Holy Toledo - is he allowed to SAY something like that?!?! I hope he has someone watching his back. At all times. Oh, but you’re not gonna believe some of the things our “media” have cooked up. Check this out:

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

Okay. NBC. ABC. Two of the major networks using OUR AIRWAVES have lost all semblance of journalistic integrity.

What the HELL is the matter with these people?!?!? Good grief, how in the world will they ever cover anything remotely challenging for The One??? Oh, right - what they care? They are clearly making a lot out of this:

What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there’s nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed “Generation O”?

I’m sorry - were you saying something? I couldn’t hear you through the grinding of my teeth. When did the MSM and the National Enquirer change places? If you will recall, this year, it was the latter that that actually broke some real news. The MSM? Not so much:

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. “OBAMAISM — It’s a Kind of Religion,” says New York magazine. “Those of us too young to have known JFK’s Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us,” Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it “BAM-A-LOT.”

“Here we are,” writes Salon’s Rebecca Traister, “oohing and aahing over what they’ll be wearing, and what they’ll be eating, what kind of dog they’ll be getting, what bedrooms they’ll be living in, and what schools they’ll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas’ tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?”

I am seriously on the verge of being ill here. “It’s a Kind of Religion”??? Worshiping this lying, cheating, bamboozling, hoodwinking, race-baiting sham of a politician who hasn’t had an original idea I can discern, who got everywhere he is by stepping on the throats of others? THIS is a “kind of religion”? Okay, it is clear to me. We have gone to hell in a hand basket.

No doubt, Thomas Jefferson, who knew the importance of the Fourth Estate for maintaining a democracy, would be, check that, probably IS, rolling over in his grave right now. Kurtz asks the right question about this, well, INSANITY:

But aren’t media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

“Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not,” historian Michael Beschloss says. “Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they’re interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president.”

So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today’s front page. “Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration,” the headline said, with 65 percent saying “the USA will be better off 4 years from now.”

Yeah, I saw that headline, too. I wondered who the hell they were talking to first, then realized it was probably an AP article. Sure enough, it was. Like they haven’t been in the tank all year long. Hahahaha.

And why, pray tell, would these young people think Obama is “cool,” yet know NOTHING for which he stands?? I mean, really - on what, exactly, are they making that determination? His listening to Ludacris? The misogyny? Reverend Wright’s racist ravings? What?? What a bunch of ridiculously uninformed children. And THEY are the future? Yikes. Sure will be interesting to see what happend if they ever get more than one brain cell to rub against another. Or as Kurtz puts it:

But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?

“We’re celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think,” says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. “Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course.”

FDR?? LINCOLN?? Are they INSANE????? LINCOLN??? The ONLY thing Obama has in common with Lincoln is living in IL. FDR? What are you people SMOKING???

And, sure. You just know you can count on the media to reflect reality at SOME point, right? Because they have demonstrated time and again how willing they are to reveal the realities of who Obama really is, and what he has really done. Oh, yeah.

And not for nothing, but I sure as hell don’t remember the media being so glowing and positive about Hillary Clinton, who, since they were clearly unaware of this, was a “historical” figure by being a woman who received more votes than any other Democrat ever, as well as winning a primary, and a lot more than one. But hey, let’s bury THAT “moment” as quickly as possible so no one intrudes on The One’s ascension.

Thankfully (or despairingly), there is an itsy bitsy teensy weensy ray of light:

One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. “With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations,” its lead editorial says.

Naturally, it is European based, not US based. Big surprise. One could say that:

Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama,” has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate’s election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.

Can someone please tell me how it is that this virtual unknown with the thinnest resume I have ever seen, who couldn’t even get a full time job in any university or business on his lack of documentation, has manipulated the masses so masterfully with “words, just words” and no real deeds of which to speak? I mean, besides the characteristics he has demonstrated thus far besides those listed above?

Yes, this is a change:

I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a “Leave It to Beaver” era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of “I Spy” in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.

Is it nitpicky to point out that Obama is bi-racial, reared by his white and Indonesian family, not his African one at any time? But hey - why rain on (more of) their delusion? Those pesky facts, why am I bringing THOSE up? This is SPECIAL, you know:

It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election — “trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president,” Beschloss says — but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.

“The Kennedy buildup goes on,” James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. “The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent.”

Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.

The media would be remiss if they didn’t reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama’s election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as “Pop Champagne for Barack.” Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up “Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints.”

“Unadulterated joy”? That the MEDIA ITSELF created, and for which it fanned the flames?? Yeah, absolutely - don’t start having any kind of ethics now on our behalf! We might all fall over dead from the shock of it. So, please, just spare us and keep us in our little Happy Obama Place. Oh, yuck - making myself sick now…

Oh, and just in time for the holidays:

A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek’s quadrennial election volume is titled “A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama.” Publishers obviously see a bull market.

Oh, JOY!!!! Another way for Americans to spend all of our hard earned, ever dwindling dollars! Yay!

And speaking of cheers:

MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: “Barack Obama, America’s 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America’s promise.” What are viewers to make of that?

There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town — new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?

Obama’s days of walking on water won’t last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

Do you PROMISE, Mr. Kurtz? Because I am WAY over all of this Messiah worship we have had to endure, even as the most qualified candidate in decades was kicking his butt in the primaries on a whole helluva lot less money (that untraceable mountain of Obama’s money. See Ani’s post, “Obama’s Questionable Internet Donations Raise Suspicion at WaPo.“). But hey - that never stopped the “media” from promoting their rapturous tale of who Obama was, how he was the One for whom we had been waiting, regardless of what the people said with their votes…I mean, really - how much reporting did they even do on the Michigan fiasco? How many people in this country really knew what happened there? How many people outside the states where there were caucuses actually knew about the vast amount of caucus fraud? Close friends in Baton Rouge had no idea about a lot of this because their state wasn’t contested, so how would THEY know what had really been going on? As one of them said, they sure didn’t see this on ABC News! No, indeed. And that is exactly the problem. So many of the issues that should have been covered about Obama simply were not, or left to the “News Briefs” section. Not so for anything the least bit suspect or negative about any of the other candidates (or if it was one of Obama’s BFFs, like John Edwards. In that case, the MSM buried critical information the voters deserved to know.). And on it goes…

You may have seen this new video already, but personally, I find this to be a glaring indictment of the Fourth Estate,as if the above was not enough (H/T to American Girl in Italy for the heads up on this):

Holy Toledo. Add these results of the Zogby Poll commissioned by John Ziegler of “How Obama Got Elected“, and bear in mind these were MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…..

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Just to be clear - Palin did not ask for the clothes the MSM made such a brouhaha about, and she did not keep them. They were given to, or will be auctioned off for, charity.

For an added bonus, you can watch this John Stoessel interview of voters:

YIKES. Are people not required to take Civics classes any longer?? Really??

