Hardly jaw-dropping, I know. And I find the schtick of Wieseltier’s writing much less interesting than I did, say, 20 years ago. But I did like this bit, which has the merit of being entirely true:

I must say that the Ayers affair rankles me, because I would not shake the man’s dirty hand; and the fact that Obama was eight years old at the time of the Weather Underground is no more pertinent to his moral and historical awareness than the fact that he was six years old at the time of the King assassination