Members of the voting public who have slogged their way through the difficulties of Virginia's Sen. George Allen in the past month have found it heavy going. What stopped this breathless spectator was the final exchange between Mr. Allen and his mother. But let's rehearse that relationship for just a minute ...

Only a few weeks ago, son George asked his mother about rumors that she had been born Jewish. She confirmed the truth of the rumors but bound him to silence in the matter. Legitimate question: Why?

Presumably she believed that if one had hidden such a datum throughout one's life, some sniffy -- and proud -- Jews would reasonably conclude that she was ashamed of her Jewish background. As to why she hid it in the first place, she told reporters that she and her husband (the famous football coach) hadn't wanted their children to grow up with the fear of persecution that she had lived with. Whether this was her actual motive, it was understandable that she swore George to secrecy when she first told him. To reveal her ethnicity in the last weeks of a political race might damage her son, who would be viewed as an accomplice in his mother's deception.

But as the whole world now knows, Mother Allen specifically released son George from his commitment to silence, and then enjoined him to make public the datum.

Here is where the story achieved sheer mawkishness. "On CNN," as The New York Times reports it, "Mr. Allen recounted his mother's saying: 'I didn't want to tell you. Do you love me? You won't love me as much.'

"Mr. Allen said he responded, 'I love you even more.'"

Well, this non-Virginian discloses that he loves the pair of them less.

Let us, if only for the practice, weigh the considerations of a popular senator running for re-election.

As a Republican, Senator Allen could reasonably assume that he would fare less well in the Jewish community than his Democratic opponent because of Jewish voters' traditional disposition in favor of the Democrat. In the last national election, Jewish voters went for Kerry 3-to-1 over Bush. Continued...