Yep, that GOP Moral Superiority
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/09/27/allen_deerhead/
Sept. 27, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- A former college football teammate of
Sen. George Allen's has confirmed details of a controversial hunting
trip in the early 1970s, during which Allen is alleged to have placed
a severed deer head in a mailbox that he believed to be owned by a
black family.
On Sunday, Salon reported that Ken Shelton, a former teammate of
Allen's who works as a radiologist in North Carolina, claimed that
Allen asked after a hunting trip for directions to a neighborhood
populated by black residents. Shelton said Allen then drove him and
another teammate, Billy Lanahan, to the area and put the severed head
of a deer they had killed into a mailbox.
George Beam, a nuclear engineering company manager who lives outside
Lynchburg, Va., now says he can confirm parts of that story. Beam, who
played football with Allen, said he remembers Lanahan, who is now
deceased, describing the hunting trip with Allen and Shelton.
"We were sitting around drinking beer," Beam said in an interview
Wednesday morning, recalling the conversation with Lanahan. "Billy
said, 'George and Kenny and I went hunting, and we decided at some
time to cut off this deer head and stick it in a mailbox.'"
Beam said he does not remember Lanahan saying that the incident was
racially motivated. He also said Lanahan did not specify who had the
idea to put the deer head in the mailbox.
In a press appearance Monday, Allen dismissed Shelton's claims as
"absolutely false," "pure fabrication" and "nonsense," according to
the Washington Post.
Beam said he was motivated to speak to a reporter about his memory
because of recent attacks against Shelton's integrity by people close
to the Allen campaign, a group that includes several former teammates.
"I knew Kenny Shelton, and his reputation in my opinion is
irreproachable," Beam said Wednesday morning, adding that he had not
spoken to Shelton in decades.
Lanahan died this year at the age of 53. His aunt, Martha Belle
Chisholm, told Salon last week that Lanahan's family owned land near
Bumpass, Va., about 50 miles east of the University of Virginia
campus, where Allen played football in college. Chisholm said she
remembered Lanahan speaking highly of Allen.
Beam played as a quarterback and a wide receiver on the University of
Virginia football team during the 1972, '73 and '74 seasons. Beam said
he lived with Lanahan between 1971 and 1973. Beam described himself as
a political independent who leans "more Republican than anything," and
has not yet decided whether to vote for Allen in November.
In college, Beam said, he did not know Allen well, and had no memory
of Allen using racial epithets. "He was a transplant from California,"
said Beam, who grew up in Clarkesville, Va. "I remember him appearing
to act more Southern than people who had grown up in the South."
In the Post Wednesday, Chris LaCivita, a consultant for the Allen
campaign, suggested that Shelton had fabricated the deer head story
because a similar incident had been reported in North Carolina in
January. Shelton said he had never heard of the North Carolina report,
and called LaCivita's allegation ridiculous.
One other former teammate, George Korte, was quoted in an Allen
campaign press release directly attacking Shelton, saying the
radiologist had "deep-rooted problems with self identity." Korte
offered nothing to back up his charge beyond a different memory of
Allen's behavior.
On Sunday, Salon reported that two other teammates, who asked that
their names be withheld for fear of retribution from the Allen camp,
also remembered Allen using a racial epithet and displaying racist
attitudes. Since then, two more acquaintances of Allen's have come
forward to claim that they heard Allen use racial epithets to describe
blacks. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Ellen G.
Hawkins, an active Democrat and housewife in Virginia, remembers Allen
badmouthing a black football player and using a racial slur more than
once at a party in 1976. Allen's campaign manager called this account
"another false accusation."
The Times, the Post and the New Republic have also reported that
Christopher Taylor, an anthropology professor in Alabama who
identifies himself as a Democrat, remembers Allen using the word
"*****" to describe black residents near his Virginia home in the
early 1980s. The Allen campaign charged that Taylor was lying. "This
guy is not credible period," said LaCivita, in an interview with the
Post.
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Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
The Bush 'balanced' budget: -2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2708 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
newsgroups Yang promises not to revenge post
in response to Sound-of-Trumpet's *****:
rec.art.scifi.written
sci.archaeology
soc.history.what-if
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