Posted on 08/22/2006 5:44:40 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Republican Sen. George Allen, running for re-election in Virginia, can't wriggle out of this one with a Mel Gibson excuse.
The conservative lawmaker was cold sober when he deliberately insulted a young man of Indian descent with a racial slur. The man, S.R. Sidarth, was filming video of Allen's appearance at a public Republican rally in Breaks, Va., near the Kentucky border, as part of his work as a campaign volunteer for Allen's Democratic challenger, James Webb. Candidates of both parties commonly film their opponents' public appearances looking for gaffes and other campaign material.
Sidarth, 20, was apparently the only person of color in the small crowd.
This incident has especially dangerous implications for Allen's future political prospects because it revives his long history of racial insensitivity, which is unfortunate for a guy with presidential ambitions.
Allen, in the course of his remarks, singled out Sidarth and referred to him as "Macaca," adding that he welcomed him to America "and the real world of Virginia." The expression "macaca" was new to many of us, not a familiar word that trips easily from the tongue.
But it turns out the word is a common racist slur favored by French Tunisians; Allen's mother is of French Tunisian descent. The senator professed not to know what the word meant despite his mother's background.
Few people are buying that, including Sidarth and Webb. The Democratic candidate, a former Navy secretary, said bluntly that he thinks Allen "knew what he was saying."
Sidarth was even harsher. "He was doing it because he could and I was the only person of color there and it was useful for him in inciting his audience," he said. Indeed, the audience laughed at Allen's crude sally.
The Allen campaign, trying to stomp out the furor, explained defensively that the candidate had merely mangled the word Mohawk, a nickname he said his staff had given Sidarth to reflect the shaved sides of his unusual haircut.
Coiffure experts, however, said that excuse didn't work either. His haircut is a molette, a modified mohawk, but not properly defined as one.
To make matters worse for Allen's defense, Sidarth isn't a foreigner who needs to be introduced to Virginia. He grew up in Fairfax County and attended schools there and the University of Virginia. His father is a big Democratic contributor.
Ironically, it is Allen who did not spend his youth in Virginia. He was born in California, detoured to Chicago for eight years and moved back to California as a teenager, as the family followed his famous dad's football coaching career.
It was not until 1971, when his father was named to coach the Washington Redskins, that Allen became a genuine son of Virginia. But he had always been attracted to the notion of the Old Confederacy, driving around in high school in California with a Confederate-flag plate on the front of his car. He posed for his high school yearbook wearing a Confederate pin on his collar.
In his five years as senator, Allen has been a reliable part of the conservative Bush machine; party officials regard him as a logical presidential alternative if Sen. John McCain stumbles in 2008. Of course such a scenario assumes that he first wins re-election to the Senate.
But the sour GOP mood everywhere, even in Virginia, has made it necessary for Allen to concentrate on home base, skipping such early presidential sightings as the Iowa state fair, where several potential rivals were on display last week.
As governor of Virginia, Allen leaned heavily toward the old Strom Thurmond state's rights days. In his 1994 inaugural address as governor, he promised to "fight the beast of tyranny and oppression that our federal government has become." After his election, however, he took down the Confederate flag he had displayed in his living room, disingenuously saying it was merely part of a flag collection.
Allen semi-apologized for the "macaca" remark, saying he was sorry if the young Webb volunteer was offended. But he didn't say he was sorry he said it. There's a huge difference in the sincerity level involved here.
Consider how deliberately Allen used a word unfamiliar to most of us who do not have family roots in Tunisia. "This fellow over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca or whatever his name is, he's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere." Allen said. "Let's give a welcome to Macaca here."
The video clip shows Allen smiling and enjoying ridiculing the young man. It also shows a man unworthy of becoming president. He's just a bully.
your = you're
sheesh !
hillary and biden.
hillary introduced a quote from Gandhi by saying, "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis."
and biden said:
“In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”
but remember there is no media bias...
I think what is even closer than the latter is that instead of speaking in the French dialect of the Christian pied noirs, he spoke a word in the Ladino dialect of his Spehardic Jewish mother.
After all he said "macaca" not "macaque" - and again, I don't think that he was consciously deciding to use a word in Ladino - I think it just came out unconsciously.
It is interesting to that macaca is the genus name for a group of monkies and that the wikipedia entry was started on the 17th by a biology student in Australia.
Allen's mothger is a Sephardic Jew?
If anyone is a bully the Democrats are. The way they treated Lieberman is bully tactics.
His mother is the former Henrietta Lumbroso, a Sephardic Jew born in Tunisia to an Italian Sephardic family who apparently emigrated to the US via France in 1940 or threabouts (at the time of her birth she was technically a French citizen, since Britain had allowed France to make Tunisia a French protectorate in 1881 in exchange for France agreeing to Cyprus being a British protectorate).
Oh my! :^)
I've noticed that more than one poster of anti-Allen threads over the last day or so have been made by some of FR's biggest Guiliani shills. Coincidence?
How about "you fu*king Jew Bastard" by the beloved Hitlery Rodamn? Some how the Jewish population of New York suck up to her a$$wipeship big time! A bunch of Hebrews in my family can't wait to vote for this swine faced scum.
They shouldn'ta made me mad. This is the Beast, after all.
By the way, I know this is changing the subject, but did Democrat Senator Byrd--the Senate Democrat Minority Leader--ever resign from the Democrat Sponsored Ku Klux Klan, or is he Grand Kleagle Emeritus?
I read over some of these threads. You've been saying the same thing since the beginning and what you've been saying makes absolute sense. What amazes me is that people evidently don't or won't hear.
They're not milking it near as much as you have been.
Thank you for reading my responses and thanks for the vote of confidence.
Here's the other shoe, waiting to drop.
The Confederate thing may play well enough in Virginia, and the South in general, but it won't in the rest of the country. Either people don't 'get it', or they think it's a racial slur in and of itself.
So, the media is tipping their hand here, because they think the left has the goods on Allen. All the Democrats need is to run some commercials with different images of him wearing or otherwise bearing Confederate symbols, with the 'macaca' clip thrown in, all to the tune of Dixieland playing in the background.
Just sit and imagine 30 seconds of that.
They can basically call him a racist without calling him a racist, and Allen would wind up tainted in the eyes of many Americans.
All this racial stuff was in his Sister's book. I don't know what her agenda is but she said some nasty stuff about Allen being abusive and a racist. Maybe some sibling rivalry there. She obviously has some problems.
That may be, but that's going to be a little bit of a problem if the R's are thinking of running this guy on the national level, and she winds up on the talk shows every night badmouthing him as a racially insensitive bully. She'd get more air time than this Jon Benet murder suspect guy.
It is? Prove it.
Hint: Even if it were, it would be the French word, which only has two syllables.
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