An ethical analysis can change according to how one frames the issue in question. Sometimes this means that a confident ethical verdict is difficult, even impossible. The latest in the seemingly unending number of controversies surrounding Republican Senator George Allen is a striking example of this problem.

Out of the blue, a former classmate of Allen's who also played football with him at the University of Virginia has come forward to announce that the Senator used the term "nigger" to refer to African Americans on more than one occasion in the early 1970s. Allen, who is embroiled in a surprisingly tight race against Democratic challenger James Webb, denies the charge. If Allen's classmate, Dr. Ken Shelton, is lying about Allen's use of the word as Allen and many of his associates say he is, then there is no ethical issue; his claim is obviously a grossly unethical act. But is making the charge ethical conduct if it is true? For the purpose of answering that question, we will assume that Shelton is reporting events (including an incident in which Allen supposedly engineered a prank that involved depositing a severed deer head in a black family's mail box) that he knows occurred, because he witnessed them in person.

Here are two ways to state the problem:

The first:

Is it fair for a public figure's former friends, classmates or associates to divulge his most unattractive, offensive, thoughtless, cruel or stupid comments or actions in his personal life to the press, and to do so at the exact moment when they can cause the most damage to his career and reputation? Even if it is, could it be fair to do this when those actions and comments occurred thirty years ago in informal settings where the future public figure had reason to believe that he was in the company of those who would not use them against him?

The second:

Does an individual who sincerely believes that he has personal knowledge of past incidents and comments that bear on a public figure's fitness to hold high political office have an ethical obligation to reveal such information, even if the information is subject to legitimate criticism that it is old, timed to do maximum political damage, and superseded by the figure's subsequent conduct?

Together, the two questions make one difficult ethical conflict. The answer to the first question is yes, it is unfair. But the answer to the second is also yes.

The unfairness of Dr. Shelton's mid-campaign attack is many faceted:

• The claim that Allen used the word "nigger" is excessively inflammatory beyond its true significance. If a senatorial campaign were a trial, the judge would reject the evidence as unduly prejudicial. The American public's extreme revulsion at the use of "nigger," as legitimately objectionable as the word is, is emotional rather than rational and so strong that the mere accusation of can be devastating to a public figure's reputation regardless of the truth. O.J. Simpson, it had been said with only slight exaggeration, is a free man because his jury was more offended by a key detective in the case using "the N-word" than by his slaughtering two people with a knife.
  
  
• Any attitude, conduct or statement that is more than 30 years old should be considered of minimal significance in assessing an individual's current attitudes. This is doubly true of conduct and statements that occurred when an individual was in school. If all people who behaved like insensitive jerks in college grew up to be insensitive jerks, America would be a fair approximation of Hell. Fortunately, we know that most people gain wisdom and maturity after college. Ken Shelton, who by his own account seems to have participated in some of Allen's alleged racist episodes, is now a respected radiologist; presumably he would not want to be judged now on his conduct then. Yet that is exactly what he is implicitly asking voters to do to Allen.
  
  
• Allen's public record as U.S. Senator and Governor of Virginia are void of any hint of racism or anti-African American attitudes. The effort to define him according to what are literally "tales out of school" in disregard of his career in the subsequent three decades is unreasonable and misleading.
  
  
• The time, if there ever was a time, for Shelton to make his accusation was when Allen first ran for office over a decade ago. Waiting until Allen was most vulnerable to the accusation (in the wake of the weird "macaca" incident) guarantees that it will do the most damage to Allen personally, much like Anita Hill's surprise testimony against Clarence Thomas levelling accusations that she could have raised long before he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, Dr. Shelton, who does not appear to be a "Democratic activist" as Allen's camp has claimed, says he was convinced by Allen's Macaca Moment, when he was videotaped mocking a young dark-skinned campaign worker for opponent Webb, that the Senator's attitudes remained unchanged from their school days and that he had an obligation to alert Virginia voters. If this is really his motivation, then the Scoreboard finds it difficult to find ethical fault with his conduct. If true, are Allen's comments in college relevant to his fitness to serve as senator today, in 2006? Dr. Shelton believes they are, and while he may be mistaken, revealing them is an ethical and even courageous act given that belief.

The Scoreboard is considerably less supportive of the subsequent sources who have come out of the woodwork after Shelton, especially the anonymous ones and political pundit Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Inexplicably, Sabato has stated that he "knows" that Allen used the word "nigger" while at the University of Virginia. He does not know, and his statement is therefore dishonest and misleading. Sabato trusts certain individuals who claim to have witnessed Allen doing so; nonetheless, he cannot know that what they say is true, because he wasn't there. The fact that Sabato just happened to be a student at UVA when Allen was has increased public confusion over his credibility: many think that he "knows' because he personally witnessed Allen using racial slurs. That makes Sabato's statement doubly improper.

Courageous but unfair, ethical but unethical: what's the verdict? Should Dr. Shelton have kept his memories of Allen's racist comments to himself? This was an ethical balancing test, and the unfairness to Allen is ultimately overcome by Shelton's conviction that what he knew needed to be passed on to voters who have to make up their minds about George Allen in November. It is difficult to argue against the principle of full disclosure, the right of the public to know as much as possible about their elected leaders. A voter might decide, thinking back on the insensitive jerks most of us were in college, that Allen's youthful racist bravado is meaningless in light of his public acts, which include support for black educational institutions. Another voter might decide that such a dated and inflammatory accusation is so unfair that Allen deserves support as a matter of principle, to discourage similar campaign tactics in the future. Or a voter might decide that Shelton's account, placed on the scales with "macaca" and Allen's now-abandoned affection for the Confederate flag, tips the balance sufficiently to raise legitimate questions about the Senator's commitment to civil rights.

If Shelton and the others are lying, Allen has been subjected to an atrocious and despicable political smear job. Assuming that they are recounting true events, each voter will have to decide how to be fair to Senator Allen.

The Scoreboard can live with that.