What a sad, sad state of affairs, for our educational system, for the Fourth Estate, for democracy, and for this country. We reap what we sow…

Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I’m a soldier.
Kurtz: You’re neither. You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Today’s errands boys are Thomas Friedman of the NY Times and the Washington Post’s David Broder. Both have turned out columns filled with praise for Senator Hillary Clinton. Both are sure she is more than up to the job of Secretary of State and both hope she stays in the Senate. It seems the Great Obama must not be sidetracked by the distractions of the Clintons! What they fail to mention is that most of the so-called distractions of the Clintons are created by the media in the first place. So in other words, the most qualified candidate for Secretary of State should not take the job because we (the MSM) will simply make it impossible for her to function since we will be spending inordinate amounts of time looking into every moment of private citizen and former President Clinton’s life, interpreting every utterance from him again and again and investigating every dime he makes. We will also dissect every facial expression from Hillary to figure out what she really must be thinking at every moment.

You can read Friedman here and Broder here.

Meanwhile, the man who will be President remains unvetted.

Friedman is concerned with the relationship between Senator Clinton and the President-elect. He argues that for the Secretary of State to be effective, the world must know she is speaking for the President.

Frankly, Obama could appoint his dear mother-in-law as secretary of state, and if he let the world know she was his envoy, she would be more effective than any ex-ambassador who had no relationship with the president.

Our current president never cared about this, so neither of his secretaries of state were particularly effective. Rather than having Colin Powell’s back, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delighted in stabbing Powell in the back, particularly when he was on the road. But being close to the president is not enough. Condoleezza Rice had a close relationship with Bush, but Bush had no coherent worldview to animate her diplomacy, so all her travels added up to less than the sum of their miles. The two most impactful secretaries of state in the last 50 years were Baker and Henry Kissinger. Both were empowered by their presidents, and both could candidly talk back to their presidents.

Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away. They know when they’re talking to the secretary of state alone and when they are talking through the secretary of state to the president.

It is a valid point. However, Senator Clinton’s performance on Obama’s behalf during this campaign more than proves she can be a team player. As a woman she has been forced to understand time and again how to succeed and forge ahead while playing a “subservient” role. As for their personal relationship, the MSM has been telling us about President-elect Obama’s great judgement for months. Shouldn’t they trust him on this one?

As for Broder, well he just wants Obama to think for himself.

What Obama needs in the person running the State Department is a diplomat who will carry out his foreign policy. He does not need someone who will tell him how to approach the world or be his mentor in international relations. One of the principal reasons he was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war with Iraq was not in America’s interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton.

Uh, David, what if he doesn’t have a foreign policy? This could be a President-elect reaching out because he needs help shaping that policy. If you haven’t noticed, most of President-elect Obama’s foreign policy talks have been at Rashid Khalidi’s dinner table. Yes, there were some vanity trips abroad during the campaign, but the experience and knowledge is not there. I am surprised Broder is not praising that “superior judgement” for the President-elect actually recognizing this.

And of course, Broder reminds us she is married to Bill.

Even if Hillary Clinton were ready to play such a subordinate role, which she might be, in return for a promise that her voice would be heard in the most serious policy debates, the presence of Bill Clinton makes that a doubly difficult assignment. The former president has, through the Clinton Global Initiative and his own extensive foreign travels and worldwide contacts, made himself a force in international affairs. It would be unfair, and unlikely, for him to shut down his own private foreign policy actions because they might conflict with his wife’s responsibilities. But foreign leaders would inevitably see Bill Clinton as an alternative route toward influencing American policy. And he would be unlikely to remain silent.

Are you trying to say that Mrs. Clinton would not be able to act independently of her husband? You admit Bill is doing good work abroad, so he shouldn’t stop and she shouldn’t be Secretary of State because of that? If the President-elect wants her and she wants the job, this can be worked out. And my guess is that former President Clinton would do whatever it takes to see to it that she has what she wants.

There are reports out today, that Senator Clinton has reservations about the job. She may decide she is better off staying in the Senate. If nothing else, remaining in the Senate will make it easier for her to raise funds to retire the debt she incurred during the campaign. As Secretary of State those activities are severely restricted. As a Senator she is free to speak out on any matter whenever she feels it is necessary. As a cabinet member, you must carry the company line.

But it’s her decision to make. As for Friedman and Broder, another line from Apocalypse now comes to mind.

Civilian: “Terminate with extreme prejudice”

Terminate their columns, that is.

Imagine yourself at the podium talking to a huge crowd, and the words on the teleprompter say things like: "This is the moment that the world is waiting for. . ." or, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." How do you pull it off? Maybe you flash to Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, running across the top of a train shouting, "Acaba! Acaba!" with stirring music underwriting your every move. Even so, something in you hesitates at throwing your full self into such grandiosity. Something healthy in you that feels it’s just too way over the top. Besides, isn’t it up to other people to say whether you are a transformative figure?

That something in you that hesitates is not present in some people, such as Barack Obama. When he proclaims that, "we are the change we’ve been waiting for," he goes full tilt with a straight face and no embarrassment. Those caught up in his rhetoric feel like they are part of the "we," and that they are going to be part of something big and wonderful together. Others of us get an unsettling sense that even when he says "we," it’s all about him, quite singular. We don’t sense individuals in a crowd relating to him (as we do, for example, when Hillary Clinton speaks), but a fused entity lost in him. He is not offering to  serve them or fight on their behalf. He is proclaiming that they can become part of him. Many of us get an eerie chill because this is the kind of messianic promise made by cult leaders, not politicians.

And that’s just the beginning of the diametrically opposed reactions to Obama that have deeply divided feminists, progressives, and Democrats, and pitted friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, networks, interest group members and officials, former political allies, as well as demographic groups against one another. One of the things that keeps us so divided is that his devotees and even many of his converts seem to know so little about him yet consistently reject information that does not fit with their trusting view of him. Many pour out unprecedented—for "progressives"—nastiness, misinformation, and hatred to demean Hillary Clinton and then Sarah Palin, and to intimidate and even threaten those who don’t agree with them. Their bullying has dominated campuses, caucuses, and the convention as well as the blogosphere and media. "Truth squads" aim to silence anything but unqualified admiration.

This is not politics as usual. How can we explain the depth and ferocity of opposing views about a man who portrays himself as a uniter? What is unleashing such widespread animosity and bullying? Is there something about the candidate himself that is inherently divisive?

When a situation has lots of pieces that don’t seem to fit, I look for a lens that can make comprehensive sense of them. In this case, we can get part of the way there via Alinsky-style "community organizing" which Obama says is the best education he ever had. This explanation dovetails perfectly with another that takes us deeper and makes sense of diametrically opposed perceptions and reactions: the anatomy of the candidate’s "self-system." The hypothesis advanced here is that his self-system appears to be organized by "narcissistic personality disorder" (NPD). The NPD lens can illuminate the structure and dynamics not only of the candidate but also of his campaign and the roles of the key sets of players. That is the focus of this article which has grown into two parts: why Obama cannot unify, and how he has divided us.

Having first engaged seriously with NPD 30 years ago and integrated it into my interdisciplinary work, I find the term "narcissist" can be a valuable tool when it is not tossed out casually or without a clue that the self-centered-ness to which it typically refers is merely the tip of an iceberg. We need to dive beneath the surface.

