MWise,

Don't forget about the Ninth District, my former home, who continues to elect Rick Boucher.

>>After the fact, all Virginians knew all of this stuff. But do you honestly think that the audience knew all of these facts at the moment that Allen uttered his inanities?>>

What the audience knew is immaterial. ALLEN knew the guy was NOT from the big city. Period. So the story that that's what he meant when he said 'welcome to America' is false. Allen KNEW what he was saying and it was "you're dark skinned, so I don't consider you American."

"i am no fan of this allen guy but am just amazed that someone from his roadkill background would know such sophisticated international slurs."

Base, you might want to reread the article (both pages) or the comments. Allan isn't a good old boy. He just poses as one to sucker his constituancy.

Like many Republican elites, he was rich kid, son of celebrity parents, indulged in every whim. A fake.

He fooled you, huh? :)

<<Michael Scherer did not write the article out of an interest for forwarding some golden ideal of ice cold objective truth; but because he was offended by Allen's remarks and wanted to tear him a new one. He's motivated by vengence, another brand of the thirst for power and sadistic pleasure practiced by his opponent. I can't see how you could not be, I'm just saying that it's useless trying to take the moral high ground while writing and celebrating a piece like this.>>

1. Yeah, invoke ice-cold objective truth, as though anyone in the US know what it is, listening to O'Reilly, Coulter and Fox News. Golden, fer sure. ANY opposing view to those hacks is light-years closer to truth.

2. You know for a fact that Scherer wanted to "tear him a new one?" Wow, never would have gotten that out of the article. Seemed pretty heavy on background rather than bile.

3. Hmmm. Vengeance, Thirst for Power, Sadistic Pleasure. Yep, all solid Republican virtues. I'm hoping that you are talking about Allen here, but somehow you seem to be implicating Webb, and somehow Scherer of those same motivations. You could be clearer. Or maybe you ARE a Repug, incoherently accusing everyone of your own flaws. Talk about projection!

4. Not so obviously, I don't know wtf you are saying. Get off your moral high horse and make a decent argument.

Fine, NASCAR fans are part of "Real America."

But "Real America" is also my stem cell research lab, with a Russian woman who moved from Moscow 12 years ago, a guy born in England and raised in Indiana, a Chinese grad student, a Japanese post-doc, and a fellow whose parents moved here from Pakistan before he was born. My British and Norwegian ancestry, on the other hand, goes back to George Washington in Virginia, and I went to high school in the dusty red half of Washington State. And I love the Real America represented by the people I work with, who are striving to keep this country great. The guy with Pakistani parents is much more likely to drive an SUV, eat a Big Mac, and go to the mall than I am!

So how dare George Allen even suggest that only white Southerners who go to Republican rallies truly belong.

If Allen wants to play these games, shouldn't his opponents just keep reminding everyone that Allen's Mom is largely French? That makes Allen a whole lot more French than John Kerry. According to Allen's sister (quoted on Wikipedia), his Mom "was ashamed that she had given up her French citizenship to become a citizen of a country she deemed infantile."

Talk about something that should raise the blood pressure of the racist rednecks Allen is playing to until their heads explode. Why not just start posting signs with photo-shopped pictures of Allen wearing a beret, a striped shirt, and a little curled pencil thin moustache (carrying a glass of wine in one hand and a long loaf of bread under the other) all over Virginia? Sure, it's an infantile stereotype, but considering the "Freedom Fries" crowd, it'd probably work.

fuckthesouth.com

as offensive as the overwrought and undisquised insult to the mr. sidarth (issued twice) was allen's man claiming he had said "mohawk". the audio is clear and unmistakable; allen's man is a liar. it is all the more debilitating to shoot yourself in the foot while that foot is in your mouth.

I just wanted to compliment the reporter or reporters involved in writing this story. The nuanced family history that makes it clear Allen is nothing more than a typical Orange County racist (or typical southern Virginia racist, take your pick), will, if there is any justice at all, send the man back to whatever rock he crawled out from under.

The clear facts of the story make Allen's campaign aides frantic attempts to spin the comment into something else, all the more offensive and ludicrous. So, it's ok to call someone a shithead, but not to call him by a racist epithet.. you gotta love that.

You nailed the cocksucker right to the wall, and MSM now has all the ammo they need to finish the job on him. Nice.

and for all those white people here who have no idea what it's like to be characterized the way Allen did Sidarth...and for George Allen, who clearly hasn't the faintest idea why he should apologize personally to Sidarth, lemme cue you into something. I grew up in Hawaii in the 1970s, and the fine and shining standard epithet for ME was "fucking haole." I heard that more times than I can count, said with anger, contempt, you name it. And for no reason other than my physiognomy. The feelings I have about that are not at all easy to articulate, and I will never forget. I will probably never forgive either, even though I'm a little wiser now than I was then.

Great job of reporting, guys!!!!!! You may well have ruined the man's political career forever, and that's an EXCELLENT thing. We can but hope, anyway.

It's because Jim Webb is not really all that different. You have a choice between a racist and a homophobic mysogynist, basically. Go ahead, find a female Naval officer who was serving when Webb was Secretary of the Navy during the 80s, and ask her what she thinks of him. Oh, if you're talking to her on the phone, be sure to hold the earpiece away from your ear before she answers.

Several of the Democratic voters I know in Virginia who supported Webb confessed that they actually liked his primary rival Harris Miller better, but they insisted that Webb was more "electable." It's that kind of thinking that got John Kerry the presidential nomination in '04.