Bill Ayers Lays an Egg. Maybe the New York Times is in more financial trouble than I knew. Today, they published an extremely lame op-ed by former Weatherman and Obama friend William Ayers. Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings has a good take-down of Ayers' various evasions and dissembling, but Ayers does an excellent job of humiliating himself as well. Taking himself to limits of self-parody, Ayers characterizes the Weather Underground as engaged in "extreme vandalism."

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

It's fair to say that the Weather Underground conveyed incompetence and immaturity more than "outrage." But that's not to say that some good did not come out of the whole Weatherman exercise. I can see Ayers as the real-life model for the Brad Pitt's portrayal of the ridiculously self-inflating character of Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys. Like Ayers, Goines was engaged in "extreme" vandalism to make a political point. At least Goines was mentally ill--Bill Ayers just seems feckless.

One More Thing: Ayers' "extreme vandalism" reminds me of Jeff Goldstein's "outlaw" stance at the conservative blog Protein Wisdom. Maybe Ayers was the one who really wrote this post about changing the world through flatulence.