During a discussion with National Review Washington editor Kate O'Beirne and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on the May 24 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews downplayed the political implications of Sen. George Allen's (R-VA) history of displaying the Confederate flag by comparing it to hypothetical candidates “out there on the left” who may have worn a “sweatshirt” depicting Nobel Prize-winning scientist Albert Einstein. Moreover, Matthews suggested that voting against Allen in a presidential election because he has previously embraced the Confederate flag would be like “vot[ing] against a person because they wore a [guerrilla leader] Che Guevara T-shirt in their 20s.” But Allen has displayed and expressed support for the Confederate flag much more recently than when he was in his 20s, and also used to “kept a noose hanging on a ficus tree in his law office,” as The New Republic documented in two recent articles.

In an April 27 article, “George Allen's race problem,” The New Republic reported that Allen once displayed a Confederate flag in his living room, had one on his car in high school, and “kept a noose hanging on a ficus tree in his law office, [which] he said ... was part of a Western memorabilia collection.” In a follow-up article, the magazine reported on May 4 that “some conservatives,” including columnist Kathleen Parker, argued that revelations about Allen's high school photograph were irrelevant because the picture is dated. But the magazine noted that Allen has a “four-decade embrace of the Confederate flag,” and that he “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.” The magazine reported that Allen displayed it in his Palos Verdes (California) High School senior photograph and University of Virginia dorm room and in “the very first ad that Allen broadcast in 1993, when he ran for governor.” Allen endorsed it as recently as a 2000 campaign event. Nevertheless, Matthews equated Allen's embrace of the Confederate flag to hypothetical candidates who wore Che Guevara, or even Albert Einstein, shirts while in their 20s.

From the May 4 New Republic article:

It is the Confederate flag, and it appears in the very first ad that Allen broadcast in 1993, when he ran for governor.

“The ad ran in the beginning of his campaign, when we were introducing him,” says Allen's 1993 media consultant, Greg Stevens, who made the spot. Stevens denies that the flag was purposefully added to the scene, which lasts for ten seconds of the 60-second commercial, to appeal to pro-Confederate voters.

[...]

Images of Allen are like a Civil War version of Where's Waldo, with the Confederate flag replacing the bespectacled cartoon character. First, as The New Republic reported last week, there's the senior class photo from Palos Verdes High School with Allen wearing a Confederate flag pin (“Pin Prick,” May 8). Now we learn that the Confederate flag appears as a decoration in Allen's first statewide ad, even though he has long maintained that the flag did not adorn his home after 1992.

[...]

After his Confederate flag pin-wearing days in Palos Verdes, Allen attended the University of Virginia from 1971 to 1977. According to two law school classmates and one undergraduate classmate, Allen displayed the flag on his pickup truck while at UVA. “I can independently confirm,” Allen law school classmate Don Cornwell writes in an e-mail, “as can hundreds of my classmates at the UVA Law School, that for the three years that George was there he drove an old pickup truck with notably newer Confederate flags on the bumpers. George and his truck was sort of a running joke in the law school.”

According to a little-noticed 1993 Los Angeles Times article, Allen also displayed the flag in his room at UVA -- a university where it was an explosive issue.

[...]

In 1995, 1996, and 1997, Allen issued a proclamation drafted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans celebrating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. The document made no mention of slavery.

[...]

As recently as 2000, Allen still publicly expressed support for the Confederate flag. A [Washington] Post reporter accompanying Allen at an event in Virginia captured this scene: “When one man at the Pork Festival said to Allen, 'Long live the Confederate flag!' he replied, 'You got it!'”

From the May 24 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: OK. OK, let's play this the other way. Kate, suppose you've found out that one of the guys who is a young candidate today, somebody in their 30s or 40s running for senator or something bigger, used to love to wear a Che Guevara T-shirt. I think that's, at this point, absolutely harmless because there is no fight with Che Guevara anymore. He was killed years ago by our side. Would that be a fair thing to use against somebody? A Che Guevara T-shirt?

O'BEIRNE: Well, people bothered by it would be bothered by it not because he poses a current threat, a present threat, but because of what he represented, which is --

MATTHEWS: Would you vote against a person because they wore a Che Guevara T-shirt in their 20s?

O'BEIRNE: Alone? I would have questions. I'd wonder what it meant.

MATTHEWS: What do you think would it mean that would bother you?

O'BEIRNE: That this individual -- this individual was an admirer of this brutal communist who, with blood on his hands, was responsible for the kind of oppression that revolution has given us.

MATTHEWS: It couldn't be -- well, how about -- let's think. People wear Karl Marx sweatshirts. I guess that's more ridiculous. They wear Einstein sweatshirts, we all grew up with those. They were OK.

[...]

MATTHEWS: You're being very judicial here, E.J. Do you find -- would you wear --

DIONNE: I don't think this is a problem.

MATTHEWS: -- would you wear a Che Guevara T-shirt right now?

DIONNE: No, I wouldn't.

MATTHEWS: Why? Why wouldn't you wear one?

DIONNE: Why? Because I'm not a communist. I'm on the Democratic left.

O'BEIRNE: Unfortunately, they're extremely popular. I have to hope --

DIONNE: I'm a secular Democrat, not a communist --

O'BEIRNE: I have to hope a bunch of kids wearing them currently, because they're pretty popular -- actually don't understand who he is and what he did. George Allen is a lucky man. This Confederate flag stuff's going to sound pretty old by 2008.

[crosstalk]

MATTHEWS: I know, that's probably -- by asking you about it tonight it begins to erode already. However, I like this Che Guevara question, too, because I think there's some people out there on the left who maybe have been wearing one. We'll see pictures of those someday. Anyway, thank you, E.J. Dionne. Thank you, Kate O'Beirne.