When we do, we discover that NPD is a defective way of organizing the self. Rather than growing around a core, it is cut in half and has no center. The ensuing hollowness and fragmentation explains why "NPDs" lack empathy and authenticity, and have difficulty standing by a principle. It’s also why the psychiatrists who first began recognizing this pattern referred to it as the "as-if" personality. Non-professionals who try to figure out NPDs invariably find themselves
encountering masks and personae, and puzzle over what lies beneath them. Where is the "real" person? Where is the "real" Barack Obama?

They will never succeed in finding him. The devastating truth about NPDs is that there is no "there" there. Nothing substantial and real lies under the masks. There are only masks.

But there is an invisible anatomy beneath the masks. It makes sense of what otherwise doesn’t. It shows us how the pieces fit together and why NPDs are inherently divisive. NPD is not uncommon, and it comes in variable degrees and with different overlays. We’ve all paid an enormous price for not recognizing NPD the last time around. Bush, too, claimed to be a uniter. Despite the disaster he has perpetrated, the Democratic establishment and most of the media have learned absolutely nothing. They can’t wait to do it all over again.

I, on the other hand, being a sociologist, tend to look beneath the surface to social and behavioral processes and the meanings they enact. I have been appalled by what it reveals about this campaign. I am perhaps even more disturbed by the feeble degree of interest and outrage among so many Democrats about these processes and what that bodes for our future. My allegiance is to neither wing of the corporate party nor their candidates, but to getting at the truth—the only basis for any of the
things we say we value.

The issue of divisiveness initially came into focus during the spring because, despite his rhetoric, Obama’s campaign and captive media kept hammering Clinton as "polarizing," and, along with the DNC, as "dividing the Party." How could a candidate who kept getting stronger and winning all the swing states be seen that way—unless, as we now know, the playing field had been rigged before a single vote was cast? This claim had legs, however, because it built on the old shibboleth that Hillary is polarizing. Really? What has seemed obvious to me for the past sixteen years is that Hillary is just the Rorschach onto whom has been projected our culture’s polarizing ambivalence about women, especially powerful women, a deep ambivalence that is carried by many women as well as many men. Not only was Hillary getting a phoney bad rap, but, equally troubling, why were so many voters unable to see through the media narratives to discern that the Obama campaign, their bloggers, and their captive media were the ones generating extraordinarily hateful vitriol and divisiveness?

When I began this piece in early August, we could still hold out the hope that the pledged and automatic delegates could resist the monumental pressure and intimidation to choose the eminently qualified woman over the unqualified man—and of course, as most people don’t know, they nearly did on Convention Wednesday until they were quashed. Although the short-term electoral context has changed, nothing changes the absolute necessity of untangling the modus operandi of this campaign. Liberal ideologues will consider my critique heretical while I consider their singularity and suppression of other narratives dangerous. I’m in the business of deconstructing false narratives and exposing what goes on beneath them—the job our defunct Fourth Estate failed to do.

Forming a Self: the Right Way and a Wrong Way. To understand NPD, we need to see the invisible structure beneath the masks. The kind of structure in focus here is mental: how we represent images, feelings, and experiences and organize them into a pattern or structure. Because we filter new experience through that structure, it becomes a self-reproducing system. The most basic of these structures is how we configure the self.

Gaining a sense of self while also learning about relationships and boundaries with others is the big task of an infant/toddler. When this goes well, "I" develop a sense of "me" and "you" in relationship with a realistic internal boundary separating us.

• Someone organized by NPD never got that right. Instead, the young narcissist-to-be lays down a different primary pattern: good/bad.

• The profoundly disturbing implication is that his self has no core or center from which to grow himself. Instead, he has two halves split off from each other. They don’t "talk" to each other. His self-boundary is in the wrong place. It divides him in two rather than drawing a line between himself and the other.

• What gets really crazy-making is that both halves of "me" get mixed up with "you" (i.e., my mental representations of you). Both halves cut right across self and other. "Good me" conflates parts of you and of me, and "bad you" conflates different parts of you and of me.

• The mixups enabled by his mislocated boundary lead to unending projections and reversals that are inevitably destructive, and make our heads spin when we try to untangle them. That’s why it is so important to slow them down and have some guidance for how to see their strange anatomy.

To add to our difficulty in seeing through the spaghetti maze, NPD is a deep structure which can be overlaid by later developments and adaptations that obscure its operation to many observers. The bright NPD can use his charm to "pass" with people who aren’t used to looking deeper, and in situations that do not threaten his faulty structure. Things get very nasty very quickly, however, whenever his "stuff" kicks in. That, not his surface adaptations, is my focus here. I begin with half of his faulty self, what the literature refers to as the "Grandiose Self."

Grandiose Self. The surface presentation of the Grandiose Self may be extremely charming, polished, even charismatic. He has a sense of entitlement and an appearance of great independence. Beneath his
grandiosity, however, lies a sense of emptiness and hollowness. How can he not feel hollow when he has no center?

Rather than learning how to "feed" and take care of himself, the NPD’s sense of entitlement leads him to expect to be filled up emotionally and supplied by his admirers. His Grandiose Self requires a steady diet of admiration, applause, and other supplies to feel alive, real, and good; anything less than wholehearted approval may be experienced as criticism. When the applause stops, the narcissist deflates like a balloon.

Beneath his grandiosity and entitlement lies the hidden structure of the NPD’s Grandiose Self. It conflates three streams into the "good" self who the narcissist considers himself to be:

 
(a) realaspects of himself that he "owns" as being "who I am";

 
(b) qualities he idealizes and claims for himself but does not in fact embody; and

 
(c) mirroring aspects of other(s) which feed his fantasy of himself by reflecting the only image of himself he identifies with and will accept and which he appropriates as part of himself.

What’s wrong with this structure? First of all, the narcissist lacks the normal tension between who he is and his ideal or fantasy of himself. That tension is essential to realistic self-perception. Presidential candidates do not normally claim that the other party’s administration is handling Gustav better than Katrina because they are following "my recommendations."

Once we know about that conflation, we are not quite so surprised by the Obama mantras about the world waiting for His Coming. That conflation also explains why the speaker of such words shows no embarrassment in speaking them, or in demanding a Greek temple stadium or the Brandenburg Gate, or usurping a presidential seal for his podium. He feels entitled to these venues, symbols, and much more. When called on it, he does not feel shamed. No acknowledgment of his gross inappropriateness will be forthcoming, only a denial of his intent when turned down ("The Brandenburg gate was only one venue we were considering") or denial of our interpretation ("We never intended to use the seal for more than one occasion"). It’s like a cat who has misjudged a leap: "I intended to change my position in precisely that manner." Yet a cat knows she is pretending; the narcissist doesn’t.

Given the absence of a center and the fragility of the Grandiose Self, narcissists are defensive, thin-skinned, and lack a sense of humor about themselves. This may not at first appear obvious because they conceal their lack of humor and humility with preemptive, inoculating statements about themselves. ("They’ll try to scare you and tell you that I’m ….." the stump speech intones.) But underneath: how dare anyone criticize! Or worse, poke fun.

