This is a smear that comes up often from Serial Exaggerator Sean Hannity, and since we’re now in full general-election mode, a hearty gut laugh no longer suffices as a rebuttal.

Hannity touts, nearly every day, Obama’s “questionable association” with William Ayers. “Who the Hell is William Ayers?” Good question.

William Ayers could pretty much be the poster child for the term “Sixties Radical.” He came from a well off Chicago family steeped in commerce and philanthropy. He went to college at the University of Michigan. It’s possible he had a pet dog. But none of that matters! No, what matters is that sometime around 1965 he joined all those long haired kids protesting the mistreatment of blacks and the escalation of war. He became the head of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

All of which you can find out about on Wikipedia.

As the 1960’s waned, the SDS fractured, and those more confrontational, including Ayers, branched off and formed The Weather Underground. They escalated from protests to riots, jailbreaks, and bombings.

I could leave that paragraph at two sentences. I could. But it rather gives the wrong impression of what the Weathermen were doing. They were incredibly careful not to hurt people — bombing government buildings in the middle of the night and only after sending letters telling what their target would be and why — and, in fact, the only people ever injured or killed by a Weatherman bomb were, actually, three idiot Weathermen. And they weren’t breaking violent criminals out of jail — they broke out Timothy Leary, jailed on a 10 year sentence for possessing two joints.

Which is not, of course, in any way, meant to say that I am agreeing with their tactics, but to point out they were not running anything resembling an al Qaeda cell.

So in 1970, three idiots blew up the town house where they were building bombs. This caused the other members to go underground. Including Ayers. In 1980, he and his wife turned themselves in — charges against Ayers had been completely dropped, and his wife and fellow Weatherman Bernadine Dohrn, received three years probation and a $15,000 fine. They live in Chicago now. He’s a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and they are prominent civic leaders in the city.

Got all that? Good. Now then, what’s Obama’s association with him?

Well, um… Oh! They both live in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. And Obama is also a teacher at a university, but not the same university. And…

The “questionable association” boils down to three specific things. The first comes to you from Politico:

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

…

“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”

Well stop the presses! Obama has been inside of Ayers’ house! Once!

The second, via The New York Times:

Mr. Ayers is listed as a member of the nine-member board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an offshoot of the Woods Charitable Fund, founded in 1941 by a prominent lawyer and telephone company executive. According to the fund’s Web site, it has focused in recent years on “issues that affected the area’s least advantaged, including welfare reform, affordable housing” and “tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty.”

For a time, Mr. Obama was on the board with Mr. Ayers, though he no longer has a formal association with the group.

Oh. My. God. Two civic leaders in the same city sat on the same civic board at the same time! Briefly! How deep does the rabbit hole go?

It goes one more deeper, with The Washington Post pointing out that:

Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001.

Well, I never.

There’s no doubt that William Ayers made some questionable decisions earlier in his life. There’s also no doubt that Barack Obama was in the second grade when Ayers was making those questionable decisions. Ayers overcame his past to be a productive and engaging member of his society, and yet is getting his name drug through the Hannity Machine every day.

But what really matters here is that Barack Obama has previously met William Ayers and has not kicked him swiftly in the balls, pulled his hair, and called his mother a whore, and therefore, Barack Obama is a terrorist.

And, because I am a vindictive little spirit galled by hypocrisy, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you how much Sean Hannity openly embraces and talks with The Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson who says “Thank God for slavery, because had not, then the blacks here would have been stuck in Africa.”

Did I mention Hannity sits on Peterson’s board? And that if you click that link right above that you’ll see an endorsement from Hannity? Would you like some video evidence?

You don’t need a Weathermen to know which way the wind blows, Sean.

We apologize for the delay. We now return you to your regularly scheduled debunks.