A funny thing happened to Bill Ayers in the years between his first headline-grabbing activities and his cameo role in the 2008 presidential campaign. He became a pillar of the very establishment he had once conspired to bring down.

Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed Ayers, an educational consultant to the city, “a valued member of the Chicago community.”

Ayers, 63, was less charitable about Daley’s father, who was mayor in 1968 when Vietnam War activists tried to disrupt the Democratic National Convention.

“White and fleshy, he reeked with the stench of evil,” Ayers wrote of Richard J. Daley in his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days.”