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Allen needs to word his statements a little better. But he did not say the claim he said the n-word was "ludicrously false".

IN fact, he said he could never remember saying the word, and that it wasn't part of his vocabulary, not then and not now, it's not part of what he is.

He said shelton's story was ludicrously false. Shelton claimed Allen was a racist and used the word all the time, a claim refuted by 16 team members who don't remember Allen doing anything racist. He claimed Allen gave him the nickname "wizard" because his name was identical to a klan leader -- but other teammates say he already had the nickname when Allen showed up, and they all said it was because he was good at catching the ball.

He claimed Allen said he came to school in Virginia because blacks "knew their place". It's impossible to prove that a conversation heard by only two people didn't take place, but everybody else remembers that Allen came to Virginia because his family moved here to coach the Redskins.

And he had that story about the deer head, which has no corroberation at all, and for whom the other participant just died a couple of months ago, so is not available to refute the story.

Logically, there's something amiss here. I could well imagine Allen, a young backup quarterback, sitting with a bunch of white people and they start talking "70's southern" and the next thing you know someone uses "n-word" instead of black and nobody cares. I can imagine him joking back to people who might be racists in a way that might be racist.

I can't imagine that a person would do the deer head thing, and NOT tell it to his other friends ever in his life. Why would he share that moment with Shelton, and nobody else? That doesn't make sense -- shelton wasn't his best friend in college.

The really nasty thing about this is that it is a transparent attempt to cast George Allen as a redneck native Southerner and fool voters. He is anything but that. He grew up in Southern California and his dad was a football coach, giving him exposure to all kinds of people at an early age. His mother was European and grew up in Africa. It's totally ridiculous to suggest that someone with this background came to the University of Virginia for racist reasons. It's ridiculous to suggest that someone with this background even knew the word nigger, much less used it. But too many gullible voters don't know this and won't bother to learn it. They just see "Virginia - football player - all-white Southern college in the early 1970s" and it seems perfectly believable. Especially when you add in the fact that Allen did once have a -- horrors! -- Confederate flag in his office.

And have no doubt, this smear will all be used in whisper campaigns in the black communities in Hampton, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Richmond. It will be printed up on flyers that will be quietly passed out in the black churches. Democrats have been doing stuff like this for years -- Create a false racial slur and then campaign in the black communities as though it were the truth, because we all know how dumb those black folks are and they will believe anything we tell them. Now you tell me, who is the real racist here?

I have a relative with family in the Jewish community in Norfolk, and he tells me the Democrtas are already running around there telling people that Allen knew he was a Jew and deliberately hid it for years because he was ashamed of it and din't want to lose the votes of all those rednecks in rural Virginia. This campaign has really sunk to new lows even for the Democrats.

Why is it that only Republicans are ever crucified for using racial slurs 36 or 50 years ago? Robert Byrd uses the N word last year and it's glossed over. Robert Byrd was Grand Kagle in the KKK, and it's OK with Liberals. Robert Byrd voted against Civil Rights legislation in the 60's because he was a good Dixicrat. Nothing is ever said.
I assume George Allen must be winning in Virginia because the Dems have resorted to bringing up things that happened 36 or 40 years ago. Heck, 40 years ago African-Americans were referred to as negros, colored people, and then blacks. You wouldn't dare call them that today. You'd be dating yourself at the least, or be called a racists by the Libs because of your arcane speech.

UVA was a very conservative place during the time Allen and Sabato would have been there. I entered in 1972 and I was in the first class that allowed women in without a quota. A state school! Some of my classmates reported that professors would say in class that women had no place there in their classes and then would say in a bit more detail where they did belong. But it never happened to me. There were very few Blacks, although my Resident Advisor in 1972 was a Black woman. There was an effort to recruit them by the time I left in the mid to late 70's. Some had a hard time adjusting to an almost all-white campus, others didn't.

I am from Virginia--more rural Virginia--and even there so many ages ago, we knew better than to say the "N" word. I grew up knowing that it was a very derisive racial slur and it was never, ever in my vocabulary. That was not the case with my parent's generation. And I just can't imagine someone finding a deer's head like this without reporting it to the authorities.