Dear Editor,

Interesting article. Being Canadian, I've never heard of this George Allen or his family. Being a Canadian of Indian background, however, I can sympathize with how the young man who was singled out for Allen's bullying must have felt. The last sentence, though, needs some further consideration - many of us have been waiting six years for the American public to figure out who George Bush is.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

Michael Scherer writes, "When you face the American people, sooner or later, they are going to figure out who you really are."

Unfortunately, and to the woe of this country, all too often those realizations occur far too late. Let us hope that the notoriously short memories of Americans in the political realm don't extend to this faux-country, fake Bubba, lest we elect yet another bully to the Oval Office.

You give Allen way too much credit for even understanding what "macaca" might mean, though the word sounds offensive regardless of its meaning. But "Welcome to America", addressed to a brown-skinned man born in this country, is worse than offensive. The man is a Virginian, and thus Allen's constituent. To make the assumption because of someone's appearance that he is not an American is worse than offensive. It is a violation of everything this country stands for. Allen's half-assed apology is just spin.

I know from very close personal experience that G allen is a closet rascist.

I would have to say that the hood has come off now, no more in the closet for Allen or should I say faux imperial wizard.

Would that there were dozens more progressives of color willing to follow around a GOP (or GOP-lite) candidate and videotape their appearances. And their constitutents, too, where appropriate.

It's a little bit too much to ask, of course-- who could have the stomach for it, day in and day out-- but it would surely have an impact. And it would reveal Mehlman's GOP diversity plan as the shell game it really is.

"The system is designed to weed out the weak and the shifty." Oh, right.

It may be designed that way, but it weeds out the thoughtful, the truthful, the competent. It breeds rich haughty pigs and liars.

The people love him in southern Virginia. He speaks their language.

Really? Because here I sit in southern Virginia, one of "the people," and I do not love him; nor do most of the people I work with. Nor do m ost people I know, many of whom have square sideburns and stiff boots.

It's not progressive to paint with a wide, red-state brush the people of any region, nor is it acceptable to make such condescending, tired comments about "the people" and "their language." Southerners-- and our rural counterparts across the nation-- are just as thoughtful and complex as big-city blue-staters, and representing us as backwater, easily snowed, boot-loving rubes is as offensive as any other cultural stereotype.

The language I speak does not require me to fall back on old sterotypes, or to drag out social cliches to make a point about ignorant politicians.

I have a friend who grew up in the same neighborhood as the Allen family and was friends with one of his brother, and he told me several years ago that George Allen was sadistic and the neighborhood bully. I'm glad his true nature is showing through before he can move further up the power ladder.

I LOVE these guys.

Yale/Harvard grad, spends months at a time vacationing (at taxpayer expense) in his estate in Texas. What does he call it? "My RANCH." Sternographers/reports in the White House detail dutifully back up his script.

Now we have Allen. California bred, privileged son of celebrity aping a home-spun good ol' boy. A sports celebrity, so it's more Real American than, say an actor. Reporters dutifully back up his script.

What really cracks me up is when these elites try acting "down home". They can't even be racist like real good-old boys. Guy can't even call them coloreds a nigger - using instead a French/Belgian equivalent.

How sissified. I'm dissapointed. I expected so much more from these GOP headliners.

Talking out of class here, but growing up in California, I knew a lot of these guys. Would sprout off their crap and push around smaller Asian-American students, chuckling because of their size difference. After school, 10 friends would take out these guys like a mechanic dismantling a car. No more racist crap from them for the rest of the year. Ah, the good old days...

I am somewhat suspicious that Allen honestly made up a word and said it - with no intention of that word being racist. I am even sympathic with the harassment he was feeling being videotaped at every stop by the other side. That would not be pleasant. I have been videotaped during activist work by the conservatives and I did not like it. Where he want wrong was in telling the young man "welcome to America." That was clearly racist and assuming that his audience was mostly white, it seems like he was trying to turn the audience against the young man (and play into their phobias) in a racist fashion.

Back in the 1920s the KKK was very respectable, until the unpleasantries in Indiana showed everybody what was really behind the smiling Klansmen (sorry, couldn't see their smiles behind those hoods).

George Allen, non-native Virginian, would have been a KKK member and leader, Grand Imperial Macacca, or something.

Today he's just another bigot strutting around in cowboy boots, who denies he's a bigot. Sounds like another slick politician who never had sex with that woman.

Sincerely,

NATIVE Virginian

By the way, is that the best picture of the victim that they could come up with? Wearing that stupid John Belushi rip-off shirt from Animal House? And he isn't sporting his Mohawk! I feel cheated.

I don't give 2 shits about George Allen or whether he wins or loses. But as an aficionado of racial humor, whether it's Carlos Mencia, Dave Chapelle, Howard Stern, Richard Pryor, Ali G, or a dozen others, I can say with 100% honesty that I have never heard the term "Macaca" as a "common racial slur around the world." In fact, I've never heard the word Macaca before the other day. Now, please, someone insult me as a sheltered, narrow-minded American who thinks that if he doesn't know about something it isn't important. Thank you.