Old grudges are, for me at least, the strongest. And I am most attached, among many others, to my grudge against Bill Ayers. But I thought that all happened a long time ago. Who would have believed a year ago, that Prof. Ayers, a guy who – in my view – was destructive and harmful forty years ago, could reappear as a "terrorist demon."

While it may be true that in his current life he is a useful citizen, when Ayers writes about the past, he is just as enraging, disingenuous, and manipulative as he ever was. In an op-ed article appearing in this past Saturday’s New York Times Ayers retains his old flair for self-promotion and misrepresentation. For example, he writes

In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices…

From this extremely lawyerly misrendering of events, one might think the townhouse explosion on Wast 11th Street which killed Teddy Gold, Diane Oughton and Terry Robbins had nothing with him. His role, one might erroneously conclude from this bizarre telling, only started after that explosion. I am tempted to apply to Mr. Ayers Mary McCarthy’s remark – everything he says is a lie including “and” and “the.” But that wouldn’t be fair. Some of what he says is true. The War in Vietnam was wrong, for example.

Check out Katha Pollitt's similar, but, of course, better expressed Ayers critique from The Nation  read more »