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Long ago, I used to come home from high school and read whatever magazines had arrived, cover to cover. Every other week, I turned to the back page of Newsweek to find the image of a very properly attired George F. Will alongside his opinion column, which often concerned the first Clinton administration. George (if I may!) appeared there as reliably as the tides. He was a fixture, middle-aged but somehow ageless, shaping my earliest sense of what a public intellectual was. His politics were well to the right of the Bostonians who surrounded me, but his wit and knowledge were undeniable even to a 16-year-old. I read every word.