Nothing hurts a narcissist more than ridicule. Mockery and even simple questions can trigger "narcissistic wounds" that lead to retaliatory behavior—especially if they churn up some truth he is trying to hide. No surprise then that following an acerbic cartoon cover of the presidential pretender and his wife, there was, according to Dana Milbank, no room for the New Yorker on the Europlane.

Obama’s conflation of fantasy and reality is readily observable in his representations of his polygynous father and his union with his mother. Barack, Jr. has created a mythic birth for himself that rearranges facts, events, and time, including the Selma march (four years after he was born!). His inability to represent his parents’ relationship realistically is merely the beginning of fabrications, distortions, denials, and coverups about his birth, childhood, schooling, family, and chunks of his adult life. Like many others, I am concerned about not only what he is hiding about himself, but also his still being a prisoner of his internal family drama.

The relationship between the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, the founder and leader of the now defunct terrorist organization Weather Underground, is deeper and closer than currently understood, according to an individual who has had a senior role in the Obama candidacy. Ayers has had direct contact with the candidate.

The Weather Underground was responsible for a series of bombings during the 1970s that caused extensive property damage. [Only two bomb's failures (at the front of the home and under the gas tank of the family car) kept an entire family from dying as they slept, reports John Murtagh, then the 9-year-old son of the judge whose family WU wanted to kill. See Uppity Woman's story, "When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home." - Ed.]

Gee, John, thanks for telling us what we’ve known since February. A day late and a dollar short, wouldn’t you say? We have been shouting from the highest hill about the horrible bias endured first by Senator Clinton and now by McCain/Palin and a week before the election, you decide to finally say something?

I am further offended that Mr. King seems to think that because so-called journalists were “obsessed with Hillary,” they could not multi-task and simultaneously vet Obama. And how were they obsessed with her exactly? He does not say. Perhaps because he does not want to say they these sexist arses were obsessed with destroying her candidacy any way they could. Fawning mindlessly over Senator Obama surely was a clear path to accomplishing that goal.

Two things must be operating here – one, King is trying to save some of his own credibility before the election actually plays out; and two, he knows how CNN’s ratings are tanking and is looking to do damage control. Despite the media’s contention that we are just as in love with Obama as they are – the reality of their falling Neilsen numbers tells a very different story.

CNN of course in not the only culprit here – and they are also not the only ones paying the price in terms of their bottom line. MSNBC’s ratings have likewise tanked, otherwise Matthews and Olbermann would not have been demoted from doing any election coverage.

The LA Times currently has damaging video linking Al Khalidi and Obama and they are refusing to release it. Coincidentally, the LA Times is also tanking and laying off workers. They have also been trumpeting Senator Obama since the beginning.

The NYTimes revenue plunged a whopping 50%, ad revenue collapsed by double digits, and NYT’s debt has just been rated “below investment grade” — or what is known in the investment business as “junk” — by the Standard & Poor’s bond-rating agency. Guess we no longer consider them the paper of record.

Looks like everybody’s chickens are coming home to roost.

Jeff Poor of BMI reports on CNN’s King: ‘Whining’ Media ‘Out of Touch’ on Election Coverage:

You know media bias has reached epic proportions when journalists are criticizing their own colleagues for a lack of professionalism in covering Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama and Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin….In an interview with South Carolina ETV set to air on “The Big Picture” Oct. 30, CNN chief national correspondent John King criticized his colleagues’ coverage of not only Obama and Palin, but the overall election.

In King’s words:

“I think there’s some very legitimate criticism that we did not treat all of the candidates in the Democratic race, but particularly the top two or three equally, because of the Clinton obsession in the national media,” King told host Mark Quinn. “It is a very fair point. We need to learn that lesson.”

King also accused the media of not adapting to the digital age. According to the CNN correspondent, the electorate has the ability to decouple themselves from the mainstream media and seek out information on the candidates without them.

“Once you move on from there – I do think that some of the criticism is justified. I think some of the criticism not so justified in that we have to adapt to the world we live in,” King said. “And the technology explosion has given people, voters, individuals an amazing opportunity. They can learn everything they want to learn about these candidates without us.”

And we have learned plenty without the likes of you, John. We have also learned plenty that is accurate and provable without the likes of Wolf Blitzer, Campbell Brown or the other Obama sycophants out there. How nice of John to notice. The internet is now officially the fifth estate, since the fourth estate doesn’t see fit to do its job.

King also criticized the media’s “whining” about limited access to Palin. “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams complained to NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer on Oct. 23 for having to wait 55 days for a Palin interview.

“Part of that is, may be legitimate,” King said of complaints the media treated Palin unfairly. “Part of that is may be how the McCain campaign put her out there. We whine too much sometimes. If the McCain campaign doesn’t want to make Sarah Palin available for interviews – OK, just say they won’t make her available for interviews. We don’t have to jump up and down and scream and cry about that … It’s not our job to whine or complain.”

King said journalists failed to go beyond the Washington-New York corridor to cover the election, proclaiming they were “out of touch” with the majority of voters.

You bet they are out of touch. The media is functioning as an elite group, deigning to offer only the news they think we need to know – instead of reporting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them God. King points out that his colleagues and bosses at CNN (and arguably elsewhere) are, just as the elites in the Democratic Party, breathing a rarified air, paying no attention to the needs of the American people.

“There is – I say this all the time and many in my business disagree with me, but one of the things I love about what I do is I travel,” King said. “And there are a lot of people who sit – they’re wonderful people. They’re well-intentioned, don’t get me wrong, but they sit in New York or Washington and they don’t come to South Carolina or North Carolina or Ohio or any other swing state out here and actually talk to human beings or watch what it’s like to stand outside of a factory that just shut down with people.”

According to King, the problem with the media coverage was they were too influenced by their surroundings and that changed their world view.

“And so their attitudes are influenced by the fact that they live in Washington or New York and they don’t travel enough,” King said. “And the criticism is that makes them elitist. I would just say sometimes there are some people who are very influential in our business who are somewhat out of touch.”

King also finds time to criticize McCain saying he should make his candidacy more about the economy and not about the Obama character question. Gee, John, funny, I thought that’s what he was and is doing.

“They thought this would be an election about Barack Obama’s character,” King said. “Sure Barack Obama has the advantage. The Democrats have the advantage this year. They thought they could make it about ‘he’s new, he’s left of center, you don’t know this guy; you can’t trust this guy.’”

“But the economic concerns have magnified,” King said. “We always knew the economy would be the number one issue, but it is number one, two, three, four, five and six because of all the different pressures – Wall Street bailouts, loss of jobs, economic anxiety, health care pressures, the price of energy. McCain’s argument seems smaller to many people in a big election about the economy.”

This is nonsense. If McCain wanted to travel the path of Obama’s character and nefarious associations there is a helluva lot more that he could have attacked Obama on. He is choosing the high road and trying to talk about the issues. This is the one place where I find King to be disingenuous. On the one hand, he is criticizing his colleagues for being out of touch, which they are, and on the other hand, he is parroting the same ridiculous talking points that McCain is ‘struggling in the polls’ because he is not making the economy a big enough issue. Still sucking a little koolaid – eh, John? Obama over polls – you yourself have noticed that when doing election night coverage. Did you conveniently forget that fact for this interview? Joe the Plumber and the newly discovered Obama ’socialist/redistributive change’ audio tapes from 2001 are surely a game changer, as is Sarah Palin.

