RealClearpolitics.com has a link to an article By John Kass in the Chicago Tribune. The thesis of the article is that William Ayers's previous life of crime should be a big deal but it is being covered up by the Chicago machine.
Which got me to wondering....if Ayers is such a big deal, when did John Kass write his first column about him?
William Ayers has been a professor at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois since the early 1990s. He's a big enough deal to have famously secured a $50,000,000 grant from the Walter Annenberg foundation.
I have lived in northern Illinois for most of this decade. But I never heard of the guy until the Hannitys of the world tried to disqualify Senator Obama from the Presidency based on their having served on a board together.
Jon Kass is a moderately conservative blow-hard. He fashions himself as a spokesman for the little people of Chicagoland but a lot of what he writes is tired bluster about "the Chicago way". He also is not a completely unhinged cook. When Obama met with the editorial board of the Tribune to discuss Rezko, Kass sheepishly admitted to believing Obama's side of the story and to give him credit for facing the music to a room full of skeptical reporters.
So today's column piqued my curiosity. I sent him the below letter. I'll let you know if he responds.
Mr. Kass,
Your column today suggests that William Ayers past as an ineffectual bomb-making radical is a big deal. It's a plausible argument. I have to ask you a question, though. When did you find out that the University of Illinois at Chicago employed him? And how many columns did you write in protest of a local state funded university keeping him on the books?
Because I have to tell you, Mr. Kass. It seems like you think he's a big deal because o f his friendship with the Democratic nominee for President and not because his Keystonecopsesque life of radicalism matters 40 years after the fact.
I look forward to being corrected on this point. Please send me the date of any columns you wrote about UIC's decision to employ William Ayers which predate Senator Obama's decision to run for President.
If you didn't write any, I think you should at least disclose that fact the next time your pretend that Ayers's past is worthy of the press's attention.
Best Regards,
name and town
Kass' column:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...