Signs of a desperate campaign

Anthrax scare

Barack Obama’s campaign offices in N.Y. and Philly have been hit with hate mail and anthrax scares. The N.Y. Obama phone bank office, which is in the same building as the UFT headquarters, received hate mail reading “Kill Barack” that was filled with a brownish-white powder.

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Media Matters charges FOX and host Greta Van Susteren with several counts of bogus research for her Obama/Ayers/Annenberg special. MM says Van Susteren used only discredited sources like wing-nut Stanley Kurtz, to attack Obama and link him to the small-schools movement which is portrayed as some sort of black nationalist plot. They forgot about the Manhattan Institute’s ’60s Marxist-turned-liberal-teacher-hunter Sol Stern , who also joined in the fun. Stern, who compares Ayers to Stalin, now says, he’s only trying to make an honest buck by writing a book on Ayers (maybe they’ll make a movie).

Here’s a clip from the FOX special:

… Obama "continued running the Annenberg Challenge which Kurtz says favored projects that reflected Bill Ayers' hard-left views," then aired a portion of an interview with Kurtz, during which Kurtz asserted that "Bill Ayers really was focused on building up the loyalty of minority groups to their own ethnic heritage and downplaying traditional American patriotism."

Damn, and I always thought the small schools movement was nothing if it wasn’t all about American patriotism. And how about all those disloyal unpatriotic ethnic minorities…? Stern, who knows better, should be embarrassed. But he’s not.

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Deb Meier offers her own rationale for signing the Support Bill Ayers petition, even though (like me) she disagreed with the way the petition was worded. More importantly, Deb’s post on Bridging Differences offers a lesson in democratic education. But it can’t help but draw fire from old Cold Warriors like Ravitch, Stern and Radosh.