TPM Reader JL on George Allen …
I think that you’re getting at something in your reading of the WaPost article about Etty Allen, but you’re still a bit off.
Yes, this is a story about a lie, but the most important lie is not the one George Allen may have told the public, but the one that his mother told for years and years. What comes through most clearly to me is her deep shame at being Jewish. Why else would she fear that once she revealed the truth to her son that he wouldn’t love her anymore? Why would she insist that he not tell his siblings? Reading between the lines, she married into a deeply anti-semitic family and decided at that point that she had to hide her origins. Family secrets like these are toxic. I would expect that George Felix Allen both knew and not-knew, the way a child will know and not-know about any family secret, because it’s something that no one in the family will ever talk about directly. The story here isn’t so much what did GFA know about his mother and when did he know it so much as it is the family’s shame at being Jewish. I mean, this is not, “Hey mom, you never told me that you were a championship tennis player when you were young!” This is something that all of them were ashamed of. Think of poor old Felix Lumbroso, coming to the U.S. for his daughter’s wedding, and having to hide that he was Jewish. Think of Etty’s fear that he, or some other family member or friend, might spill the beans. Think of little George Felix, growing up in such a household and what he internalized. There is nothing in his behavior or speech, now or in the past, that suggests that he’s not ashamed that his mother is Jewish.
Amen.
