[WardFive] Readers’ Comments

Sent from my iPad

 

 

Dear Colby,

The attached letter rebuking The Post for its mean spirited disparagement of former mayor Barry's tombstone stirs up my similar exception to your earlier column of 3/25/16 calling "Donald Trump the white man's new Marion Barry," using such epithets as "drama king, worry free and unencumbered by principle" as facile equivalent characterizations between the two.

Let me be clear, as a cofounder of SNCC, I knew Barry and Trump is certainly no Marion Barry! Unlike Trump, I saw Barry repeatedly risk life and limb in the protection and interest of strangers. I saw him humbly recruiting historically threatened dirt farmers to risk their very lives with him for winning voting rights he already had. I saw him, as Mayor, refuse immoral compromises on the little people's behalf with nothing to gain but the establishment's opprobrium. And I know the lavish bribes unsuccessfully offered to him, because he weighed his net worth as more than his bank account. Is it asking too much to have a little decent respect for such qualities alongside errors?

Who can say the same for Trump? Find a counterbalance of selflessness in him?

But I and others never "believed in Marion, no matter what," as your column dismissively suggested. Rather I and others believed Barry was sincerely trying to fulfill his original SNCC vows to serve the least of those in his care, even when repeatedly and miserably stumbling in his personal life. It can be said of Marion what Shakespeare said of his Othello, "when we these unhappy tales of him relate there is nothing to excuse or extenuate but let us not forget that he hath done the state some service and thou knowest it." None of us deserves to be remembered in only our lowest moments. My more than fifty years of principled political disagreements with the man have at least, taught me that.

Long ago in 1972, I took an equally dim view of one of your predecessors, Bill Raspberry's heavily damning political op-eds in the Post , which prompted him to rethink his position and he even published my opinion in place of his regular columns, 11/3/72 at page 27, as a counterweight to his imbalanced views. And while I cannot expect you to publish my words, at least I hope you and your paper rethink your views on Barry's large importance in changing the history and direction of our City for the better in many ways that some may have forgotten.

Very Truly Yours, Timothy L. Jenkins , Up until now, a third generation Republican