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Opinion: William Ayers defends himself and his relationship with Barack Obama on ‘Good Morning America’

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(UPDATE: See below.)

For months, William Ayers was one of the most talked-about men in America.

Ayers, who was a radical antiwar protester in the 1960s and who now teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago, was ridiculed as a ‘washed-up terrorist’ by Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

And McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, accused Barack Obama of ‘palling around with terrorists’ because he worked with on civic boards with Ayers and attended a reception at Ayers’ home when he was running forIllinois state legislature.

But while the controversy churned, the man at the center of it remained silent.

That changed on election day. As soon as the polls closed on Nov. 4, Ayers opened up. In an interview with the Washington Post, Ayers complained that the Republicans had turned him into ‘a cartoon character.’ He also called the media’s handling of the affair ‘kind of shameful.’

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Today, Ayers talked to the media again, this time in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.’ In the interview, which you can watch below, Ayers said that his relationship with Obama was exaggerated and insisted that the two never talked about Ayers’ antiwar activities.

He complained that the whole controversy was a “dishonest narrative” used by Republicans to “demonize” him. And he defended his actions during the Vietnam war.

“Let’s remember that what you call a violent past that was at a time when thousands of people were being murdered by our government every month, and those of us who fought to end the war were actually on the right side. I never hurt or killed anyone.’

(UPDATE: Ayers also made an appearance today on Democracy Now! In the interview Ayers tells host Amy Goodman that his radical past ‘was raised up in an attempt to replay the culture wars.’

(He also recounts his experience at Obama’s acceptance speech on election night. ‘It was an extraordinary feeling,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in a lot of large crowds in my life, but I’ve never been in one that didn’t either have an edge of anger or a lot of drunkenness or kind of performance. This was all unity, all love.’)

You can watch footage of the interview on Democracy Now’s website.

-- Kate Linthicum

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