On the one hand, the Allen N-word accusations seem to be going a bit awry:
- Larry Sabato "said he had never personally heard Sen. George Allen use racial epithets, despite saying on television a day earlier that the senator "did use the n-word."
Quote:"I didn't personally hear GFA (Allen's initials) say the n-word.
"My conclusion is based on the very credible testimony I have heard for weeks, mainly from people I personally know and knew in the '70s," Sabato wrote.
- And there is an element of "glass houses" involved, it appears:
Quote:Also Tuesday, Allen's Democratic opponent, Jim Webb, declined to say definitively whether he had ever used a racial slur to describe blacks.
"I don't think that there's anyone who grew up around the South that hasn't had the word pass through their lips at one time or another in their life," Webb told reporters.
Webb referred to his novel, "Fields of Fire," which aides said includes passages using the n-word as part of character dialogue. But he added: "I have never issued a racial or ethnic slur."
Asked for clarification of his original answer, spokeswoman Jessica Smith quoted Webb as saying, "I have never used that word in my general vocabulary or in any derogatory way."
She declined to say whether he had ever used the word apart from when he wrote his book.
- Finally, there is no police record or memory of the "deer head" thing. That, though, doesnt tell me much; I dont know how likely a black Va. resident was to report such a thing exactly.
Quote:two Louisa County sheriff's deputies who were on the force in the early '70s said that they recall no complaints about severed animal heads.
Retired Lt. Robert Rigsby said he was in charge of investigations in the early '70s, and any such report would have gone through him.
"I think that's a myth," Rigsby said.
On the other hand, the deer head incident has actually been confirmed by a second source - right when the Allen camp was making Shelton, the man who recounted it, out to be a bald-faced liar:
Quote:Another Allen teammate recalls deer head incident
A former college football teammate of Sen. George Allen's has confirmed details of a controversial hunting trip in the early 1970s, during which Allen is alleged to have placed a severed deer head in a mailbox that he believed to be owned by a black family. [..]
George Beam, a nuclear engineering company manager who lives outside Lynchburg, Va. [and] played football with Allen, said he remembers Lanahan, who is now deceased, describing the hunting trip with Allen and Shelton.
"We were sitting around drinking beer," Beam said in an interview Wednesday morning, recalling the conversation with Lanahan. "Billy said, 'George and Kenny and I went hunting, and we decided at some time to cut off this deer head and stick it in a mailbox.'" [..]
In a press appearance Monday, Allen dismissed Shelton's claims as "absolutely false," "pure fabrication" and "nonsense," according to the Washington Post.
Beam said he was motivated to speak to a reporter about his memory because of recent attacks against Shelton's integrity by people close to the Allen campaign, a group that includes several former teammates. "I knew Kenny Shelton, and his reputation in my opinion is irreproachable," Beam said Wednesday morning, adding that he had not spoken to Shelton in decades. [..]
In the Post Wednesday, Chris LaCivita, a consultant for the Allen campaign, suggested that Shelton had fabricated the deer head story because a similar incident had been reported in North Carolina in January. Shelton said he had never heard of the North Carolina report, and called LaCivita's allegation ridiculous. [..]
And there is an additional person recounting Allen using the "N-word" too:
Well - two additional persons, actually; here's the second one:
Quote: N-WORD ACCUSER OF THE DAY:
The latest acquaintance of George Allen with a specific and on the record account of Allen using the N-word is Ellen G. Hawkins of Manquin, Virginia. The New York Times has the story:
Mrs. Hawkins, who described herself as a rural Virginia housewife and an active Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday that she heard Mr. Allen use the slur repeatedly at a party on election night in 1976. She said Mr. Allen used the term while deprecating the intelligence of the black players on the Washington Redskins football team, which Mr. Allen's father coached. Recalling remarks about its star running back, Larry Brown, Mrs. Hawkins said that Mr. Allen "started in effect bad-mouthing him, saying what a shiftless you-know-what" he was.
She said she remembered the conversation because she was a big fan of the team and was shocked. She said Mr. Allen's statement on Monday was "just plain a lie."
On Tuesday afternoon, I obtained an email sent by Hawkins in which she discussed the incident and noted a few additional details:
I have a very specific memory of a conversation I had with George Allen when he was in law school at UVA, in which he used similar language -- much to my shock at the time. In my case, I can give time and place, as it occurred at a Ford-Carter election night party at the home of a mutual friend. I might add that I have told some people about this throughout the years -- most recently I talked to Tyler Whitley of the Richmond Times Dispatch about it a few weeks ago when he asked me why I was supporting Jim Webb in this campaign.
What was the response of Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams, the guy formerly known as the next Karl Rove, to the latest N-word charge? He told the Times it was "another false accusation."
Or, in Ryan Lizza's summary:
Quote:I truly don't mean to pile on, but it's worth summarizing what we now know about Allen's history on matters of race:
-He wore or displayed Confederate memorabilia from high school (late 1960s) until 1993, including on himself, his car, in his living room, and in a campaign ad.
-In high school he allegedly sprayed racist graffiti on his school's walls.
-In college he allegedly stuffed the head of a deer in a black family's mailbox.
-According to the accounts of three independent, on the record sources and two anonymous sources, in college and law school in the 1970s and as an attorney starting a political career in the early 1980s, Allen regularly and casually used the word "nigger" to describe African Americans.
There are two possibilities: Allen is the victim of a massive conspiracy to paint him as a racist, a plot that involves numerous high school and college classmates, a Virginia housewife, an Alabama anthropologist, and a North Carolina radiologist. Or, George Allen was a racist.
