Stop reading this for a minute and go read Bill Ayers' column in today's NY Times because it reminds us how empty our political campaigns are which, in turn, explains how the country has been led into the hole into which we are falling. Because the guy we wanted to have a beer with instead of the thoughtful, but maybe boring guy who windsurfs, or the other thoughtful but boring guy who sighs deeply when forced to debate such an imbecile, turned out to be so grossly incompetent we elected the more qualified candidate this time, but the campaign was no different than 2000, 2004 and every other one in recent memory.


As Ayers writes the "unrepentant domestic terrorist" did not conduct, as would terrorists, "campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends" but the Weather Underground, which he helped to found,, did some stupid, excessive things to try to end a war which rent our beloved country into so many pieces that we are still trying to put them back together. Perhaps more importantly, while Ayers and the President-elect :sat on a board together ... lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community [and]sometimes passed in the bookstore[, they] didn't pal around, and [Ayers] had nothing to do with his positions. {Ayers] knew him as well as thousands of others did..."

As he well points out, people who talk to one another do not automatically take on each others opinions. It's a good thing: I would hate to have to hold Senator Kennedy responsible for the views of Senator McConnell and would have to re-evaluate my views of Senator Kerry, given that he sits in the same body as does Senator Chambliss, who so disgracefully ran against Max Cleland six years ago.

As outrageous as it is to draw conclusions from such flimsy "associations" (Alger Hiss was in the State Department when President Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Untion...) others, far more important and significant seem to gather no attention whatsoever from the same people aghast that the Obama family voted at the same time as Bill Ayers did (how could he do such a thing?). The breathless attention paid to such nonsense, or how Senator Clinton looked while the President-elect announced that he would nominate her as Secretary of State is even more reprehensible when the airheads on, say, MSNBC cannot find even a second to advise their audience that the General they are calling upon to explain military tactics to us, has consulting contracts with firms whose business interests seem to coincide with the General's expressed views.

Maybe it's all benign and, as NBC and the General insist, those views are independent of his or his client's interests, but surely NBC and MSNBC viewers are entitled to some information to evaluate that issue on their own when he appears. The spectacular work of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow sometimes obscures what MSNBC is the rest of the time, beginning with the fluffernutter morning show (with occasional useful moments), through the rest of a broadcast day which consists of unbelievably uneducated cutie pies interviewing angry people about things neither seem to have any expertise beyond what one could find on a bar stool. (One interviewee I heard when I forgot to turn the set off after the fluffernutter show ended, was telling the cutie pie to whom he was talking that Barney Frank "has to shut up" before I could get to the switch). Beyond the day filled with ennui that MS and its competitors are, though, is a complete disrespect for the rules that make journalism valuable and the McCaffrey business, just like its ancient staging of accidents to jazz up a report, do not do NBC News or those of us who grew up on it, any service.

The complete ignorance, and the idea that putting a "former prosecutor" and a defense attorney (I am not sure what the difference is) on screen at the same time could enlighten viewers about, say, a criminal justice issue, caused MSNBC and friends to spend most of yesterday informing us that, notwithstanding a trial at which 12 jurors had to be in agreement before finding him guilty, and the disavowals of a judge who heard every word of the trial and read a probation report about the crime and the defendant, that the sentence imposed was for the crimes he committed in Nevada, OJ Simpson finally was going to to prison for other crimes---two murders---he committed more than a decade ago. Entre nous, you know, but we who saw none of this trial, and read barely a word about it, know that whatever the judge said, Simpson really did nothing that bad this time and the jury and judge were just getting back at him for the stupid acquittal 13 years ago.

On the other hand (one which got no particular attention through all of this yelling), most people might object to being accosted at gun point by people trying to recover what some football star turned murderer says is "his stuff" and forced to leave the location while the football star-murderer and his friends take what they want. I know nothing about Nevada law, but in the state in which I live, that is called both robbery and kidnapping. (Any talking head who happens on this blog and questions what is "really kidnapping" might read, say, People v. Banks, 42 A.D.3d 574, 840 N.Y.S.2d 137 (2d Dept. 2007) before blabbing on tv that nobody would call what happened in Nevada a kidnapping).

And while the judge explained her sentence in detail and more than justified it based on the crime and Simpson's tearful rendition of his own version of it (neither under oath or subject to cross-examination---the same way he beat the criminal murder case, but was unable to escape civil liability since he had to testify at that trial), the fools called upon by cable tv to explain it to an already cynical public insisted at every opportunity---Chris Matthews included---that what really happened was that the judge wrongly used this opportunity to make Simpson pay for his murders.

The judge said she did not take them into account, but, contrary to what you heard on television, that "association", that the man before her had been tried and acquitted for the murders but later held civilly liable for them (not, as some MSNBC panelist insisted, for "negligence") was a perfectly legitimate factor to be taken into account in determining how, along the range of authorized sentences for the crimes upon which Simpson had just been convicted, he should be sentenced. The U.S. Supreme Court explained all of this about 60 years ago when it said:

A sentencing judge is not confined to the narrow issue of guilt. His task within fixed statutory or constitutional limits is to determine the type and extent of punishment after the issue of guilt has been determined. Highly relevant -- if not essential -- to his selection of an appropriate sentence is the possession of the fullest information possible concerning the defendant's life and characteristics....The belief no longer prevails that every offense in a like legal category calls for an identical punishment without regard to the past life and habits of a particular offender.

Williams v New York, 337 U.S. 241, 69 S. Ct. 1079, 93 L. Ed. 1337 (1949).

One other "association" bears mention here: That Caroline Kennedy is the daughter of the President who inspired me into public service should hardly disqualify her from the United States Senate and the seat held by her uncle until we was murdered forty years ago. This is the right time, in the right atmosphere to send her to the Senate with her family background and their dedication to public service being but one factor, and her background in the law and public education two other ones. As a New Yorker I would be so proud to be represented by another Senator Kennedy that it is hard to imagine anyone else in that position.