[Cross-posted at
Raising Kaine.]
More shoes are dropping, and still more may be about to drop, on George Allen concerning his habitual past use of the n-word.
In tomorrow's Charlottesville Daily Progress, Bob Gibson devotes much of his column to the testimony of a nurse and a former classmate of Allen's, both of whom attended poker parties with then-law-student Allen and recall his habitual use of the slur.
"He just threw it around so casually, it's like he didn't know any better," the nurse, identified by her maiden name of Leah Deason, recalls.
An Allen classmate recalls the same thing:
"It was part of his everyday speech," he said. "It just rolled off his tongue. He'd get a black card he didn't like and he'd toss it back and say, `I don't need that nig--- ten.'"
And Gibson has more repellent recollections from Ken Shelton, the courageous North Carolina doctor and Allen undergraduate classmate who first came forward by name to accuse him of using the racial slur:
Shelton said Allen showed disrespect to UVa and the school's mostly black cleaning staff by walking down the hallways of Newcomb Hall as a student and spitting tobacco juice "on the floors in the hallway and on the walls."
There may be more. So says Ryan Lizza of the New Republic, in TNR's blog, The Plank, tonight, alerting us that "new n-word accusers will step forward tomorrow".
Lizza has broken stories about Allen's racial insensitivity before--not once but twice.
So as the saying goes: stay tuned. This ugly story has not yet run its course.
It's high time George Allen began to tell the truth about his past, took responsibility for it, and showed Virginia that he has fully understood and repented of what he has done.
[Update: Yes, Lizza was referring to the Gibson column. Don't miss the devastating way he lays out the story so far, here.]