"Call her 'Bernie,'" my Chicago friend advised.

I confess I gulped.

"'Bernie?'"  I whispered, incredulous.  "Are you sure?"

"Bernie" sounds so…friendly…for a terrorist.

"You'll love her," my Chicago friend smiled.  "Everybody does."

Think of her as Bernie the Bomber.

And try to remember what Ronald Reagan said: One man's terrorist is another man's maverick.  Or words to that effect.

But Bernardine Dohrn, whose hand I shook at a shake-hands-have-a-drink thing when she first joined the prestigious law firm of Sidley Austin in Chicago, was not like any terrorist I'd ever met.  And that counts the menacing Nicaraguan who sat behind me in an international politics class, hissing, "We will take our country back!"

Even though Bernie is a former leftist leader of the SDS and the infamous Weathermen, she and Palin are a lot alike.  Bernie is a brunette, like Palin.  They both wear bangs.  They are both fiesty!

They are pit bulls with lipstick!  Palin was a college beauty queen, and Bernie was a high school cheerleader. Bernie ran her high school

newspaper, and Palin studied communications.   Palin was a college

minor in political science, and Bernie majored in it.  Like Palin, Bernie did not imitate rich college kiddies who finagled backpacks and plane tickets from their accommodating folks and took off for Europe and mindlessly drank cappuccinos on the Via Venetto.  No!  Bernie traveled, but to non-frivolous places like Cuba, where she and fellow mavericks met with North Vietnamese officials.  Like Palin, who now has also met with a few foreign leaders, Bernie is a serious babe.

Sarah describes herself as a "CEO," and Bernie is a busy lawyer.

Palin calls herself a "feminist."  And Bernie was a feminist when feminism was the moral majority's equivalent of Marxist-Leninism, and J. Edgar Hoover wore bras and dresses to infiltrate it.  Which made him stand out, because most real feminists were burning theirs.

Are Palin and Bernie both mavericks?  You betcha!

And like Palin, Bernie has a First Dude! Bernie's hubby is William Charles "Bill" Ayers, her co-Weatherman who held that meet-the-neighborhood-in-my-living-room coffee for Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barak Obama, about whom Palin has complained so much.  Call them "Bernie and Bill."

Who's the real American terrorist in the 2008 election?

Ask who's not telling the truth here.

Ask why are Bernie and Ayers freely running around, eating deep-dish pizza, taking the L, and giving coffees for democrats and, like the Palins, making six figures and living comparatively high?

Take note—First, America is a land of opportunity.  But (second) it also helps to have friends and well-connected family.  Preppie Ayers is from a multi-generational Chicagoan family.  His father, a former CEO and chairman of the utility Commonwealth Edison, wisely told him to get a haircut the day he and Bernie turned themselves in to face, well, not exactly justice, but intense interest.  Third, it pays to be a victim. Because the Nixon and other administrations used grossly illegal (or at least, what used to be illegal before the Patriot Act) means to pursue domestic terrorists—warrantless searches, illegal wiretaps, perjured testimony, falsified evidence, beatings, and even torture, the most serious charges against Bernie and Bill were dropped.  Bernie received three years' probation and in 1982, served eight months' imprisonment for refusing to rat out her co-mavericks.

Two years later, Chicago's Sidley Austin hired Bernie as a lawyer.

"We often hire friends," said mainline Chicagoan and Sidley partner Howard Trienens.  But what he really meant was "friends of friends,"

and in this case, "friends of Bill" Ayers' well-connected, prosperous family.  Bernie worked at Sidley for four years.  Obama, studying law at Harvard, was recruited by Sidley lawyer Newt Minnow, the former FCC chairman who called television "a vast wasteland," as a summer associate in 1988, Bernie's last year at the firm.  And those of you in TV Land know Newt better than you think—the foundering ship in Gilligan's Island, the S.S. Minnow, was so named to mock him.

Which brings us to Palin's latest lie—that Obama "pals around with terrorists." Obama is guilty of little more than launching his political and professional life in Chicago, a city notorious for its working-class, labor-union, radical left politics.

Did Bernie, Bill and Obama meet there?  You betcha!

Is it a big deal?

No!  Everyone knows Bernie and Bill.  You don't go out of your way for it.  But you're at a highbrow law firm party, nibbling on a canapé, and suddenly, someone in a Brooks Brothers pinstripe says, "Have you met our new maverick?"

And you find yourself shaking hands with…well, with a terrorist!  Zowie!

Only, they are redeemed terrorists.  With kids and a mortgage.  How American is that?

Palin's co-candidate, Arizona Senator John McCain, would be happy if we just rode the wave of innuendo.

Let's sit this wave out.



 

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