Ayers, Obama, Annenberg... and Reagan?

At left is TV Guide publisher Walter Annenberg and his wife, Leonore. The handsome tall guy with them is Ronald Reagan. Walter introduced Ronnie to Maggie Thatcher. Ronnie liked Walter's philosophy and philanthropy so much he gave him the Medal of Freedom. Ronnie liked Leonore so much he made her his State Department's Chief of Protocol. This was after Walter had already served as Richard Nixon's Ambassador to England. Ronnie and his Wife, Nancy, enjoyed Leonore and Walter's company so much they spent holidays and New Year's Eves together. Some of Walter's prized publishing moments included taking on Joe McCarthy and championing support among Americans for the post-World War II Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. [link]

Walter and Leonore were extremely committed philanthropists, largely focused on education, journalism and the power of knowledge. In 1993 they gifted the largest sum ever to improving public education and called it the Annenberg Challenge. The Challenge gave grants to many cities to reform urban schools and curricula. One such city was Chicago.

Let's have All Things Considered take it from here with text and audio of what they've found out about Annenberg's venture.

The Obama campaign says he first met Ayers in 1995, when Obama became chair of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million fund that awarded grants to groups trying to implement new programs to improve inner city education in Chicago.

Walter Annenberg, a lifelong Republican and former ambassador who was appointed by Presidents Nixon and Reagan, funded an ambitious program to reform urban education in many cities in the mid 1990s. Ayers was an important member of the group that developed and wrote the grant proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

Obama and Ayers attended at least six meetings together over six years, Annenberg Challenge records show, and those knowledgeable of the school reform group say it is likely there were other informal sessions of the group that they both attended. But no one on the board or on the Annenberg Challenge staff remembers Obama being any closer to Ayers than to any other member of the board. The Annenberg board also included several civic, business and education leaders, many of them Republicans.

...

Regardless of his background, it was never a problem for anyone — including Republicans and Chicago's most powerful business leaders — to work with Ayers on Chicago's public schools. In fact, Ayers is widely respected in the field of urban education.

"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. "It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."

So there you are, chairing a board filled with Rotarians, Socialites, CEOs, cultural movers. And one ex-radical hippie English professor. Did they know who Ayers was? Sure. He helped land this 50-million grant from Annenberg's foundation. And he was, in an odd disjointed way, one of them. The hippie's dad was CEO of ComEd, Illinois' electric company, and a medium-scale philanthropist in his own right. Anyway, word is Ayers seems to have got right with the law some 20 years later and now helps inner-city kids and pays his taxes. During meetings, everyone gets along fine, and it's no surprise: you can't swing a cat without hitting a Republican and some other pillar of the community trading names of good babysitters.

Yeah, if it was me, I'd have run screaming from the room.

Question is, why didn't somebody tell Annenberg and all those terrorist sympathizers to just call the whole thing off for fear of damaging their claims to loving their country?

Please, can we talk about Alaskan seccesionist movements, witch doctors and regulatory graft next? At least we have film of those non-inflammatory non-events and non-associations not happening.