John King’s statements are way late, but it’s a start; still enough time for the media to turn en masse this next week and tell the truth about a thoroughly unqualified, even dangerous candidate.

Yeah. Okay. Sure.

We’re waiting…

Uh, yeah, so Edwards apparently spends a lot of time with ACORN. But wait - it gets better (and by better, of course, I mean on the issue of voter fraud):

I see (and as you can see, this is part 6 of 6 - the other 4 parts were the conclusion of his speech, and then more questions). It isn’t that ACORN is fraudulently registering people that’s the problem, because - hey - they’ve “registered” over 1 million people! - but it is the INVESTIGATION into those “voter registrations” that is the problem because they may suppress “voting.” I gotcha.

Now, look - as the politicians ALL like to say (Joe Biden and Barack Obama especially) - I am ALL for lawfully registering people to vote, and I am adamantly opposed to any real attempts at voter suppression in any communities by anyone. To attempt to thwart anyone’s right to vote is just flat out wrong.

That being said, when ACORN registers 666,000 (okay - am I the only one who finds the “666″ part to be a bit telling?!?!) in a state that has been steadily declining in population, and when it is already acknowledged by the “powers-that-be” that approximately 200,000 are fraudulent, it makes the argument that this is all about voter suppression, just a bit weak (here’s a LINK for more information on that, and actual voter fraud in OH)…Just a little tiny bit…I wonder why the applause wasn’t QUITE so loud about Edwards’ suggestion of paper balloting? Hmmm - I could be reading into that, but then again, maybe not…

Anywho - I thought this was all pretty interesting, the connections Edwards has with ACORN, too. Maybe not quite as many connections as Obama, but hey, if he did, maybe he’d be the nominee right now! Hahaha - just kidding. We all know the fix was in for Obama. Still - sure seems like ACORN has a mighty wide net for prominent Democrats, especially for a “nonpartisan” organization! Ahem. I reckon that’s how they ended up with $31 million of our money. I’m sure they do some good with it, but they sure do some major shenanigans with it, too. I reckon it’s the latter that’s exactly why they DO get so much money, especially in election years, don’t you? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

UPDATE:
As it turns out, an attorney for ACORN also thinks there are some issues with charitable funds and ACORN. Oh, yes - it was in the NY Times yesterday. Yes, the attorney, Elizabeth Kingsley, lays out all of her concerns regarding ACORN and charitable giving, as well as THIS little gem:

It also offers a different account of the embezzlement of almost $1 million by the brother of Acorn’s founder, Wade Rathke, than the one the organization gave in July, when word of the theft became public.

“A full analysis of potential liability will require consultation with a knowledgeable white-collar criminal attorney,” Ms. Kingsley wrote of the embezzlement, which occurred in 2000 but was not disclosed until this summer.

Here’s one of the best parts, though. Guess which voter registration group is affiliated with ACORN? Project Vote. So what, you ask? Well, alert citizens know that to be the group for which OBAMA worked in IL. Turns out that the only people on its Board of Directors are from ACORN. Wanna tell us again, Barack, about your relationship with ACORN, of the rampant voter registration fraud?? *Crickets* Yeah, that’s what I thought.

If only the NY Times had acted like a real newspaper and not pooh-poohed this whole idea that ACORN was acting in a fraudulent manner. One can only imagine what could have happened had they acted to INFORM rather than CAMPAIGN for their chosen candidate. Sadly, that’s all we can do - imagine. Hopefully, though, this is not TOO little too late, and the people of the US might get the clue that there are organizations working HARD to undermine our right as citizens to cast a vote that matters. Let’s not just hope, though - let’s spread the word. Our votes must matter!

But first, I do want to point out that a lot is going on AGAIN with ACORN. Sen. Cornyn of TX (R) is pushing legislation to stop all taxpayer dollars to ACORN. Yes, it seems that since 1998, ACORN has received $31 MILLION of YOUR taxpaying dollars. You read that right - this very partisan organization (despite their claims) has received $31 million TAXPAYER dollars.

See, I don’t want ANY partisan organization to receive taxpayer money. Not ACORN, not Faith-based organizations, not any partisan organizations. Non-partisan only, I say.

Now, Senator Cornyn isn’t sure he can get our money BACK, but he does want to staunch the flow. Remember that Chris Dodd also tried to get 20% of the bailout repayment to go to ACORN, National La Raza, and the National Urban League. Do the math - 20% of $700 billion dollars = $140 BILLION dollars. OF YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS.

Thank heavens that got kicked out, but what does that say about what ACORN really does that Dodd and others wanted to funnel them that kind of money?? Mighty suspect, if you ask me.

Oh, and more misogyny with Sarah Palin as the target has been out this weekend, especially a YouTube video. I refuse to give it any more play, but it featured a former NFL football player knocking Gov. Palin to the ground and rendering her unconscious. Again - the attacks on her are attacks on women, pure and simple. There is no other way to paint it. They aren’t attacking her POLICIES, they are attacking her GENDER, same as they did to Senator Clinton. Why women would still support a party that treats them so shamefully is beyond me, but that’s just me. There us an excellent post at No Quarter entitled, “Dear Sarah, Dear Sister” on this topic that is WELL worth reading.

Okay - now for a light moment. My mother read this to me from the Charlotte Observer, her local paper. My mother had five children, a pertinent piece of information for this article, which is entitled, “Are We Really Sure Deep Throat Wasn’t A Woman With Kids?”

They say talk is cheap, but not when it comes to talking on the phone when kids are around. Its author is Tracy Curtis, who apparently knows whereof she speaks when she writes:

If they hadn’t revealed who Deep Throat was back in 2005, I would swear it was a woman. A woman with children.

That would have explained everything. Why she couldn’t talk on the phone with the Washington Post. And why she had to secretly meet the reporter in a parking garage.

And it wouldn’t have been because she was afraid her kids would hear her spilling secrets about the Nixon administration. It’d be that Bob Woodward couldn’t hear a word she was saying because of all the kids screaming in the background.

I think my mom could agree with that. In my family, there are three boys and two girls, all about two years apart. Oh, we could get into some trouble, I’ll tell ya.

Why is it that every time a mom gets on the telephone, the world around her crumbles? And I can speak for all moms, because when I talk to another mom and I’ve got my kids all around me, I can hear her kids all around her. In fact, every conversation I’ve had this week has ended with a blood-curdling scream in the background and then “I gotta call ya back.”

I know THIS is true. When Mom would get on the phone, we’d stand there going, “Momma, Momma, Momma, Momma…” What am I saying - we STILL do that!

Any normal person would call the police. But if you’re a mom, you just hang up and finish making dinner. No biggie.

My initial theory was that I call too much attention to myself when I get on the phone. I’m too obvious. I’m too happy and excited to just be having conversation beyond which Power Ranger is the strongest. And my kids can’t handle it. They have to be right under foot with my full attention.

