I'm not being naive. I was in a California high school at the time--one with a fair amount of racial tension. Allen's behavior has a crassness that would have been considered uncool, among other things. SoCal is not a southern state--the Confederacy, indeed the Civil War in general, doesn't have much weight out here.

Palos Verde is a posh area--you'd have had voluntary racial segregation socially--but jokes about beating up blacks? No. Overt racism in California is considered somewhat lower class, frankly--a sign of ignorance--though, once again, more subtle things did and do occur.

">>And by the way, "cracker" does not carry anything like the emotional/historical punch that the n-word does, so please give me a break with all this "ooh, YOU'RE a liberal racist, Tom Payne" crap. That's just silly.<<

But you despise him because he is a cracker, right? How wonderful that you have found a class of "white niggers" to hate & feel good about it. Move over, George Allen-- the courageous "Anonymous" is here."

Mr. Higdon:

1) I did not call Mr Allen a cracker. I simply pointed out that there is no comparison between the two terms.

2) I live in a small town in the southeast. Do not assume that I look down on small town, southern white people. I am one. My family is from here. I grew up here. But I still know better than to think that it's ok to use words like "nigger" and display the Confederate flag - even though I see that flag displayed in three separate places during my morning commute. Those are hateful symbols and while I love the south, and I'm proud to be a southerner, I sure as hell am not proud of that part of my heritage. And "cracker" is most definitely in no way comparable. If you think it is, you need a lesson in American history.

3) I'm not obligated to post my real name on here. You can call me a coward all you want, but it's just plain stupid to go around posting political views on the internet with your real name attached. Prospective employers do use google, and sometimes they don't agree with you. But if you want to post your real name, you go right ahead.

Reading and hearing about the recent allegations of George Allen using derogatory terms about people of different ethnicities doesn't surprise me. I knew George well enough to be on a first name basis with him back in the early 90's when I was active in the Charlottesville Republican Committee. I was secretary and treasurer of that committee at different times. We even had the party headquarters in the basement of George's law office in those days.

We held meetings occasionally at a local motel conference room in town. The now defunct Mt. Vernon Motel. One evening, George attended our committee meeting there. In an adjoining conference room there were Mexican-Americans who were selling western ware. As I stood talking with George and the then committee chairman during a break making small talk the chairman suggested that George may want to look at some of the cowboy boots for sale in the other room as we knew of his affinity for the footwear. His response floored me. He looked at us both and said in a condescending tone that he would not buy anything from those "wetbacks." I looked at the chairman and he looked at me in total shock. The conversation quickly wrapped up and I walked away in total disbelief at what I had just heard. As this was an actual personal experience for me I am very inclined to believe the current allegations.

Sincerely,

Forrest R. Cook

Those of you with first-hand knowledge of Allen's past behavior, I hope you are sending detailed information off not just to Salon but elsewhere. Whether you're liberal or conservative, a Democrat, Republican or other, I think most of us can agree that we don't need this kind of person in elected office.

It would be one thing, I guess, if Allen's attitudes were a thing of the past, but it seems that they continue into the present.

I have to wonder, how did someone so bad get so far?

A cracker need be neither white, southern, nor poor. Bushit's a cracker. Allen's a cracker. They're both confederate wannabe rich boys who chose, consciously chose, to affect that twang and that condescention. Cracker is as cracker does, like Manhattan Ritz, and Anal Anonymous. It's the republikan platform: hatred of "the other", whether xenophobic, homophobic, mysogenistic, militaristic, oligiarchic, or just plain greedy and stoopid. Jesse Helms. Trent Lott (nice hairpiece, crackerjack). Newt the Patoot. The late lamented Strom the Bomb (another nice hairpiece, and a great racing orange color, too). What used to be Dixiecrats have long sinced morphed into the heart and (ass)soul of the reichwing powergrubbers. The remnant of the George Wallace (what is it with the name George and these pricks?) campaign were the start of Lardass Fallwell and the Moron Majority (really; they started with George's mailing lists). So, here's a stiff middle finger to the confederacy in all its permutations and peregrinations and incestuous assignations. Screw every last one of 'em. Appomatox was only a temporary setback. The cracker brigades took another 150 years, but they sure 'nuff took over. It's working out so well, too.

If it was his propensity to call names, and he acknowledged that, as a youth, he had done that, it would pass, and the attackers would look like tormenters. That's what I thought this story would end up as. (And I'm a Dem with no love of Allen.)

But it's the way he's handled all this stuff! "I made up 'macaca,' I don't even know what it means." "I was referring to his 'mohawk' haircut -- long on top, short on the sides. What's this about North Africa? Never heard the word." "Okay, sure, my mom's from North Africa, but she never used the word." (Maybe true; but look on Stormfront.org, it's a term that's popular there.) "Jewish? How dare you? Are you anti-Semitic?" "Well, no, mom just told me I was Jewish a month ago." Picture taken with confederate organizations that are against interracial dating? No, I never knew about what they believed.

And now, faced with these n-word allegations, what happens? He denies he's EVER used the word. Not, well, I might have said that in the past. I'm very sorry about that. No, "I never said that." And dozens of people come forward who say they've heard him. The latest? Larry Sabato, a classmate, on the Hardball show. I'm pretty certain he's a Republican, but there was a look on his face when he said it that told you something.

If you made a mistake or two twenty years ago, but you were a good guy, people would shut up. Whoever was with W during the cokehead years, the booze and wild party years, must essentially like him, because they never came forward. Of course, maybe Karl would have had them killed, but I think it's fair to presume that he was liked enough by the people who partied with him, which he didn't deny, that there was no big scandal.

But his serial denials, and the way people are coming out about this guy makes me think that a lot of people who knew him really saw something they didn't like, that they saw something ugly ten or twenty years ago or more, and they're bringing out the stories now. If he was a good guy, nobody would be saying shit.