Whew! What was all that mess? I’m still in a daze, sorting it all out,

decompressing. 

Pass the Vitamin C.

For the past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with my kids

and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved in as the

kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing. And every day, I

participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible

movement for peace and social justice. 

In years past, I would now and then—often unpredictably—appear in the

newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a reference to Fugitive Days, my 2001

memoir of the exhilarating and difficult years of resistance against the

American war in Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames, revolution

was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted
 our

utopian dreams. 

These media episodes of fleeting notoriety always led to some extravagant and

fantastic assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I

probably believe now. 

It was always a bit surreal. Then came this political season. 

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship

with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the

Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In

1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him,

I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to

deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to

radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they

pounced. 

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign
 provided the script, which included

guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known),

creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet

to be uncovered.

On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently in an attempt to reassure

the “base,” sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. McCain

was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so

Hannity filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant “terrorist,” he explained,

“On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our

Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters.

… He said, ‘I regret not doing more.’ “

McCain couldn’t believe it. 

Neither could I.

On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a

cartoon character created to be pummeled. 

When Alaska Gov. Sarah
 Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a

now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with

terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)

The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from

there.

My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all

venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: “Watch out!” and

“You deserve to be shot.” And some e-mails, like this one I got from

satan@hell.com: “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll water-board

you.”

The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he

hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going

to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot.

(We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made

against me in 1987, after I
 was hired as an assistant professor at the

University of Illinois at Chicago.)

The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost

a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking

holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.

That ’60s show

  

  

Vicente " Panama" Alba

panamaalba2@yahoo.com

  

 

"if you tremble with indignation at every injustice 

then you are comrade of mine." 

"Let's be realistic, let's do the impossible"

Ernesto "Che" Guevara