DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.
"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."
Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical.
The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.
Obama's campaign urged supporters to call the radio station to complain.
"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.
"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."
Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenburg," said the response was strong.
"I would say this is the biggest response we've ever got from a campaign or a candidate," he said. "This is really unprecedented with the show, the way that people are flooding the calls and our email boxes."
Christenson said the Obama campaign was asked to have someone appear on the show and declined the request.
"He got into the files just yesterday, so we wanted to have him on to find out what he found. And, if at all possible, we wanted to get the Obama campaign, to get their side of the story," Christenson said. "That's why the uproar is kind of amazing, because we wanted the Obama campaign's take as well."
The show's producer said the calls dropped off after the show's first hour. He did not have a count of calls, but said it was "non-stop."
Obama's campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.
Notice that although there are many personal attacks against Mr. Kurtz and negative characterizations of his research, "right-wing hatchet man", "baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears", "lies, distortions, and manipulations", "baseless attacks from a smear-merchant", "a slimy character assassin", "divisive, destructive ranting", what is completely lacking in the Obama campaign's statement is any refutation whatsoever of Mr. Kurtz's facts.
Go back and read the thing over again. Obama's stooges spew a huge amount of bile, but don't offer so much as one fact in opposition to Mr. Kurtz's conclusions!
They want WGM to "offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies" but they don't offer so much as a suggestion to what that rebuttal might be.
In other words they can't refute any of Kurtz's charges and so they are attempting to distract the public by launching ad hominem attacks and insisting that the media find, or invent, a rebuttal to Mr. Kurtz.
Notice that the Obama campaign refused to send a surrogate to the radio station to face Mr. Kurtz directly. This can only mean that there is no legitimate rebuttal to the information about the ties between Ayers and Obama which Kurtz has unearthed.
And notice one more thing. Obama is still referring to Ayers as "University of Illinois professor William Ayers" rather than as "unrepentant terrorist bomber and communist revolutionary William Ayers".
Obama did not, does not and probably never will, have a problem with what Ayers did! Obama, like other members of the extreme left, think of Ayers as a counterculture hero. Why else did the University of Illinois make him a professor? Why else a did young Obama need to have Ayers blessing in order to begin his political career as an Illinois Democrat? Why else have Democrat elected politicians and other movers and shakers in the party conceded so much power and influence to Ayers, who says that he is proud of what he did and regrets nothing, if they don't agree with him?
This is first and foremost about what kind of man Barack Obama is as revealed by the kinds of friends and associates he chooses for himself. But it is also about Democrats in general in that they tolerate someone like Ayers in a position of such influence in their party.
And last but not least it is about how Obama would govern as president if his first reaction to any critic is not to debate of disprove, or even to ignore, him but rather is to attempt to silence him by abusing the law or by resorting to these kinds of gutter tactics.
In the final analysis Barack Obama is nothing more than a typical cheap sleazy corrupt Chicago politician and he is completely at home in the Democrat party.
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