Author David Halberstam Dies in Car Accident
Best-selling author David Halberstam died in a car accident:
According to the San Mateo County coroner, famed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam was killed in a car crash Monday morning near the Dumbarton Bridge.
Halberstam, 73, died and three others were injured after a three-vehicle crash in Menlo Park, the California Highway Patrol reported.
His writing career began in the jungles of Vietnam, but he wrote on baseball, basketball, the media, the firemen of Sep. 11.
I’m very disappointed with the NY Times injecting very debatable opinion about the Vietnam War into Halberstam’s obituary:
His reporting, along with that of several colleagues, left little doubt that a corrupt South Vietnamese government supported by the United States was no match for Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies. His dispatches infuriated American military commanders and policy makers in Washington, but they accurately reflected the realities on the ground.
The only thing that stopped the U.S. was domestic unwillingness to continue fighting the war. I was a lack of public will, not underequiped Communists.
Halberstam’s books include The Best and the Brightest, The Summer of ’49, and Firehouse.
“Famed Author David Halberstam Killed In Bay Area Crash”
It goes without saying that the NYT is going to see this through that particular lens. But what was the role played by The Best and the Brightest? Was it worse than “losing Cronkite,” or not as bad?