Attentive readers with good memories will know that I have had, and taken, more than a few occasions to criticize Colbert King, the deputy editor of the Washington Post‘s editorial page. (For some of those criticisms, see here, here, here, and here.) I don’t retract any of those criticisms, but today Mr. King deserves a considerable amount of praise, and I am happy to offer it. (Possible appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s no fun always being a scold.)
In his column today, “Kerry’s Unlikely Detractors,” Mr. King did something quite rare: he writes that
Those who dismiss critics of John Kerry’s Vietnam service as just a bunch of right-wing Republicans out to advance George W. Bush’s cause don’t know what they are talking about….
And, he writes, he should know, for he was once one of those himself.
I may have once thought that about the critics, too. But after poring over the large volume of e-mail I received after my Aug. 28 column, “What Matters About Kerry and Vietnam,” I don’t any longer.
King’s Aug. 28 column repeated all the usual calumny:
I had taken to task the authors of the blistering anti-Kerry bestseller “Unfit for Command” for giving readers an unbalanced view of Kerry’s service in Vietnam, and for not revealing their own connections with the Bush campaign and the sources of their financial support. The column also criticized “Unfit for Command” for smearing Kerry, a decorated former naval officer, as disloyal because of his antiwar activities. Writing as a former Army officer, I concluded: “Speaking for myself, it is enough that he served.”
King was led to revise his opinion, he writes today, by the volume of email he received about that column. A number agreed with him, of course, but to his surprise
[m]any more, … most of them angry veterans, did not. Most striking was the fact that those who identified themselves seemed to span the political spectrum, with one even describing himself as a Howard Dean Democrat.
And most striking of all were the responses of an old friend of 47 years (they were Howard University classmates), former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Rodney Coleman (a loyal Democrat appointed by Clinton), whose comments King prints with permission.
Read them, and joint me in saluting (if, after Kerry’s convention appearance, you’ll pardon the expression) Colbert King for having the courage and good grace to revise his opinions in print.
