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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAttention Virginians: While we're on the subject of high school "pranks,"
there's another you should know about.
Your former governor and senator George "Macaca" Allen is hoping to regain his US Senate seat this year. Apparently R's in Virginia either have a short memory or think racism is a good reason to vote for someone.
Please spread the word among your friends who might be inclined to give Allen the benefit of the doubt that "Macaca" was no accident or fluke. George Allen has a racist past dating back over 40 years to when he was a student at Palos Verdes High School in California. I know because I was a classmate.
He was, no doubt, one of the few teenagers in Southern California who wore a Confederate flag lapel pin in his yearbook photo and plastered his car with Stars and Bars bumper stickers. He wasn't content to simply advertise his sympathies, however. He had to act on them. The night before our school was to play a predominantly African-American school in a basketball game in late 69 or early 70, Allen spray painted the exterior walls of our high school with anti-white graffiti to make it appear to be the work of black students from the rival school. He wanted to ratchet up the racial tension. He was caught and briefly suspended. However, his father was coach of the LA Rams at the time and the school swept the incident under the rug.
When asked about this during a 2006 New Republic interview when he was testing the Presidential waters, Allen claimed it was just a silly prank and there were no racist overtones. An out and out lie. This is a guy who carried a baseball bat in his car that had the words "N----r Knocker" inscribed on it. His own sister alluded to it in a book she wrote, though she left off the inscription and claimed he only used it to smash mailboxes. He also named his only son Forrest, as in Nathan Bedford Forrest of the KKK.
The New Republic article is reprinted here in its entirety. It's worth a read. Virginians, please do whatever you can to make Allen's political exile permanent.
http://www.tnr.com/article/george-allens-race-problem
Franks1
(7 posts)He was, no doubt, one of the few teenagers in Southern California who wore a Confederate flag lapel pin in his yearbook photo and plastered his car with Stars and Bars bumper stickers.
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The Wizard
(12,482 posts)leave the carcass of a dead animal on the front porch of a black family? Or maybe left one in their mailbox? Bigotry is a selling point in the Confederacy.
LibDemAlways
(15,139 posts)high school classmate, who also had classes with Allen at the U. of Virginia law school, reports that one day after the Redskins (by then his dad was the coach) lost a football game when a black player missed a last second hail Mary pass into the end zone loudly proclaimed in class "If it was a watermelon, he'd have caught it." Allen is an embarrassment of racist riches.
That same classmate works as a Democratic consultant in VA these days and has urged Tim Kaine to go after Allen on the racism issue. But, as you point out, it's a positive for many voters. Just hope sanity prevails.
lastlib
(22,981 posts)LibDemAlways
(15,139 posts)the Allen family that she'd even mention it. She paints a nasty portrait of her brother as a guy who threw another brother into a glass patio door and comments that he should have been a dentist because he enjoyed inflicting pain.