Mr. Taylor, who is white and was then a graduate student at the University of Virginia, said the term had come up in a conversation about the turtles in a pond near Mr. Allen’s property.  Mr. Allen, Mr. Taylor said, told him that “around here” the only people who “eat ’em” were African-Americans, whom he described with the notorious epithet for blacks.

Mr. Shelton, a radiologist now living in North Carolina, said that on a hunting trip Mr. Allen had sought out the home of an African-American and affixed the head of a dead deer to the mailbox.  He also said Mr. Allen had called him Wizard, for Robert Shelton, who used the title as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

“He wanted to know if I was related,” Mr. Shelton recalled in an interview. “I said no.”


I guess I just don't see what the big deal is.  Maybe it would have been more considerate for Sen. Allen to have affixed a turtle instead of a deer's head.  I mean, after all.

If anyone wants to read my very first post on this blog, in which I covered the origins of George's "race" problem, you can find it here.