I built a script that does what Rex suggests. There's a check box (or element) in each column that, when clicked, figures out which column it's in based on the nth-child and then hides the same ones in each other TR.
Before .hide() I'd add a class that I could reference to return the column.
The issue I had is I was working with heavily styled tables where some rows had colspans and some TDs had unique classes based on their position in the row. I rant into issues in IE where IE wouldn't always show() the hidden TDs with the proper styling. It seemed that IE had trouble redrawing TDs.