Chi Trib’s John Kass explains to National Review writer Stanley Kurtz why he can’t have at the Annenberg Challenge files at U. of Ill. at Chicago in order to check on how close Obama was to unrepentant terrorist/school reformer William Ayers.
The Richard J. Daley Library doesn’t want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.’s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.
And nobody sent Kurtz.
It’s the mayor, stupid, and he defended the non-access to library materials in Chicago’s premier bastion of state-campus learning, where free inquiry reigns and young minds and old rove happily through the groves of truth and beauty.
The Tribune’s City Hall reporter, Dan Mihalopoulos, asked Daley on Wednesday if the Richard J. Daley Library should release the documents. Shortshanks didn’t like that one. He kept insisting he would be “very frank,” a phrase that makes the needles on a polygraph start jumping.
“Bill Ayers—I’ve said this—his father [top dog at Commonwealth Edison] was a great friend of my father,” the mayor said. “I’ll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of [sic] our country. People didn’t know one another. Since then, I’ll be very frank, [Ayers] has been in the forefront of a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that.”
The mayor expressed his frustrations with outside agitators like Kurtz.
“People keep trying to align himself [sic] with Barack Obama,” Daley said. “It’s really unfortunate. They’re friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he’s been making a strong contribution to our community.”
Point is, somebody sent Ayers.
UIC faculty and staff, understandably eager to keep bread and butter on table, are certain not to object to this thwarting of inquiry. Sure, retired dean Stanley Fish, outspoken in liberal causes, could raise a stink from his now-Florida base, say in a NY Times op-ed. . . . . I said he could, ok?
My own Society of Midland Authors, hoary with antiquity by virtue of its founding by Chicago literary greats, could protest by withdrawing its archives from this very special collection which doesn’t want nobody nobody sent. . . . . It could, ok?
Meanwhile, what’s this Shortshanks business that the redoubtable Kass tosses into the journalistic hopper? Well, make it Longshanks, and you have the English king Edward I, a big guy, who among other things in a long life of beating people up and taking over countries, expelled the Jews in 1290 — he needed the money.
The present Mayor Daley is not very tall, nor was his father, hence Shortshanks, with a nod to the powers of a medieval king. It works for me, but still Kass might want to rethink the ‘Shanks part, or explain it better than I just did,
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Reader D: Mayor Daley in this instance may remind John Kass of Long or Shortshanks, but he reminds me of Chief Clancy Wiggum in The Simpson’s, who’s wont to say: “Okay folks, show’s over. Nothing to see here, show’s over, move on ….”
Blithe Spirit 
Cover-ups on top of cover-ups, disinformation on top of disinformation. Are you still able to keep score, Jim? I can’t; my scorecard’s an unreadable mess.
If only Ayers-to-Obama-to-Daly were a double-play combination, instead of a pathetic little political squeeze play.
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You may behaving trouble keeping score, Nicholas, but the whole sordid situation is entirely too clear to me.
Obama is as corrupt and lying as are his buddies, Daley, Ayers, Wright, et. al.
Maybe some of this is sinking in to the general public as McCain’s poll numbers are rising and B.O.’s are falling.
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I definitely smell a rat in Mayor Daley, Nicholas. Not to think that Daley isn’t protecting both of his political buddies by keeping records under lock and key which could reflect unfavorably upon his friends is like believing in the tooth fairy. The “Chicago-way” defines both men. The stain is too deep to erase. This stain must be kept under cover at all costs. For to expose any part of it would allow truth to emerge about the corruption that surrounds two (Obama-Ayers) who are deeply entrenched in the Chicago political machine.
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Margaret and Nancy, I hope it didn’t seem as if I were carrying water for Mayordaley! The fact that Daley would cover for unrepentant terrorist Ayers brings a certain symmetry to the proceedings.
Obama’s unofficial campaign workers in the media (most recently the AP’s Nedra Pickler and the Trib’s Clarence Page) have long insisted that only a racist would criticize Obama alias Soetoro, and more recently, that only the “lunatic fringe” would say he was anything but mainstream. Some critics now emphasize, a la John Kass, that he is a traditional, corrupt Chicago poll, as if that precluded his also being a black supremacist. And yet, while the Windy City may he home to the “Chicago Way,” it is also the capitol of American black supremacy (which is why O went there), and black supremacy and political corruption, rather than being mutually incompatible, are mutually reinforcing (Farrakhan, Wright, Tillman, et al). Think Detroit, D.C., East St. Louis, Gary, Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, New York, etc.
I believe that Obama is an intellectually pretentious, silver-and-fork tongued, American Mugabe.
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