Below the belt

First they tried the elitist track, then the inexperienced track - neither really seemed to stick to Obama's public perceptions. This was especially when his opponent, Sen. McCain was seen to be the ultimate elitist and the years of McCain's experience in the Senate seems to have come to nought. Now desperate, they are trying the terrorist track.

In this video here, Obama says it like it is and explains the facts (in his words). Essentially, he tells us that he sat on the same school board with an individual who did some bad things when Obama was 8 years old. Yes, when Obama was 8 years old.

Ayers is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts forty years ago when I was 8 years old. By the time I met him 10 or 15 years ago he was a college Professor of Education at the University of Illinois and we served on a school reform board together. A board by the way that was funded by Walter Annenberg who had been an ambassador and close friend of Ronald Regan's. So, I have talked to him about school reform issues, and the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he has been advisor of mine, that I have palled around with a terrorist, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points. You know, look, I can handle these attacks with the remaining four weeks, but it is certainly not serving our democracy. We need to be having a debate about how we are going to yank ourselves out of a very difficult situation and that is what I am going to spend my time talking about...

Gail Collins of the Times analyzes the Ayers connection to Obama and warns us of the slippery slope the nation will go down as the McCain camp rolls out the 'guilt by perceived association' strategy.

When I was a teenager, Charles Keating came to my Catholic girls high school in Cincinnati in his capacity as the founder of Citizens for Decent Literature, an anti-pornography group. His theme was the evil of wearing shorts in the summertime. Keating said he knew a young mother who took her child for a walk while wearing Bermuda shorts. A motorist, overwhelmed with lust at the sight of the back of her uncovered calves, lost control of his car and slammed into them. Everybody was killed, and it was all her fault. We were then asked to sign pledge cards promising to conform to standards of modesty that would have satisfied the Taliban.
If Barack Obama is responsible for the Weather Underground, and if the mother in Bermuda shorts was responsible for the car crash, I am pretty sure that I am on the hook as well.