Michael Scherer reports: "Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s." Guess what the inflammatory epithet was. . . .
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I'm So Surprised
24 Sep 2006 09:54 pm
Comments (16)
Bet his polling ticks up in the land of cotton....
"Bet his polling ticks up in the land of cotton...."
Nah. Racist tactics only work these days when they're coded and deniable.
Overt racism plays badly even in the most backwards precincts of the country.
Stick a fork in Allen.
This just goes to show the wisdom of the 50 State Strategy. Not too long ago, Allen looked unbeatable and the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Now, simply by being forced to come to his state and campaign, he was put into the position of making career-ending gaffes, day after day. Now, he might get re-elected, but that's one fewer viable Republican presidential candidate.
I have never seen a politician fall this hard before, and so publicly in front of so many people. This guy was supposedly Presidential material 3 months ago.
I'll just say, I don't envy Dr. Ken Shelton right now. I'm quite impressed with his courage, and I hope that I'd do the same in such a situation. But I can only pray that he's never committed an untoward act in his life, never written a silly letter to the editor, never prescribed drugs to family members or nodded off in church. The slime grunts on the right wing blogs are probably working at full tilt already.
Man, I hope the dumb things I did as a kid don't get held against me nowadays.
Then again, the dumb things I do nowadays are enough to keep me from running for President.
The racial slurs are bad enough...
but if the story about putting the deer head in a black family's mailbox is further corroberated & publicized, there's no way in hell Allen will win reelection...
Before Macaca-gate, Webb had been struggling to get black voters in Southside Virginia fired up about the election. The latest Allen kerfuffles should do wonders to solidify the black vote for Webb.
Do college pranks foreshadow a lifelong pattern of alarming behavior. . .and should voters be paying attention? Well, consider GWB's cute little college peccadillo: (Source: NY Times, Nov. 8, 1967)
The Yale Daily News, a student newspaper, accused Yale fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon of burning its pledges with a branding iron--a clear violation of campus rules. The reporter characterized the initiation procedure as "sadistic and obscene." An accompanying photo showed a scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately a half inch wide, from the hot branding iron Deek members applied to the small of the back of 40 new members.
George W. Bush, then a Yale senior and former president of Deek, explained that the instrument used was actually a coathanger--and that the wound was merely a "cigarette burn."
Might this have any connection to GWB's present indifference to--perhaps even affinity for--torture? Nah. . .I'm sure by now the frat boy quoted in this article has matured and feels remorse.
Interesting anecdote, Sylny, thanks. Haven't heard it before. Assuming it's genuine, it'd be a great item for Left Blogistan to publicize. So GWB was one of the villians of Animal House? Hmmm.
Seank- Yeah, talk about burying the lead. I've seen this story posted on like 10 blogs, but none of them mentioned the deer head thing (not even Atrios). I don't think anyones made it to the second page yet; Allen obvisouly fancied himself as some kind of white power Godfather.
Senator Macaca is a kind of 'Jefferson Gatsby': a privileged California kid with an interesting family history who went to Virginia in the early 70s with the idea of remaking himself according to his neo-confederate fantasies. Which makes SR Sidarth a kind of Nick Carraway, the outsider who cracks a façade that's sustained by those who endulge and enjoy the self-fashioned bubble of Allen's life.
My favorite part about this whole thing is that Allen is a fake Southerner. That actually sounds about right. I grew up in the South (albeit in a big city) and had to go to Connecticut for college to hear a good collection of the most racist things I'd ever heard. Post civil rights era I'd tend to argue that there are more virulent racists outside the south than inside it. I don't mean to argue that everything is hunky dory, just that I'm not convinced that racism can be described as a mainly southern problem anymore.
Allen seems to have missed all of this. Honestly, I'm not even sure coded racial language is such a big draw anymore. But, of course, Allen is badly tuned into the South, he seems to have idealized it out in California as a land of segregation and honey and doesn't really understand that its all become far more complicated than that.
Southern bigotry is bred in the bone. It's like Original Sin. Faulkner has a scene that absolutely defines that near on genetic side to Southern bigotry. Two friends, one black, one white, had been camping out with the older hunters since they were on solid food. Sleeping in the same bunk together. One day, right before puberty sets in, the white kid simply looks at his friend, sees that he's black, and puts him out of the bunk. The black friend, as if awaking from a dream, leaves the bunk and goes to sleep somewhere else.
Now I want you to tell me one thing more. Why do you hate the South?" "I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont hate it," he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark. I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!
Post civil rights era I'd tend to argue that there are more virulent racists outside the south than inside it.
Consider the experience of Allen's Virginia-native peers at UVA when he arrived from UCLA as a transfer in 1971. You've grown up during the decade of civil rights marches, the university has had its own protests, and this California kid arrives thinking and acting like he's the reincarnation of Robert E. Lee.
And yet the most Northern of Southern states fell for it for years just like how the fell for the Bush facade. The South seems to love to be parodied by Yankees as the butt of jokes.
Comments closed October 08, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
Wow. It's pretty amazing to watch spontaneous human combustion.
Posted by Petey | September 24, 2006 10:07 PM