George Allen Says He Was 'Screwed' by the Referees, WashPost Says Who's That?

Proving he's moving on with post-Senate life, George Allen gave an interview to his journalistic tormentor, Michael C. Shear of the WashPost, but Shear plays it cute in Saturday's paper when he pretends not to know who the "referee" is when Allen suggests he was wronged by the refs (including the Post, I have zero doubt):

He declined to talk specifically about the controversies that turned what was supposed to be his warm-up for a presidential campaign into a losing bid to hold on to his Senate seat. "You can't brood and dwell" on the loss, he said.

But it's clear -- especially from the football analogies he uses frequently to describe the sudden turn in his political life -- that Allen regrets the mistakes he and his campaign staff made during the past several months.

"In the event that you lost a game by three or four touchdowns, people say, 'Gosh, it's a blowout,' " Allen said as movers packed up boxes and removed pictures from Room 204 in the Russell Senate Office Building. "If you lose by one point in a game, you can look back on every single play of the game."

Looking back, he continued, one "can say, 'gosh darn, if we only had made that block, if we only didn't jump off-sides, if we only had recovered that fumble, if we hadn't thrown that interception. If the referees didn't screw us on that play.' "

Who are the referees in that analogy? He doesn't say.