“Hi Dad.”
“Hi, son. You look a little down”
" Yea, with the employment figures tanking, and the car sales freezing because of the financial crisis, I might be getting laid off. And Susan’s job at the school is threatened because of the state cutbacks. Plus we found out Megan has a pre-existing disability, so if we lose our health-care plan from our employer, she might not be covered."
“Never mind that, did you see this story about Obama and Bill Ayers?”
“Who?”
“Bill Ayers, the Weatherman.”
“Which channel?”
“Not that kind of weatherman- the group from the Sixties.”
“Like the Beatles?”
“No.no- a radical group- against the Vietnam War.”
“Right, Vietnam (again)”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, nothing- so what about this Ayers guy?”
“Well, this Ayers, he blew up a lot of things- like a statue of a policeman, twice- and they ended up blowing up each other when they were trying to make a bomb.”
“Sounds like a bunch of screw-ups- that McVeigh guy killed 300 people with fertilizer.”
“Then he went on the run, and finally resurfaced in the Eighties.”
“So the cops got him?”
“Well, no, they dropped the charges- but Obama was associated with this guy.”
“Obama was one of these Weathermen?”
“No, no, he was only eight years old at the time, but he knew this Ayers later.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, this Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois, and he brought Obama into the Annanberg Challenge.”
“The Annapurna Challenge- like, running in the Himalayas?”
“Not Annapurna- Annenburg! named after Walter Annenburg! This was a radical socialist project.”
“Okay, so this commie Annenburg…”
“Annenburg wasn’t a commie! He was a wealthy
Republican businessman. Nixon appointed him ambassador to Britain. Don’t you kids know anything?”
“Sorry. So what happened with Ayers and Annenburg?”
“Well, there was this teachers’s strike in Chicago, so after that some people like Ayers figured it would be better to put power in the hands of parents and local people instead of the Teachers’ Union and the bureaucracy, so Annanberg gave them some money”
“Oh, that was good…”
“No, that was Communism! He brought in this Maoist who’d been to China…”
“For the Olympics?”
“No, in 1977! Anyway, Obama worked with these guys on the Annenberg Project.”
“Right, 1977. And then?”
“Well, it didn’t work out, so it was shut down in 2002, but the point is, it says here that Ayers heavily influenced Obama’s views.”
“Oh, so does it say how he influenced Obama about the financial crisis?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“How about Iraq?”
“It doesn’t say, but…”
“How did he influence Obama on global warming?”?"
“It doesn’t talk about that…”
"“What about health care? I told you, I’m worried about Megan…”
“It’s not about that! It’s about what this Ayers guy was doing in the '60s!!”
“Uh, right, the 60s…sorry, Dad. I’ve gotta run…Gotta see the bank about the ARM on our house… Jeez, we might be getting tossed out on the street… Bye, Dad, I’ll make sure to come by to take you to the polling station. (Uh, Nurse, I think his adult diaper needs changing)”
" Bye, son…Vietnam…hippies…Woodstock…zzzz."
