On Friday, George Allen got ambushed twice in Staunton, VA, where attention continued to focus on his offensive “macaca” comments.
First, a UVA law student asked him some harsh questions during a visit to the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce:
A man who identified himself as a law student confronted U.S. Sen. George Allen here today, demanding to know if the potential presidential candidate had ever used the n-word.
Mike Stark, in his early to mid-20s, also asked Allen, R-Va., why he had a Confederate flag and a noose in his office. The News Virginian confirmed that Stark is a first-year law student at the University of Virginia.
An Allen aide asked Stark to leave, while a staff person at the Holiday Inn in Staunton also told him to leave the premises.
The man paid $20 to attend a luncheon hosted by the Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce. The man stood with reporters waiting to interview Allen, then fired him questions.
“Is this an interview?” Allen asked. “I’ll be glad to talk to you afterwards.”
Allen aide David Nepp, stepped in and asked the man to leave.
“Are you with the hotel,” the man asked.
A hotel employee asked man to leave.
Allen did say before the man left that the Confederate flag was a gift to him. The Republican previously has said the noose represented his tough-on-crime stance and long has been removed from his office.
Note Allen’s excuse — the Confederate flag was a gift to him (a detail I’ve seen in no other published report). But as Ryan Lizza showed in The New Republic, “Allen has either displayed the flag–on himself, his car, inside his home–or expressed his enthusiastic approval of the emblem from approximately 1967 to 2000.” Whether that particular flag was a gift is irrelevant. Moreover, even if it was a gift, Allen hung the flag in question in his living room — an obvious endorsement.
After receiving the unwanted questions at the Chamber of Commerce, Allen failed to appear at a scheduled downtown meet-and-greet, disappointing protestors who were waiting to protest his “macaca” comments:
