time.

  It’s pretty easy to imagine being a hero from generations gone by—we’re all abolitionists and freedom fighters now, all heroes in retrospect—but that settles nothing for today. Several state legislatures want teachers right here, right now to compile lists of students with questionable immigration status. Several people right here, right now are being interrogated, persecuted, and jailed for giving money or medical supplies to charities in Palestine disapproved of by the State Department. Citizens are legally barred by the US government right here, right now from free travel to a single country in the world, that terrifying island ninety miles from Miami. Where is the outrage, right here and right now? Oh, but these things are quite complicated and so very controversial that it’s hard to know what to do now—it was all so obvious and a litt
le too easy back then. I mean, McCarthy’s name itself was a dead giveaway: McCarthy, McCarthyism . . . who couldn’t see that shit coming a mile away?

  I shopped; I cooked; I set up for dinner. But it felt mostly like a heavy slog through thick mud. I was cold; I was lonely; I was tired. Not at all the mood or the tone I’d wanted.

  Things got better inside my head when Bernardine returned to Chicago. She went right to work, making the carrot-ginger soup, chilling me out, promising fun, and when a wondrous collection of our closest activist friends from A Movement Reimagining Change (ARC) assembled at a friend’s beautiful home to help out and serve, mostly to be present at the dinner party, I felt fine. We agreed that we would serve a course and then pull up chairs to chat with our guests, jump up and prepare the next course, ferry dishes in and out, and then pull up chairs for a chat again. There was lots of wine and beer, and we set an elegant table with a place cards depicting six different “great Americans”—Rosa Parks, for example, and Gertrude Stein, as well as Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin—at each place setting, along with a menu printed on card stock they could each keep as a souvenir: Hoisin Ribs and Cucumbers, Carrot-Ginger Soup, White Fish with Black and Red Quinoa, Midwest Farmhouse Cheeses, Apple Pie and Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream Ice Cream. At the bottom of the menu, I’d included two quotations about the humanities: “I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities,” from David McCullough (awarded the Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush); and “When I hear the word humanities, I draw my gun,” from Tucker Carlson (emphasis mine, in both cases). It was, of course, a joke.

  I meditated on Rilke:

  Let everything happen to you