Yes, another one. First we heard from
Shelton. Then from
Taylor. Now
NYT reports a third named witness: Ellen G. Hawkins "said Tuesday that she heard him use a racial slur in 1976."
The details:
Mrs. Hawkins, who described herself as a rural Virginia housewife and an active Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday that she heard Mr. Allen use the slur repeatedly at a party on election night in 1976. She said Mr. Allen used the term while deprecating the intelligence of the black players on the Washington Redskins football team, which Mr. Allen's father coached. Recalling remarks about its star running back, Larry Brown, Mrs. Hawkins said that Mr. Allen "started in effect bad-mouthing him, saying what a shiftless you-know-what" he was.
She said she remembered the conversation because she was a big fan of the team and was shocked. She said Mr. Allen's statement on Monday was "just plain a lie."
She described her recollections in an e-mail message forwarded to The New York Times. Her former husband, who she said was at the party, did not return a call for comment.
Also, of course, there's Sabato, who says: "the fact is that he did use the 'n' word, whether he's denying it or not. He did use it. ... My sources are former classmates who came to me with stories that matched up ... I never solicited them. They came to me during the past few months."
The list keeps growing.
This is also fun. WaPo reports a named witness who claims that lots of people knew Etty was Jewish:
Decades ago, when George Allen's father was coach of the Redskins, my husband and I (along with several other couples) were guests in the coach's private box. When Mrs. Allen (the Senator's mother) appeared, several people, upon noticing her Mediterranean coloring, wondered what her ethnic background was. We were informed she had been born in either Morocco or Tunisia, and that she was Jewish. A fair number of the guests were also Jewish, and nothing further was discussed. It was simply a matter of "cocktail party" chit-chat. However, I was so naive in those years, that I assumed the coach was also Jewish, since he had a Jewish wife! How could comparative strangers know a fact that Mrs. Allen's children were not aware of?
Good question. Another clue that Allen lied when he claimed his Jewishness was a big surprise when he heard about it from Etty in August.