By Kerry Picket William Ayers spoke to a Washington, D.C. audience tonight about his views on the American education system.  The Ayers speech included slams towards Fox News and Governor Sarah Palin. The event was full of mostly supporters given the amount of loud applause he received.  A true question and answer session never really occurred, as audience members were required to write their questions on note cards for pre-screening.  Knowing organizers would only choose softball questions I confronted Ayers with cameraman Brian Maloney. I asked Ayers about the dedication to Robert Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan in his 1974 book Prairie Fire.  The video is uploaded at Eyeblast.tv:

PICKET: Professor Ayers you had an unusual dedication to Sirhan Sirhan in your previous book.  Do you regret that?

AYERS: Absolutely, but that wasn’t a dedication…show me.  You heard it somewhere.  The dedication in Prairie Fire in 1974…It was a manifesto was to all prisoners, and if I were writing a book like that today, I would dedicate it to 2.1 million people in prison. I think it was a stupid thing to single him out, but I also think that we have created a monster in the prison system.  We ought to abolish the prison system.  That’s what I think.

It is unfortunate the mainstream media refused to ask Ayers any questions about the Weather Underground's 1974 manifesto, but  that would make scrubbing his past even more difficult for them.