I usually try to keep some tabs on what sort of propaganda the right wing talk radio shows are spouting, and I can certainly say that for the last several months, Sean Hannity (and many others) has spent hours on a daily basis directly attacking Obama for his association with William Ayers.
There's something under that attack that's always deeply bothered me, but I've never been able to figure out what it was.
Sarah Palin's recent comments about "Obama hanging out with terrorists" made me think even more about it. Why was this bothering me so much?
This morning, I figured it out. And it paints a brutal picture of the Republican Party's moral and ethical standards.
First, a preface. I'm a Christian. I attend church virtually every weekend with my family and I serve on the council of the church, which is fairly large. That council position is very involved and eats up quite a bit of my time. I often use that position to encourage church funds to be spent directly on charities instead of capital improvements - in fact, it was that general platform that convinced me to run for the council.
In short, I'm more interested in actually following what Jesus himself taught than listening to the ramblings of his disciples or the organizational doctrine of the church.
(That's actually a big reason as to why I've found my way to the more liberal side of the political spectrum over time, because if you just stick to the Gospel, Jesus was not just a liberal, but a pretty radical one.)
Sean Hannity, too, claims to be a Christian, as does Sarah Palin and as do many other right wingers. They wear this faith as a badge of honor, making sure to let everyone know that because they wear this Christian badge, they are self-appointed moral authorities.
When the Ayers story first started to get legs, I did a lot of reading about William Ayers - and I frankly was disgusted by his acts in the 1970s. They were actions I consider abhorrent - setting bombs is a disdainful way to get your political point across. The Gandhi/MLK model of civil disobedience is much more powerful and much more likely to get your issues the right kind of attention, plus they don't endanger the lives of others.
But as I read more into it, I began to realize that the actions of William Ayers in his Weather Underground days were that of a young man who was making a lot of immature and dangerous choices. And as I read later interviews and news articles about him, I realize that he came to regret setting bombs.
Take, for instance, "Sudden Impact," a 2006 article written about the "Days of Rage," a series of conflicts in Chicago between the city and the Weather Underground in 1969. In it, Richard Elrod, a lawyer for the city injured in the Days of Rage, discusses receiving a remorseful apology for his younger actions from Ayers. In the Chicago Tribune in 2004, Ayers wrote "I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official." Even the September 11, 2001 New York Times article, which Hannity breathlessly talks about hourly on his show, sounds much more like a person trying to come to terms with some poor choices in his past - ideologically, he agrees with opposing the War, but he feels remorse for lives he himself interfered with.
The picture of the man, taken from so many articles and pieces, is of a person who believed (and still does believe) fervently in something, but his youthful mind, not having a strong sense of judgment, made some very poor tactical decisions that hurt others, decisions that he now regrets.
Even more important, he pays penance for those poor decisions in his life by serving on community volunteer boards and raising money for community activities - and he's pretty good at it. He's now come around to devoting much of his life energy to working for and raising money for community causes, like the Chicago Annenberg Project and the Woods Fund of Chicago.
Given all that, I tried to put myself in Barack Obama's shoes. I meet this fellow, William Ayers, who is working for positive things in the community, volunteering his time and energy. I'm at least a bit impressed, since these are organizations I'm volunteering for, too. Then, later, I find out about Ayers' past. What do I do?
In Hannity's world, you walk out of the charitable groups in a fit of self-righteous indignation.
But Obama stayed, and as a Christian, that was the right choice to make.
Even a cursory reading and understanding of the Christian Gospels makes it clear that we have all made mistakes in our life and we all have the power to change for the better. More importantly, all Christians are called to not dwell on the sins of the past, particularly if a person has repented for those sins. It's made clear many times throughout the Gospels, but never so clear as Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus dines with a former prostitute who feels deep regret for the bad choices in her life. And instead of storming out in a Hannity-esque fit of self-righteous indignation, Jesus sits there, dines with her, listens to her story, and accepts her gifts and even a kiss from her, and she is reduced to tears by the fact that he accepts her. He even goes so far as to defend this woman from the other dining companions, pointing out that her actions now show the type of person she is and that she should not be judged on her past.
The Ayers-Obama story isn't a story about Obama cavorting with terrorists. It's a story about a person looking beyond another person's past and valuing the work that person is doing in the present. It's about Obama trying to live by the actions of Jesus in that chapter of Luke.
Every time I hear Sarah Palin talk about Obama "cavorting with terrorists," she shows me what kind of Christian she is - and what kind of person she is. Rather than actually follow the words of her professed faith, she shamefully betrays them. The exact same thing is true of Hannity and of his right wing talk radio brethren, who talk about the greatness of their faith, then immediately betray it by attacking the actions of a person who was genuinely following the morals and principles of that faith.
These people are not Christians. They are wolves in sheep's clothing.