I’m imagining that a lot of you moms out there are nodding your head up and down at this point. I reckon it must be true, because I know WE did that, too. I bet we could have been out in the yard, up in a tree or something, and as soon as Mom got on the phone, there we’d be! “Momma, Momma…”

So I started sneaking off to make calls. Bathrooms and broom closets became my regular haunts. Dial quickly and quietly and speak in low, robotic tones that won’t be picked up by ears conditioned to “Sesame Street.”

And it worked. For a while. Until somebody had to go really bad and I had no choice but to let him in. And turn on the lights.

Ms. Curtis is lucky. She has the benefit of CELL phones!!! Mothers of people my generation (and older) weren’t so lucky. About all our moms could do was say, “I gotta go kill one of my kids now,” and hang up the phone attached to the wall.

There are lessons to be learned from Watergate. Particularly if you’re like me and you desperately need to have a conversation. They knew it back then and I know it now. You gotta have a plan.

When Bob Woodward wanted to talk to Deep Throat, he’d move a flower pot with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment. And Deep Throat scheduled meetings by inking a clock face with the time on page 20 of Woodward’s copy of the New York Times.

So now, when I want a call from a girlfriend? I stick my husband’s Clemson (Clemson? Ugh. Not even UNC?? Sorry - longstanding NC v. SC university rivalry!) flag in our azaleas. Then my girlfriend confirms the meeting with a smiley face on page 20 of my Parent Magazine. And then we meet at the farmers market, in the shadows, by the cantaloupes.

We don’t share government secrets and we don’t rat anybody out. But for the lengths that we go to, to have a complete conversation, 10 minutes of uninterrupted gabbing is plenty exciting. tracyobserver@yahoo.com

No doubt - I think my mom’s best opportunity to get some peace and quiet was when we all went to school. That was about it, until we went to college. It didn’t stop us from being bratty whenever we came home, though. I guess some things never change…

Therein lies the comic relief from me for the time being. I hope it gave you a smile as you ponder why the Obama people are giddy that Gen. Colin Powell, he of the “white powder” before the UN to get us into the Iraq War in the FIRST damn place (and another excellent article which I recommend to you, “Powell Endorses Obama, and Supporters Pee Their Pants in Glee.”). Or how many of these multiple-times registered people will be voting in this election, and how often. Or has the NY Times officially become a paper on the lines of the National Enquirer after their smear piece on Cindy McCain? Inquiring minds want to know! Ahem. But for now, I hope you can have a smile for a moment, anyway…

The partial story told by the New York Times today is collapsing of its own weight but has likely added to the confusion. Since I am one of the “bloggers” referred to without an explanation in the Times’ story I thought I would summarize the top ten highlights of the current state of play.  These ten key points confirm what I have argued all along - that Bill Ayers was responsible for the elevation of Obama to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge board.

1) The key question is whether Bill Ayers had a role in the selection of Barack Obama to become Chairman and President of the $160 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a multi year school reform effort started in 1995.

2) This is the key question because if it is true that Ayers played a role in Obama’s selection it indicates that Ayers and Obama had a pre-existing relationship.

3) If Ayers and Obama did have a pre-existing relationship it undermines claims by the Obama Campaign that the relationship between Ayers, an authoritarian political figure who once engaged in bombings to implement his politics, was “tenuous” or “casual” and that Ayers was just a neighbor of Obama’s in Hyde Park.

4) I believe that Obama and Ayers shared a similar world view with respect to education issues, at least. For example, during their time together running the Chicago Annenberg Challenge they supported funding for groups like the Small Schools Workshop and Local School Councils. These groups were criticized as engaging in “teacher bashing”  by union activists and as a “political threat” to school principals by Arnold Weber, a fellow Annenberg board member.

5) I have presented evidence here at Global Labor [published at No Quarter and at the Global Labor blog] that Ayers did in fact play a direct and personal role in Obama’s elevation to the CAC board. This evidence consists of letters exchanged at the time of these events between the national Annenberg Challenge led by Vartan Gregorian, the President of Brown University, and Bill Ayers, on the one hand, and between Gregorian and Adele Simmons, President of the MacArthur Foundation, an advisor to Ayers, on the other. 

Those letters state clearly that Ayers was actively engaged in the board selection process in November and December of 1994.

I described those letter to the Times when asked about this and provided them copies.

6) I also argued that these letters are consistent with the legal responsibility Ayers had as the representative of the recipient of the $50 million Annenberg Challenge grant.

7) According to the Obama campaign and now according to emails I have received from the New York Times, Ayers had “nothing” to do with the selection of Obama for the board Chairmanship. 

They claim that according to Deborah Leff and Patricia Graham that only Leff and Graham recruited and nominated Obama, respectively. However, in their published story the Times did not quote Leff to that effect. Neither did the Obama campaign in its statement on the matter. I have asked the Times for clarification.

If Leff’s and Graham’s current recollections are true, then the written contemporaneous documentation I provided to the Times (letters to and from Vartan Gregorian and Ayers) appears to be contradicted and this leads to a very odd conclusion: that Leff, a lawyer, and Graham went around the back of the legal representative of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (Ayers) to recruit and nominate the CAC board Chairman (Obama).

Why would they have done that? In fact, I do not think they did.

9) In August of 1994, Leff wrote a letter to Brown’s Gregorian lauding Bill Ayers for his leadership in organizing the grant application and said that her Joyce Foundation was awarding $80,000 to his Annenberg working group, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, to continue their work to secure and establish the Annenberg program. This Collaborative was the group which Ayers represented when he submitted the final Annenberg grant application in November.

Thus, as of August, 1994, Leff’s Joyce Foundation also recognized officially that Ayers was the formal agent for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge applicant, the Collaborative, and they were financially aiding him in that effort.

In addition, letters from the Governor of Illinois, the Mayor of Chicago, the Superintendent of the Chicago school system, the Executive Director of the Woods Fund, the Executive Director of the Polk Bros. Foundation, the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Council of Chicago Area Deans of Education all sent to Vartan Gregorian acknowledge the leading role of Ayers and/or the Collaborative he formed in the formation of the Annenberg Challenge.

10) To accept the story 14 years later of the Times and the Obama campaign requires us to conclude that Leff, unilaterally against her own board of directors (which in November added Obama), went around the back of Bill Ayers to impose on him secretly Barack Obama as the chair of the Annnenberg Challenge! That is a remarkable conclusion - and of course one that is not yet backed up by Leff herself!

Why not? Most likely because Leff as a lawyer understands now as she did then that whatever her personal role in the selection process, the legal power that Ayers possessed, as the agent of the CAC grant recipient - the Collaborative, to either reject or accept Obama as CAC Board Chairman was clear.

Thus, while Ayers may not have suggested the Obama name directly to Leff, only Ayers could approve of the appointment of Obama. No one else possessed the legal power to do so.

At their November meeting together, Ayers may have delegated to Leff, Ayers and Simmons the task of recruiting a pool of potential board candidates but only he could give the final approval - a condition of the Collaborative’s receipt of the grant, as set forth in the exchange of letters between Gregorian and Ayers. 

