Pro War Websites

I’m not going to challenge Christian’s tales of his heroic actions in Nam, where his website claims he won two Silver Stars, but some of his other stories, particularly one  he recently told to blustery conservative radio talk-show host and local newspaper columnist Michael Smerconish, do merit a little examination, and raise questions about what Stephen Colbert would call his general “truthiness.”  headlined “Vietnam hero cures an old Rutgers wound,” Smerconish hails Christian for bravely returning to the Camden campus of Rutgers Law School this year and finally, more than three and a half decades late, earning a law degree he had tried unsuccessfully to earn after returning from Vietnam.

According to Smerconish and Christian, the Bristol, PA native, reportedly the youngest second lieutenant in the Army at 18 (a rank he says he attained only a year after he had enlisted at 17), was driven to “drop out” of law school, reportedly “a few credits shy” of graduation, because of the “unfriendly environment,” which he says included abuse by an administration and faculty who Smerconish says “made a circus of his attempt to earn a law degree.”

Sounds horrible, no?  But Christian’s astonishing claims of administration and faculty abuse don’t really stand up well on close inspection--a standard journalistic procedure that the shamelessly credulous Smerconish and his equally credulous editor Kevin Ferris simply dispensed  with.