Bob Gibson
Daily Progress political blogger

Once upon a time 13 years ago, there was a controversy about U.S. Sen. George Allen, then a candidate for governor, and his private Confederate flag—the one he displayed in his home in Earlysville.

When the story broke, Allen said it was part of a flag collection, giving people the possible impression that some sort of United Nations of flags adorned the Allen household, one of them the Stars and Bars.

That impression, accepted by the media covering the flag flap, apparently is untrue. Spin control from 13 years ago may have reached its half-life and deteriorated somewhat.

Today, two former officials who visited Allen’s log cabin home at different times recall only up to two flags on display there, a Confederate flag and, on an opposite wall, an American flag.

Gary Grant, a former Albemarle County School Board member who last year sought a Board of Supervisors seat as the Republican candidate, recalls that inside the home of his former Earlysville neighbor in the early 1990s he saw the Confederate flag but not the “flag collection” that Allen claimed in his 1993 damage control attempts.

On Nov. 4 of last year, Grant recalls, Allen displayed another telltale sign of his personality as the GOP senator was joking around in front of a Republican crowd that was rallying in Albemarle for the party’s statewide ticket and local candidates.

“During his remarks, Allen spotted me in the crowd and mentioned me as his former Earlysville neighbor,” Grant recalled. “Then he made a public wisecrack about me with what he called, and I quote here, my ‘sissy helmet.’

“I was in the crowd in my tan suit holding my bicycle helmet, since I had biked to the rally from where I parked my car over near the Four Seasons neighborhood,” Grant said.
“For the record, George Allen may consider wearing bicycle helmets as being sissy, but I don’t. Being safe is not being a sissy,” he said.

“Is it possible there is a trend here?” Grant asked, noting Allen’s 1994 comment about knocking political opponents’ “ ‘soft teeth down their whiney throats,’ reverence for Confederate flag decor, ‘sissy helmet’ statements, and offensive cultural assumptions — a la ‘macaca’ — about non-white U.S. citizens of other than his political persuasion.”

The other former official said Allen jokes around a lot and may go a little overboard when it might serve him better to keep quiet.

Running unofficially for president while seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate can bring lots of new scrutiny to even some old, perhaps small, incidents.

Former Governor and current Senator George Allen thinks anyone with darker skin is not from America and likely is closer in relation to our simian friends than our Republican friends.

Retired UVa Dean Rick Turner is an admitted liar (just check out the plea agreement he signed in federal court) who knows drug dealers personally.

Former Ambassador Andrew Young thinks the Koreans, Chinese and just about anyone else who isn’t African-American has ripped off the African-American community and that’s why he believes his now former employer Wal-Mart is doing a good thing by ringing the death knell for mom-and-pop shops.

Conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson has in the recent past recommended assassinating a foreign leader, warned that God would smite Pennsylvania for incorrect voting behavior and hawked his own body building healthy vitamin formula that has helped him leg press a ton.

I often joke that I’m the only normal person left. Now I’m beginning to think that I’m right.

I can’t tell you how much that scares me.

Bob Gibson
Daily Progress political blogger

A day’s commute into Washington was an eye-opening look at the air-conditioned sardine cans they call Metro cars Monday.

Not having ridden at rush hour for a while, I arrived at the East Falls Church station on the Orange line about 7:30 a.m. and had no trouble getting a quick fare card and up to the platform with a nice crowd of commuters.

Five minutes later, the D.C.-bound train arrived with perhaps 20 or 30 people already standing in each car. Our crowd joined the crowded carfuls, careful to grab places to hold on and trying not to step on or jostle those on the train.

The doors did close, but that magic did not continue for the rest of the trip to Washington.

At Ballston, the stop closest to where I grew up several blocks away in the middle of Arlington, more standers made it into each car. The doors closed, opened, closed and we were all warned to stand fully inside the now packed train. Eventually the doors closed and we were off.

This continued through Clarendon until we got to the Courthouse Station. At that point, with more people trying to stand on each car, the door closing ceremony grew longer. Several times the doors opened and closed with a voice warning all of us to stand clear of the doors.

Some poor sardine on car No. 3 didn’t get all his fins inside and the train was taken out of service, with all of us asked to debark because of a “door malfunction on Car No. 3.”

I was not in the offending sardine car, but when the next Orange line train rolled into Courthouse about four or five minutes later, the commuters on the train, many already standing, got a surprise new carful of standers in each car.

Luckily, the doors worked, the sardines sucked it up and in and the train made it under the Potomac to disgorge a load of fresh fish in D.C.

Perhaps Metro needs some more cars. 

Commuters were amazingly polite and most understanding with the train taken out of service to get its doors examined. Guess this has happened before.