There are any number of ways that Ayers could have gotten Obama’s name into the mix.

For example, how did Leff think of Obama? Perhaps because Ayers had suggested his name to Simmons - an old friend of Leff’s from their days at Princeton - who passed it on to Leff without telling Leff that the name came from Ayers. Perhaps because Ayers had first suggested Obama to Leff for the Joyce Foundation board earlier in 1994 and then it occurred to Leff that Ayers would approve of Obama for the CAC as well. 

Or perhaps when Ayers asked Leff to help with the selection process he provided her with clear guidance on the kind of board chair he wanted: someone young, dynamic, a lawyer, with a background of supporting the CAC agenda of school reform, and someone who represented, as committed by Ayers to Gregorian, the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago. There were actually very few, if any, such individuals in Chicago other than Barack Obama, in light of the hostility of mainstream black organizations to the CAC agenda.

Or perhaps Leff, Simmons and Graham came up with several names and only when Obama’s was finally mentioned did Ayers grant his approval.

It does not really matter how Obama’s name got into the mix because in the end only Ayers had the legal authority to approve of Obama, whether or not Leff, Simmons and Graham understood that, much less the New York Times. Only if the Collaborative had revoked Ayers power to represent them, could that have changed. Of course, the opposite happened - they made Ayers co-chair and he represented the Collaborative at the board meetings of the CAC itself once it was established in March, 1995. 

Actually, the Times indirectly confirms this explanation when it quoted Ben Labolt that Ayers and Obama met for lunch, after Obama met with Graham.  Since LaBolt says this was the “first time” Ayers and Obama met, this lunch must have taken place before the CAC’s first board meeting in March of 1995. Although it is undoubtedly true that Ayers and Obama met long before this, that is legally sufficient evidence that Ayers approved of Obama as the board chair.

To test this proposition, ask what would have happened if Ayers, as the legal agent of the CAC grant recipient had said after that lunch, no, I do not want this person for the board? Leff, Graham and Simmons would have had no choice but to go back to the drawing board. They were only agents of Bill Ayers, the legal representative of the Collaborative, for the purpose of recruiting potential board members. They had no legally cognizable ability to impose a choice on Ayers and the Collaborative. This is true no matter what Graham or others may have thought when they told the Times that Ayers was not involved.

The individual with the legal power to overrule a decision is the person with the actual decision making authority.  

That was Bill Ayers and his decision was: Barack Obama.

……………..

I am a lawyer, political scientist and law professor. I teach courses and conduct research on the global capital markets, business law, international human rights and labor law.

……………..

SusanUnPC’s note: We all know Steve Diamond for his investigative work on Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers. Steve is a lawyer, political scientist and law professor. His blog is Global Labor and Politics.

Here is the only video proof that Barack Obama at one time was willing to talk about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (although he says nothing about Bill Ayers).

We will be posting a new piece by Steve Diamond later today. Why is the press continuing to ignore Obama’s stewardship as the chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenber Challenge (CAC)? The CAC disbursed more than $100 million dollars while Obama headed the board. Is he now ashamed of his work on that effort? In the meantime here is a succinct summary of the key questions the media ought to be asking Obama courtesy of the talented Mr. John Batchelor:

Unanswered Questions Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Barack Obama
By John Batchelor. posted on October 05, 2008 at 11:08 AM

Scott Shane’s Version

The New York Times assigned its first Bill Ayers profile since September 11, 2001 to a veteran political reporter Scott Shane, and the article published October 3, 2008 provides no new information about the mysterious relationship between Bill Ayers and his colleague of at least over a dozen years Barack Obama. In Scott Shane’s version, the two met by chance in Chicago in 1995 in a conversation about education, served briefly together on two Chicago foundation boards, lived in the same neighborhood, and have fallen out of meaningful conversation since 2002.

The Cutting Room Floor

There is evidence that Scott Shane and his colleagues worked carefully on this story and perhaps were obliged to leave out a deal of material that did not fit concisely in the most innocuous version. There remain many unanswered questions from the puzzle pieces of the story over many years. Below are some of these questions in chronological order when possible.

1. Most importantly, when and where did Barack Obama first meet Bill Ayers? Neither Bill Ayers nor Barack Obama would speak to Scott Shane for this piece, and Scott Shane mentions a “lunchtime meeting in a Chicago skyscraper” in 1995 but does not say this was the first meeting. Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt does assert, without further explanation, that the 1995 meeting was their first meeting. There exists no other published record of this meeting, nor of this meeting being the first meeting.

2. Is it coincidence or significant that both Columbia College student Barack Obama (Class 1983) and Columbia Teacher’s College doctoral student Bill Ayers were in New York City in the same time frame of the early 1980s, and that they both attended wool-gathering events about socialism at the Cooper Union in the early 1980s? And that Mr. Obama, after two indifferent post-college years working for a trade newsletter in New York, left for Chicago in 1985, while Mr. Ayers followed his wife to Chicago after receiving his doctorate at Teachers College in 1987?

3. Is it coincidence or significant that Barack Obama traveled to Chicago to work for Mike Kruglik in a Saul Alinsky-inspired organization, Developing Communities Project, because of a $12,000 grant from the Chicago-based Woods Fund? Is it significant that a member of the Woods board at the time was Ken Rolling, who would later serve as the executive director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) grant alongside Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama?

4. Is it coincidence or significant that Bernardine Dohrn (left, with Bill Ayers, 1981), after serving seven months in jail on a felony for refusing to cooperate with the 1981 Brinks robbery investigation, was employed from 1984-1988 at the prominent Chicago law firm, Sidley Austin, where both Michelle Robinson in 1988 and Barack Obama in 1989 would serve as summer interns, and where Barack Obama met his future wife? Is it coincidence or significant that Bernardine Dohrn supervised the interns at Sidley Austin and that this duty passed to Michelle Robinson after Bernardine Dohrn left to an associate professorship at Northwestern University? Is it coincidence or significant that Bill Ayers’s father Tom Ayers (1915-2007) was a major client of Sidley Austin and long a significant proponent of progressive causes in Chicago?

5. Is it coincidence or significant that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were known to be part of a Hyde Park support group for Mayor Harold Washington, and that this group included other prominent South Siders such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father William Pfleger? Is it coincidence or significant that Barack Obama has written that he was attracted to Chicago in 1985 because of the achievement of Harold Washington?

6. Is it coincidence or significant that, after graduating Harvard Law School in 1991, Barack Obama was offered his first law job in 1993 by Judson Miner, of Davis Miner Galand, who was a 1967 University of Chicago Law School classmate of Bernardine Dohrn?

7. Is it coincidence or signficant that Bill Ayers began his well-publicized pursuit of the $49.2 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge Grant with a sizeable grant from the Joyce Foundation in 1993-1994, and that the junior lawyer Barack Obama was named to the Joyce Foundation board in November 1994 by Joyce Foundation (since 1992) President Deborah Leff?

8. Is it coincidence or significant that Deborah Leff asserts that she alone suggested Barack Obama as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant board, beginning March 1995 — despite the puzzling fact that Barack Obama had no education or teaching experience and, then 33, was to serve at the head of a board that included two university presidents?

