Well, it's been five days since the "Nation" magazine published its online story on the link between Virginia Senator George Allen and the Council of Conservative Citizens and other white supremacist groups (see
here), and the story has finally broken through to the main stream media, in an AP story and in a column in the "Kansas City Star." While the AP story only has two paragraphs on this, and the "KC Star" has three short paragraphs, this is a start. More below the fold.
The AP story has appeared in two places, in a story published in today's edition of the
Daily Press (Hampton Roads, Virginia) and the Web site of
WVEC TV (ABC-13, Norfolk, Virginia). The
KC Star item is in its "The Buzz" (?online?) political column.
Here's a portion of the Daily Press AP story:
Last week, Allen chose to decline an award from the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund after donors to the minority endowment threatened to withhold contributions.
Some polls indicate Webb has eaten into what was once a wide Allen lead and made the race competitive, something it wasn't in July.
The comments have also reopened Allen's past to national media scrutiny.
In the latest edition of The Nation, the left-leaning magazine carries a photo of Allen in 1996 with leaders of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a segregationist advocacy group for "European-American people." The senator's spokesman, John Reid, said Allen had no ties to the group and dismissed the picture as one of many Allen, then governor, made with numerous groups and people in a receiving line.
Yet even in small towns like Staunton, where Allen's folksy manner and conservative message always play well, the gaffe nagged at him. On Aug. 25, a heckler confronted Allen about the [macaca] comment after a local Chamber of Commerce gathering, and he skipped a subsequent campaign stop downtown where protesters awaited him.
And here's what the KC Star "Buzz" political column says:
The Nation reports that in 1996, then-Virginia GOP Gov. George Allen "personally initiated an association with the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council."
Attending a convention of conservative PACS, the magazine says, Allen strode to the CCC and spoke with founder Gordon Lee Baum. He then suggested they pose for a photograph with Charlton Heston. The picture ran [in] the CCC's newsletter.
Baum, on the photo: "It helped us as much as it helped him. We got our bona fides."
It's nice to see this news finally breaking through, but I think we need to push a lot more on this. Call or email the reporters who you know who haven't done a story yet. To identify other media, you can also use this Virginia media list, which DemInDisguise mentioned in a recent posting. You can also use the Google News Advanced Search (see here) to ID reporters and columnists who have written pieces on Allen recently. Look for their contact information at the end of the news story or column, and then give them a call or send an email and suggest that they ask more about Allen's links with white supremacists, and if he's willing to disallow those links once and for all. Watch Yahoo News (see here) for the AP story. If it does appear, give it a high recommendation and email it to friends, to push up its prominence on Yahoo.
And, in related news, watch for a DKos diary posting later this week by the the Monkey and the Banana on what they plan to do to bring more attention to Allen's racism, and how you can help with that.