In between dreaming up outrageous ads for her clients, slandering their opponents, and heading a small organization called the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, Kay Daly occasionally finds time to write posts for her blog “The Daly Report.”
On Wednesday, she saw fit to weigh in on the recent allegations that Sen. George Allen used racial slurs to refer to African Americans during his college years
Virginia Sen. George Allen on Monday denied allegations by a college football teammate and another former acquaintance that the senator used a racial epithet to refer to blacks during and after his time at the University of Virginia in the early 1970s.
The accusations by R. Kendall Shelton, 53, a radiologist in North Carolina, and Christopher C. Taylor, 59, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama, reignited questions about Allen and race as he campaigns for reelection against Democrat James Webb.
Shelton said Allen frequently used the “N-word” to describe blacks and nicknamed him “Wizard” because of the similarity of his name to that of Robert Shelton, a former imperial wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He also recounted an event from 1973 or 1974 in which he, Allen and a third friend were hunting deer. After the deer was killed, Shelton said, Allen cut off the doe’s head, asked for directions to the home of the nearest black person and shoved the head into that person’s mailbox.
Taylor said that during a visit to Allen’s Charlottesville house in 1982, Allen pointed to turtles in a pond on his property and said only “the [epithets] eat them.”
Allen denied the allegations, but Daly came rushing to his defense, offering a unique “who hasn’t said ‘n-word’?” defense
This strategy deployed against George Allen could be called the “Southern strategy with a Mark Fuhrman twist.” If one is truly truthful, there is probably not a person alive on planet Earth who has not uttered the so-called “n-word.”
They might have been singing along with lyrics to a hip-hop tune. Or they might have said it in a sociology course. They might have been in a play. Or a lawyer in a courtroom for OJ Simpson. They might have been reading aloud from a newspaper or a book and quoted the dreaded n-bomb. They might have been using the word as an example of what not to say. Who knows?
There is an obvious difference between reading a book or studying the word in sociology class and using it as an epithet , but apparently Daly is incapable of understanding that … which is not particularly surprising considering that she works for a candidate who produces ads such as this [view the ad here]
“What kind of congressman would try to deny our soldiers the body armor they need to save their lives? The answer is your congressman, Brad Miller. That’s right, Brad Miller did not vote for the appropriation that paid for improved body armor for our troops. But Brad Miller has no trouble spending your money — he would just rather spend it on sex. That’s right, instead of spending money on sickle-cell research, Brad Miller voted to spend your money to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes in San Francisco. Instead of spending money on cancer research, Brad Miller spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men. Brad Miller spent your tax dollars to study something called the “Bisexual, Transgendered and Two-Spirited Aleutian Eskimos,” whoever they are. Brad Miller even spent your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia. Brad Miller pays for sex, but not for body armor for our troops. If Miller had better priorities, you wouldn’t be having to hear this.” Robinson: “I’m Vernon Robinson, and I approved this message because Brad Miller is out of touch, and soon, he’ll be out of Congress”
To make matters worse, aside from the intentionally offensive rhetoric, FactCheck.org notes that his ad is not even remotely accurate
[T]he ad [is] misleading on several counts. Miller did nothing that would have denied body armor for troops. There was no connection between the National Institutes of Health studies in question and funding for body armor. And despite the misleading way the ad belittles them, the sex studies had such stated goals as slowing the spread of AIDS, understanding homosexuality and improving the lives of senior citizens as their sexual function declines.
…And saying it’s Miller’s fault that viewers are “having to hear this” gets things backwards. It was Robinson’s decision to put this fact-twisting bunk on the air. If he had greater respect for the facts you wouldn’t have to be reading this.
