Ghosts of Illinois

Well, it looks like OJ is checking back in to the Downtown Hilton again - maybe for an extended stay. Old Number 32 could have lived the Life of Riley on his NFL pension, but that was not to be. Jurors deliberated 13 hours and found him guilty on all counts 13 years to the day after his acquittal in Los Angeles.

New street cred for the number 13.

I was a teenager in the early 1970's. One day I was in the Attalla, Alabama post office waiting on something and I thumbed through a clipboard of bulletins - The FBI's Most Wanted. Why the image remains I don't know, but I remember seeing young Bernardine Dohrn there in black and white, and wondering how such a pretty woman could have possibly done such awful, thuggish things. The words popped out from the page - Riot. Conspiricy. Mob Action, Interstate Flight. .

Bill Ayers is the radical from the 1960's that has has been in the news of late. Some reporters insist on referring to him as an "anti war activist". Ayers has described himself more specifically as a communist revolutionary. He and his wife Bernardine and their Weatherman organization planned and participated in terrorist attacks on American government buildings in the 1960's and 70's. A California policeman was killed in one incident. I recognized their names from so long ago, and I was shocked to hear last year that they not only did not pay for their crimes, but now live lives of luxury. Dr. Ayers is deemed a "Distinguished Professor" at The University of Illinois - Chicago. Bernardine is a law professor at Northwestern and a director of The Children and Family Center there. They live in an expensive townhouse in an exclusive part of town.

For years old Klansmen and Nazis have perp walked their way across our television screens, a pathetic parade of limping geriatric criminals finally brought to justice for crimes committed decades ago. Infamous characters such as Adolph Eichmann, Nazi Butcher of Lyon Klaus Barbie, Medgar Evers' killer Byron de la Beckwith, and Birmingham church bombers Bobby Cherry and Robert Chambliss come to mind, All of them died in prison.

Not so Bill and Bernardine Ayers. Living just down the street from the Obamas, the Ayers don't consider themselves criminals at all.

The Ayers say that we should leave their turbulent past behind. They remind us that everyone makes mistakes.

I agree. We can and should forgive people of their past ignorance, especially if it is long past and they have demonstrated that they have moved beyond it. But when a life has been lost, it is not our right to forgive and forget. The only people who can truly do that are the victims of the crime, and they cannot speak. Although the Ayers were never directly implicated in the murder of the police officer, the organization they founded and allegedly lead did take responsibility.

I don't know if OJ is a killer or not. Maybe the thirteens just kept adding up in his life like a cancer that went unchecked. I have read that Dr. Ayers and his wife have said that they have no regret over the Weatherman bombings, expressing sympathy only for the innocent people who got in the way. In much the same vein, another terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, said that the children in the America's Kids daycare were "collateral damage", and that he regretted their murders.

The difference is that McVeigh paid with his life in short order.

The prisons are full of violence prone people. Isn't it ironic that William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who undoubtedly see themselves as selfless crusaders for justice, never spent a day in prison among the wretched people they claim to defend? Approaching old age, these Holy Warriors are happy to carry out the revolution from the bourgeois comfort of their townhouse in Hyde Park, far from the madding crowd.

There is at least some justice for Bill and Bernardine, though. While most criminals waste away in the penitentiary, money, power and influence have given the Ayers a free pass. As two rich old white people who bought their freedom, they have become the very thing they claim to have hated most.