McCain campaign going after Michelle Obama? My personal experience with Dohrn and Michelle Obama's law firm.
Apparently they want people to think it's scary that she worked at Sidley & Austin in Chicago where Bernadine Dohrn worked for a few years. Bernadine Dohrn is married to William Ayers. I went to Northwestern Law School where Bernadine teaches. I met with her there. She was one of very few female faculty when I was at school there. You know who else teaches there? Stephen Calabrese, co-founder of the Federalist Society, speechwriter to Dan Quayle and worker for Judge Robert Bork. I met with him too.
He was smart and nice too. In fact I met him more often than Bernadine Dohrn because she seemed busier and he advised my senior research project A More Perfect Union: The Constitutional Right to Sexual Pleasure. I quote Salt ' N Pepa in the paper. He gave me an A. I'm not making this up. Prof. Calabrese has a lot of political influence in the conservative world. The Federalist Society has been the filter for judicial nominees for the Bush administration.
The wackdoodle McCain campaign logic that ties Bernadine Dohrn to Michelle Obama, would tie Prof. Dohrn to Prof. Calabrese (and other Federalist Society co-founder Gary Lawson who was then at Northwestern).
I had no idea Bernadine Dohrn did work for Sidley & Austin. On the one hand it shouldn't surprise me because so many faculty at Northwestern do work for Sidley & Austin. It's the big deal, heavy-hitter, borg-like firm whose name was all over Northwestern Law School. Sometimes I felt like they should just have re-named the school. It was the inspiration for the "S&M law firm" I had litter it's name all over my law school cartoon Paté & Joan.
I only met Prof. Dohrn once. She was really smart and caring. That's all I remember. Prof. Dohrn is a Clinic professor.
When I was there, the Clinic area was where all of Northwestern's "diversity" hires (a/k/a non-white men, or anyone who teaches something other than administrative law) were so that the school didn't look too bad in US&World Report. It was like the ghetto of the law school. It was the 'old" building. The Clinic faculty were focussed on helping people. And…lowest status of all at a 'top' school like Northwestern was, many of them had actually practiced law. But if Sidley hired Bernadine Dohrn, I imagine they figured she was pretty safe.
As you can see from my cartoon, I spent time making fun of Sidley & Austin and people like Michelle Obama spent their time on law review and getting top grades. Which explains something about why I'm now a comedian and Michelle Obama is about to be First Lady. Sidley was as establishment as it gets. The few people I knew who worked there worked so hard, I doubt they had time to do anything together, except bluebook.
I bet they're surprised to find out today that the Republican Presidential campaign thinks they're a "terrorist cell."
Posted by email from heathergold's posterous
October 21st, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I only met Prof. Dohrn once. She was really smart and caring. –
Caring? Heather, you need to do some research on this one. It's not scary that Michelle worked at Sidley & Austin in Chicago. It's scary that you and Michelle Obama think Bernadine Dohrn is caring and smart. This blog is scary; it shows that you are ignorant or worse… you endorse the actions of Bernadine Dohrn.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn
What Dohrn said about a pregnant woman and others killed by followers of Charles Manson
Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in their bellies. Wild!"
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:51 am
Thanks for your comments.
Pam, I wrote the piece because I found myself reading about a person I'd actually met who was coming up in the Presidential Race. I found it ridiculous and amazingly ironic that it was being suggested that Michelle Obama, simply by working at the same firm as Bernadine Dohrn suports violence any more than the founders of the Federalist Society (also my professors at the same law school as Prof. Dohrn).
Meeting someone, including Prof. Dohrn really means nothing about what you believe.
You've just posted a comment to my blog. I'm Jewish. Does that make you Jewish?
I found Prof Dohrn caring and smart when I met her one time to deal with some of my own problems. Michelle Obama wasn't there. McCain wasn't there. Neither were you Pam. Vietnam didn't come up. I was lucky to grow up in Canada where I didn't have to watch endless movies about the Vietnam War at all. For a long time I thought MASH was a show about Vietnam.
I know very little about the 60s. Even though I was born in 68, my parents barely knew who the Beatles were. They missed the entire "revolution." They missed every chance to see Joni Mitchell perform in Toronto.
Yes, I totally endorse Bernadine Dohrn's hour in her office helping me through law school. If you had to bluebook and shepardize, you would have felt the same way.
Research, thanks for the link.Bombing and pigs? WTF? All that 60s crap sounds insanely melodramatic. Bombing anything is insane. I'm a fan of Ghandi's. What were you people thinking?
Of course the most amazing thing in that Wikipedia article I learned is that Dean Robert Bennett hired Prof Dohrn. That blew my mind.
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 am
First, if you read the website it totally puts the snippet quote from Bernadine Dohrn into context — that she was being ironic and reacting to media fascination with the Tate death (while the media was ignoring the death of a black panther). This is a classic trick that practicing lawyers like me, sadly, are familiar with. Take a position, find a quote, highlight the most incendiary snippet, ignore the context, and the holler. Or, to quote a colleague, arguments like this remind me of a Texas Long Horn Steer: a point here, a point there, and a whole lot of bull in between.
Second, from all that I understand, the 60's were indeed a hysterical, terrible time. Looking at what people said or did over 30 years ago with no context and no effort to understand what might have been motivating them is unhelpful. I don't think anyone is very interested in rehashing that period right now, when we have real, acute problems to address, but the notion that you can equate 9/11 to the SDS movement is silliness — the 9/11 attack had no end but to do harm; SDS and their offshoots, however wrong headed, wanted to change things in this country for what they saw as the better.
Finally, Bob Bennett was part of that era, and while you may dismiss him as a fundamentally conservative character (he is a reserved fellow, there is no doubt), he also is the man who argued against the Hyde Amendment in the Supreme Court.
The bottom line is that Ayers and Dohrn both seem to have forged meaningful lives and careers and the witch-hunting spearheaded by Palin and her compatriots is repellent.