McCain & McCarthy

Dickerson nails what for me is the central point about Ayers: if we are to criticize Obama over Ayers (which is fine with me, up to a point), we must also criticize Walter Annenberg, Mayor Daley, the University of Illinois, Stanley Fish, Cass Sunstein, Richard Stern, all the partners at white-shoe Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, pretty much everyone who's anyone in Hyde Park and much of the establishment (Republican and Democrat) of Chicago. The troubling implication of this brand of McCarthyism is that it suggests we should all be vigilantes, since it seeks to deny that it is up to society and the state, not the individual, to punish crimes such as Ayers's... and for whatever reason or reasons, Ayers was not prosecuted. Perhaps justice was not served! But it is simply not the place of Obama or any other individual to hound and humiliate Ayers as if he were the child-molester in Tom Perrotta's 'Little Children,' least of all when Ayers has chosen in his post-revolutionary phase to make a positive contribution to society.

On a related note (that Jeff Goldberg might appreciate), I hope that all the other non-Obama-associated people in this country named "William Ayers" are not facing any blowback over this manufactured controversy.