Political Scientist Joins Attack on Allen

A prominent political scientist, who at one time was a classmate of George Allen, has joined the "n-word" fray:

A noted political scientist joined one of Sen. George Allen's former college football teammates in claiming the senator used a racial slur to refer to blacks in the early 1970s, a claim Allen dismisses as "ludicrously false."

Larry J. Sabato, one of Virginia's most-quoted political science professors and a classmate of Allen's in the early 1970s, said in a televised interview Monday that Allen used the epithet...

Christopher J. LaCivita, an Allen strategist, said Allen and Sabato were not friends nor did they associate with each other in college.

"Larry is obviously relying on words he heard from someone else," he said. "We believe it's completely inaccurate."

Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, would not tell The Associated Press how he knew Allen used the n-word. He told Chris Matthews on MSNBC that he did not know whether it was true that Allen used the word frequently while in college.

"I'm simply going to stay with what I know is the case and the fact is he did use the n-word, whether he's denying it or not," Sabato said.

This statement will probably be very politically incorrect, but let's get serious here. Just how many southern men of age 50+, white or black, have gone through their lives without at one time or another using the n-word? I'll bet if people were really honest, you wouldn't find that many. Although that word is fairly uncommon today (except in rap videos), it was much more common when men of Allen's age were growing up in the south. Is the use of the n-word going to be an automatic disqualification from public office? If so, southerners are going to have to import their politicians from the north.