9. Is it coincidence or significant that a major recipient in the first year of CAC grants was a radical education enterprise headed by Bill Ayers and his University of Illinois education colleague, the self-proclaimed revolutionary communist Professor Mike Klonsky? And that Mr. Ayers’s employer, the University of Illinois, contributed a free room to serve as the CAC headquarters?

10. Is it coincidence or significant that not only was Mr. Obama’s first introduction as a political candidate made in the Hyde Park home of Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, but also, while Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers continued to serve on the CAC together, they participated in public policy panels together? In 1997, they were on a panel at the University of Chicago, purportedly organized by Michelle Obama, entitled, “Should a child ever be called a super predator?” In 2002, they were on a panel at the University of Illinois entitled, “Intellectuals, who needs them?” This cooperation was in addition to the enthusiasm that Mr. Obama expressed in print in 1997 for Mr. Ayers’s book, “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenille Court.” The unusual loss of all of Mr. Obama’s Illinois State Senate records, 1996-2004, prevents additional discoveries of their policy conversations.

11. Is it coincidence or significant that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers served on the Woods Fund board together 1999, 2000, 2001, and through mid-December 2002, during which time they together approved grants to many progressive enterprises, including Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church and a Chicago organization closely associated with the prominent radical Palestinian booster and confrontational Professor Rashid Khalidi, then of the University of Chicago and now of Columbia University? Is is coincidence or significant that there is no pubic record of the politician Barack Obama rebuking the author Bill Ayers (right, in a book promoting photograph) for his unacceptable remark, published in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, promoting Mr. Ayers’s book, “Fugitive Days” (Beacon Press), that “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”?

12. Is it coincidence or significant that Barack Obama and his spokespersons have changed the explanations about the nature of the relationship between Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama several times since the fact of it was first introduced to the presidential campaign this year? In February, campaign strategist David Axelrod said the men knew each other because their children attended the same private school — despite the generational age difference between the grown Ayers children and very young Obama children. In April, Mr. Obama, when asked during the Philadelphia debate by George Stephanopoulos, said that Ayers was a “guy who lived in the neighborhood” and a “professor of English” — a strange evasion given the facts of their work together on CAC and Woods. In September, Mr. Obama told Bill O’Reilly that he had not “seen” Mr. Ayers in a year and a half. In the Scott Shane piece, we are told by the campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt that the two met on the street a little more than a year ago and that there have been no telephone conversations or text messages between the two since Mr. Obama began serving in the Senate in January 2005. Unfortunately, this sort of non-denial denial does not speak to the repeated, credible reports of communication between Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama via interlocutors such as Mr.Axelrod.

13. Finally, is it coincidence or significant that despite all the heated attention that the Ayers-Dohrn-Obama acquaintanceship has attracted at least since February that Mr. Ayers has refused to end the questions? Mr. Ayers has not been silent in this period. He writes a regular blog, appears at many public events and most recently published a bizarre four-panel cartoon (right) of his Vietnam war resistance thoughts. His colleagues Mike Klonsky and the radical politician Tom Hayden are equally outspoken and are the energy behind Progressives for Obama, a sentimental collection of 1960s radicals now in their autumnal years. One brief message from Mr. Ayers would end the speculation about the unusual coincidences that put both he and Mr. Obama so often in the same cities at the same time with the same activities, and yet they remain unsympathetic and unresolved.

I responded earlier to an email from Scott Shane, author of the story, by updating my first post on this here.

This afternoon, Shane told Politico.com the following in response to my post on his story:

As for Steve, he was great in outlining his theory — that Obama and Ayers had a relationship going back many years, to the 1980s, and that Ayers therefore must have proposed Obama for the board. He looked at the same letters I’d seen showing Ayers (and one of the two co-organizers, Anne Hallett) had discussions early on with Annenberg folks about the need for a board. Unfortunately, his theory is wrong.

What Steve didn’t do was talk to the people involved. As I report, Deborah Leff and Pat Graham give a credible account of how they chose Obama, and I have no reason to think they’re lying. Moreover, if Obama only met Ayers when Obama joined the Annenberg project, it seems hardly likely that he would have pushed for Obama’s appointment. On the other hand, since Obama already served on Leff’s board, it makes perfect sense that she would propose him.

Let me explain the facts to Mr. Shane, once again, as I did in his lengthy interview with me:

1) Ayers and Obama were both active in the successful campaign in 1988 to establish a teacher/principal watchdog group, Local School Councils, in the Chicago public schools. The LSC’s have been called a form of teacher-bashing by union activists.

2) Ayers conceived of and led the process that resulted in a $49.2 million grant from the National Annenberg Challenge.

3) As the formal agent of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative (CSRC), the working group that applied for the grant, Ayers received an inquiry in November, 1994, from Vartan Gregorian, President of Brown University about the board selection process.

4) Ayers responded by describing his personal role and noted that Patricia Graham, another foundation head, had agreed already to serve.

5) Another exchange of letters between Gregorian and MacArthur Foundation President Adele Simmons also confirms Ayers personal role in the board selection process.

6) If Ayers was not involved it would have been a violation of his fiduciary obligation to the CSRC.

7) Shane says he spoke to Deborah Leff, then head of the Joyce Foundation, about the Ayers role but she did not tell him that Ayers had no involvement.

The board selection process for the CAC began in November of 1994, at least, and the board first formally met in March. Obama joined Leff’s Joyce Foundation in November. Even if Leff had a formal responsibility for the selection of CAC board members, which she did not, it strains credulity to suggest that in a few weeks she would have formed the basis of an opinion on Obama such that she could convince Graham that he should not just join the CAC board, but lead it, despite his youth, lack of experience in education, and lack of contacts to raise the $110 million in matching funds the CAC would have to raise. 

In addition, Leff would have had to convince Graham to join her in secretly appointing Obama to the board without discussing the idea with the individual with formal legal responsibility for the selection of the Board, Bill Ayers.

9) Of all the people Shane spoke to, only Graham, whom Ayers helped select for the CAC board, stated to Shane that Ayers had no involvement in the Obama selection. But that quote was not put in the Times story, despite its obvious importance. We do not know how Graham explains the contradiction between her recollection, 14 years later, and the written contemporaneous record of letters between Gregorian and Ayers and Gregorian and Simmons that make Ayers’ role in the board selection process clear.

In closing, let me note that I don’t want to weigh down this post with a recitation of the actual agenda carried out by the CAC.  Readers can find plenty on this blog about that, including Obama’s role in backing Ayers effort to shore up the teacher bashing Local School Councils and the hundreds of thousand of dollars doled out to Ayers and his ex-SDS comrade Mike Klonsky’s anti-teacher effort, the Small Schools Workshop. 

But suffice to say that the record of the actual work of the CAC demonstrates a consistency between the views of Ayers and those of Obama on their efforts during the “Chicago School Wars” against Mayor Daley. I have explained in my work here that I view this as a fundamentally authoritarian agenda aimed at undercutting the democratic power of elected union officials and government representatives. 

Thus, the suggestion by the Times that Ayers was an “ex-radical” is mistaken.