The collective meltdown over at the Corner over the past few weeks makes me tempted to say that a lot of folks have oozed down to Mark Steyn’s level, but actually Steyn’s getting dumber, too, as witnessed by his huzzahs for the ad and puzzlement that no wealthy 527 donors want to pick it up. But here’s a clue — the ad, while a damning indictment of Bill Ayers, has nothing on Obama. There’s not even a proper insinuation of wrongdoing here.

Jack Cashill at The American Thinker observes:

In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama’s career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama’s belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.

Yes, that’s right, it’s an article whose thesis is that Bill Ayers is the real author of Dreams From My Father. I found it via an enthusiastic Andrew McCarthy whose recent posts at The Corner seem to have been designed to make K-Lo look like the picture of intellectual rigor.

Of course the speculations gets really interesting when we consider the possibility that Ayers was the assassin Hillary Clinton hired to kill Vince Foster.

As I was saying yesterday, I think the conservative effort to demonize Bill Ayers as somehow the greatest monster of American history is absurd. He was involved in violent extremism amidst an era of extremism in American politics and plenty of his contemporaries did worse stuff in the name of upholding white supremacy or prosecuting the Vietnam War than anything Ayers did in opposition to it. That said, my former boss Mike Tomasky is sure right to call BS on this statement in support of Ayers:

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers—”unrepentant terrorist,” “lunatic leftist”—are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Martin Luther King, Jr. participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements. And yet he never set bombs anywhere, nor advocated that anyone else set bombs anywhere. Ayers did. Was Ayers more passionate than King? No. Was Ayers more violent than King? Yes. And King was right and Ayers was wrong — that’s really all there is to it. Now and again you do see a strand of thought on the left that equates willingness to engage in violence with one’s level of passion and commitment. That was the Weather Underground in its day, and it also I think represents the thinking of some of the so-called “liberal hawks” of the 21st century. But the notion that passionate commitment to the cause of justice is best exemplified by killing people — and especially by a “tough-minded” willingness to contemplate killing innocent people — is ludicrous.

The “unrepentant terrorist” thing is a bit complicated. One thing you can say in Ayers’ defense is that it’s perfectly clear from his present-day conduct that he, in fact, realizes that unleashing a podunk domestic terrorism campaign would be a stupid and immoral thing to do. He could be going around setting off bombs. Instead, he’s a professor and a community activist. On the other hand, he seems sufficiently entrenched in egomania and self-righteousness that he can’t bring himself to actually admit that. And until he does admit that he was wrong, he’s hard to defend.

Jonah Goldberg throws down the gauntlet:

It seems to me the liberal left needs to decide, was Ayers a horrible figure to be ashamed of, or a hero? If you don’t like this choice, why?

This is baffling. Is Jonah Goldberg a horrible figure to be ashamed of, or a hero? You must choose! But he’s neither. He’s just a guy. What Ayers did was wrong, and it’s troubling that, unlike most 60s-era radicals, he can’t seem to see that even in retrospect. But I dare say he’s responsible for a good deal less violence, death, and destruction than is, say, Henry Kissinger. It’d be dumb to idolize Ayers’ actions from back in the day but he’s hardly history’s greatest monster or even the greatest monster involved in 1960s political controversies.