As promised, I am returning to share my experience of attending my first pro wrestling event ,the WWE’s Monday Night RAW at the John Paul Jones Arena.
I arrived just before the doors opened at 7pm and saw what appeared to be an endless line- no question that this event was going to draw a huge crowd. However, once the lines started moving,people merged in together and things went quite smoothly.
After getting inside and purchasing a souvenir program, I went in search of my seat, section 106, row BB, seat 14. Several ushers later, it was discovered that I,and others ,had been sold seats that did not exist(doubtless not all the computer bugs have been worked out in their system). But a gracious usher provided a seat that was even better ina nearby section,Row C, much closer to the ring.
A word about the crowd. Diverse is it. Young, old, male, female, black, white. Cleancut UVa fraternity types alongside tattooed bikers. A young man with a tee-shirt with Thomas Jefferson quotes. Goth/punk- rock type teenagers. There is no such thing as a “typical wrestling fan”, contrary to the beliefs of those who stereotype both the activity and its followers.
All I can say is that it was as much fun as I had hoped it would be. I got to hear ring announcer Lilian Garcia sing the national anthem as I had hoped. Her voice- she should have a singing career on the side. And there was the wild water fight involving the WWE divas and Diva Search contestants. Not sure what it had to do with wrestling but it provided an opportunity for fun and laughter. Its good to see adults being kids.
Much of the action was focused on the upcoming Summerslam event. There was the face-off between WWE owner Vince McMahon and son Shane McMahon, and the team of Triple H and Shawn Michaels with each party valiantly trying to come out on top of a verbal battle. There was the preview of the Ric Flair vs. Mick Foley “I quit” match at Summerslam when Foley ran in and clobbered Flair, ending his match with Johnny Nitro.
And we got a new Women’s Champion with Lita defeating Virginia’s own Mickie James. That was a tough one for me. I am a great Lita fan-but Mickie is one of our own.  Lita’s companion Edge is the men’s champion-so now a couple holds both title belts. But that may not be true for long if John Cena has his way at Summerslam. The Edge/Cena feud broke out big time. First, Cena attacked Edge during his match with Carlito,and ended up with the belt.In this match,popular diva and former women’s champ Trish Stratus was in Carlito’s corner and had the requisite skirmish with her great rival(but sometimes tag team partner )Lita.
In the next-to-the last event Cena told Edge “to come and get it"-the belt he had grabbed . They went at it fast and furious, with Cena winning by disqualification when Edge decked the referee. But the title did not change hands on a DQ.
The show ended with the much-anticipated appearance of legend Hulk Hogan facing off with “Legend Killer” Randy Orton(a son and grandson of pro wrestlers). After sending both Orton and a Hogan impersonator fleeing the ring, the Hulkster proceeded to fire up the crowd in anticipation of Summerslam, climaxing what was three-plus hours of almost-nonstop excitement.
Have to say I came away with almost everything I had hoped to experience. I was disappointed that Stone Cold Steve Austin was not on the roster, or Undertaker, two of the most colorful WWE stars.
But it was one fun, unforgettable evening for everyone. I hope the WWE returns to the Jack again, soon.

Ah vacation: Time off to visit family in Michigan at the same time the Texan Palestinians are buying cell phones to blow up the Mackinac Bridge (pronounced Mackinaw), the only feel-good icon the state has left after the exodus of nearly 90,000 auto industry jobs in the past three years.

Then I return home to find voice mail and comments chiding me for my defense of then embattled, now retired UVa Dean of African American Affairs M. Rick Turner.

FLASHBACK: You may remember Dean T was the vocally active head of the UVa office who stood up to the Charlottesville School Board and said their efforts to dump a school superintendent were “racially motivated.” He was often active in the community, standing up and calling down those whom he believed were fostering racial discrimination.

FLASH FORWARD TO ANOTHER FLASHBACK: You may remember Dean T, now x-Dean T, entered a plea agreement and probation with federal prosecutors for lying to an investigator regarding the activities of a drug dealer. That sparked a UVa investigation which ended—how surprising—when x-Dean T retired.

I wrote this about that: “We know what Dean M. Rick Turner, now on administrative leave, didn’t do. He didn’t do drugs. He didn’t sell drugs....”

You said this about that, and here I paraphrase: We don’t know squat about what he did. Defend yourself, Scribe Boy.

You, of course, are right. I made some assumptions. First, x-Dean T was at the time a prominent public figure and an educator entrusted with guiding young minority adults through the minefield that is higher education and the business world. The man was in charge of the one department in the entire university—nay, in the whole community—which had as its sole purpose the shepherding of minority students through school and into life as a productive force in society.

I assumed from his public statements that he would not allow himself to partake of a Marion Berry-like nightmare of illicit drugs and ladies on the side. Being as no one was prosecuting him for those things, it was easy to give him the benefit of the doubt. No charges, no foul.

Sure, that’s naive.

On the other hand, the federal attorney is charged with protecting society from those who would engage in such behaviors as buying or distributing drugs whether for profit or personal use. Check the court dockets and notice that they prosecute everyone and anyone from UVa Frat Boys to gangstas. If someone in such a position of influence and power of our youth were to be found buying, selling or using drugs, one can only assume that the investigators would pass the information on to the federal attorneys who would file charges and prosecute to protect the youth from such a nefarious influence.

Sure, that’s naive.

But to believe that x-Dean T was more involved in drugs than the charge against him indicates is to believe that his status as an educator and activist outweighed the harm his activities had on his charges, that his status was more important than the image of leadership he presented. To believe that the federal prosecutors would bow down and sweep beneath legal rugs the illegal behaviors of a public educator rather than expose those transgressions and prosecute him as they would any other is to believe that wealth, power and influence far outweigh protecting the people from predators and vice.

If we cannot trust our educators to provide the proper role models, if we cannot rely on the prosecutors to protect us from those who would lead us astray or tear at society’s fabric then we are not a society. We are a nothing but a pack of animals where the strong and influential will always have their way.

We would be worse than dogs because we would know exactly what we’re doing.