Readers with a high threshold for nausea may have taken in Bill Ayers’s New York Times op-ed column “The real Bill Ayers” yesterday. Ayers describes himself as a former civil rights activist, draft resister and nonviolent demonstrator. He admits to “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism[.]” (Discover the Networks has a slightly more illuminating post on the real Bill Ayers here.)
Now Patterico has somehow managed to get his hands on Charles Manson’s submission to the Times explaining “The real Charles Manson.” In the draft of the column published by Patterico, Manson cops to being “a big fan of the Beatles” as well as “a songwriter and admittedly a bit of a drifter.” Patterico’s Manson also admits to symbolic acts of extreme vandalism. He is, in other words, about as candid as Ayers, though Patterico’s Manson, unlike the Times’s Ayers, doesn’t get to flog any forthcoming books.
Via Michelle Malkin.
JOHN adds: As I’ve noted before, there is a connection between Charles Manson and Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, that goes beyond parody. Dohrn, then the head of the Weatherman faction of which Ayers was a lesser-known member, publicly and enthusiastically endorsed the Manson Family’s murders as political acts worthy of praise. To my knowledge, neither Dohrn nor Ayers has ever publicly regretted that endorsement.
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