Josh Marshall has been hammering George Allen lately.
TPM Reader GM has a nice catch out of the Sen. Allen Macaca Apology 3.0 article in today's Virginia-Pilot, emphasis added ...
"The point is, symbols matter, they should matter, and this is something that I wish I learned a lot earlier," Allen said. "Even if your heart is pure, the things you say and do and the symbols you use do matter because of the way others may take them."Allen wore a Confederate flag pin on his lapel in his 1970 graduation picture from a Southern California high school. He hung a noose from a plant in his Charlottesville law office in the 1980s and a Confederate flag inside his home. As governor in the mid-1990s, he alienated some by signing a resolution that designated a Confederate history month in Virginia but did not acknowledge the evils of slavery.
I guess you have to hand it to Sen. Allen since in his feeble efforts to wriggle his way out of his history of bigotry he has actually managed to lend an element of bleakly dark humor to this country's heavy history of racial segregation and violence.
A noose? He missed the symbolism of that one? Thought it was just about southern heritage?
The weird thing is, as Ed Kilgore pointed out back in April, it's not even like George Allen is even a southerner. As Ed wrote then, "Allen's whole cowboy-boot-wearing, tobacco-chewing, country-music-loving Southern Man routine was something he cultivated during his formative high school years in the hyper-exclusive Southern California community of Palos Verdes."
What was the noose about?
Even with all the Macaca coverage, this guy's still getting a free ride from most of the press.
No kidding. The man displays a hangman's noose, takes glamour shots with a white power group, votes against MLK day, and calls a minority a racial slur - and that's just part of the portfolio. And one "ethnic rally" is supposed to make nice?