We've seen the media created controversy about Barack Obama's relationship to Bill Ayers, a 60's radical who has now become a well regarded education professor in Chicago.
While an embarrassing association in some respects, it is hardly worth getting upset about for most thinking and reasonable people.
But the right-wing freakshow and their water carriers in the MSM raised it up, Li'l Georgie Stephanopolous dutifully carried out Sean Hannity's errands and sandbagged Obama with Ayer's association in the now infamous Philly debate and Hillary Clinton and John McCain sanctimoniously piled on. Their cheap-shots were the worst sort of hypocrisy especially considering their own relationships with unsavory characters.
A great article in the Chicago Tribune just came out that mentions one such relationship that St. John of McCain has that is much worse than the virtually non-existent relationship that Obama has with Ayers.
It isn't McCain and Hagee - which the media is just coming around to - but it is McCain and G. Gordon Liddy.
Follow me after the jump.
Remember Mr. Liddy? The fascist nutjob involved in Watergate who is unrepentant about his involvement and has said some scurrilous things since his release from incarceration?
Obama's tenuous relationship with Ayers consists of having been at the man's house once in the 1990's, sitting on a charity's board with Ayers and eight others and once receiving $200 bucks as a campaign contribution for state senate.
Well, as the Tribune article smartly points out, Liddy has a far stronger relationship with McCain - a real friendship in fact - than anything that can be manipulated or fabricated about Obama and Ayers.
How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy's home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator's campaigns—including $1,000 this year.
Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as "an old friend," and McCain sounded like one. "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family," he gushed. "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."
"...Congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great..."
Hmmmm....what principles does Mr. Liddy adhere to?
Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn't disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?
As mentioned, Liddy went to prison (unlike Ayers). Like Ayers, he too seems somewhat unrepentant about his past.
He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as "a prisoner of war."
Unlike Ayers however, Liddy has not reformed and become a pillar of the community in the manner that Ayers has. In fact, Liddy is not only unrepentant about his prior actions, he is unreformed to this day.
In 1994, after the disastrous federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, he gave some advice to his listeners: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. . . . Kill the sons of bitches."
He later backed off, saying he meant merely that people should defend themselves if federal agents came with guns blazing. But his amended guidance was not exactly conciliatory: Liddy also said he should have recommended shots to the groin instead of the head. If that wasn't enough to inflame any nut cases, he mentioned labeling targets "Bill" and "Hillary" when he practiced shooting.
"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. . . . Kill the sons of bitches."
Nice guy that Mr. Liddy.
I've always thought that guilt by association is stupid and is used by people who don't have a real argument against a candidate but the MSM has proven itself to be stupid over the last couple decades and these tactics have taken purchase. As we've seen with the Reverend Wright scenario, this stupidity is alive and well and dangerous to our civics.
Now imagine if Obama had a friend who was like this; whose radio show he regularly attended, whose thousands of dollars of donations he regularly accepted.
What would Timmy, li'l George et al say then?
How loud would the media be howling if Obama had such a relationship? The double standards for Obama are breathtaking when compared to Clinton or McCain.
I won't get into Hillary's hypocritical efforts to stick the knife into Obama over Ayers considering we all know that the skeletons in Clinton's closet constitute a graveyard.
I hope that this (very obvious) story about Liddy starts getting acknowledged so as to diffuse the Ayers story at the very least. Please send the Tribune article to your friends and to media-types so that they can view this hypocrisy close up.