Second Acts in American Lives

I thought often of Warren Kimbro, who died on Tuesday, during last year's presidential campaign. Kimbro had a dark past (he tortured and killed a man in cold blood) and whenever the specter of Bill Ayers was raised as a kind of slur requiring no evidence or explanation -- especially when it was raised by someone like Sarah Palin who could not possibly understand what Ayers stood for and by extension how deeply he betrayed his own cause -- I thought of Kimbro. I knew Warren a little, as did everyone else active in civic life in New Haven, and it occurred to me that perhaps he alone could understand the kind of vilification Ayers went through for a year, having himself been (in a small way) a totem of the culture wars.

Many would argue that Kimbro, unlike Ayers, felt genuine remorse for what he'd done, as if remorse were the same as rehabilitation, as if we should all operate under Christian assumptions of forgiveness and redemption. I always felt a bit queasy around Kimbro, disinclined to forgive, abhorrent of forgetting. But I admired how he underwent a transformation without becoming a turncoat, that is, how he continued to pursue justice, continued to enter the public square even though that was where he'd been tarred and feathered.

There are second acts in American lives, and the second acts do not have to be negations or disavowals of the first. There is redemption beyond turncoatism, something the culture warriors will never understand.