Ayers Talks

He speaks with David Remnick:

Ayers seemed curiously calm and cheerful about the way he had been made an issue in the campaign. He seemed unbothered to have been part of what he called “the Swiftboating” process of the 2008 campaign.

“It’s all guilt by association,” Ayers said. “They made me into a cartoon characterthey threw me up onstage just to pummel me. I felt from the beginning that the Obama campaign had to run the Obama campaign and I have to run my life.” Ayers said that once his name became part of the campaign maelstrom he never had any contact with the Obama circle. “That’s not my world,” he said.