Blake Hounshell (link) and your humble servant both this morning read Thomas Frank's Wall Street Journal profile of William Ayers (link). Hounshell interprets the story in the context of the "testosterone-poisoning" theory of radicalism--that it is largely the product of rootless, underemployed young men. I'm certainly sympathetic to that view, but I think Hounshell overrreaches when he describes Ayers as "a fully rehabilitated, functioning member of the Chicago political scene." Functioning, maybe. Fully rehabilitated? I'm not so sure. Frank concedes that he will not "quibble with those who find Mr. Ayers wanting in contrition." He adds that "his 2001 memoir is shot through with regret, but it lacks the abject style our culture prefers."
Well you know what, Tom? I kind of like contrition. And I suspect there isn't one of us that hasn't done something that he ought to be abject about, at least some of the time. My take is that for all his achievements in education and community service, that Ayers still just doesn't get it: that he put innocent people in harm's way, in an enterprise that vastly overestimated its own virtue (I am tempted to add: "and effectiveness"--I won't go quite that far, but I think a good case can be made for the proposition that the bombers did as much to aggravate the evils of society as they did to assuage them).
None of this, of course is meant to endorse the slimy and disingenuous efforts of the McCain campaign to demonize someone who should by all rights be recognized as a marginal, even trivial, figure. That's why I join Hounshell in endorsing McCain when McCain says "It's not that I give a damn about some old washed-up terrorist." Quite right, Senator. Now, back to the campaign.
For Extra Credit: The book that sold me on the testosterone-poisoning theory of revolution is James H. Billington Fire in the Minds of Men (link).
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