Felix's Faux Pas

The picture just keeps getting uglier for Senator George Felix Allen. While his racism came into national focus thanks to Macaca-Gate, it seems that his bigotry can be traced to the very beginning of his Virginia roots.

In case you need a refresher, the California-born mock redneck Allen infamously posed with a Confederate pin in his high school yearbook and later appeared in a campaign ad filmed at his home with the flag in the background. And then there's the matter of his record as a lawmaker. " As a member of the Virginia Legislature, Allen opposed a state holiday honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As Virginia's governor, Allen issued a proclamation honoring Confederate History Month that contained no mention of slavery."

But wait…there's more. Now, three of Allen's former University of Virginia football teammates have come forth with corroborating stories of the senator's racism:

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.

To be fair, these allegations were made by only three of Allen's 19 former teammates interviewed by reporters. Some even claim the senator had " no prejudices, biases or anything else." And yet, there seems to be no political agenda driving the outing of the would-be Klansman/Senator. Shelton – the only named accuser – has a bipartisan voting record and has publicly supported Republican candidates. Why would he lie about a man he hasn't talked to in thirty years?

Here's the thing – I hate the whole "where there's smoke, there's fire" argument, but there are more fumes coming out of Allen's campaign than there are at a Phish concert. You may not believe that he liked/likes to use the word "nigger", or that he stuffed a dead dear's head into a black family's mailbox, or that he had heard the word "Macaca" at least once prior to using it to mock a brown-skinned employee of his opponent, or that he spoke fondly about imperial wizards of the Ku Klux Klan, or any other less-than-flattering story in the news. But the facts that we do know about this douchebag (zest for the Confederate Flag, white supremacist voting record, a noose hanging outside his law office) certainly make these new allegations a lot more believable, don't they?