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.
You've been pushing this and now you admit that you didn't even bother to see the video. Wait until somebody slurs your preferred presidential candidate.
Hint: Republicans can NEVER win and Democrats can manufacture offense better than GM can manufacture cars.
I didn't see it at the time. I have since watched it. Do I have to make a public service announcement about it? What is your problem?
Well that I agree with. Republicans can never get away with stuff. Dems always get away with stuff.
Does she even speak French? All of the anti-Allens have been making hay of the fact that it sounds similar to a French slur (which we are not sure that it's a real slur or not) but he apparently included a syllable.
And she's Jewish? That'll make him bulletproof for any of these charges, even if she converted.
But this is so stupid and contrived and I cannot believe the morons on this site who buy this as some sort of disqualifier. Absolute morons.
Typical MSM BS!! This is why liberal newspapers all over the country are going in the tank. Where was the mention of Hillary Clinton's remarks about the Arabs and the gas stations, Joe Biden's remarks about the Pakistanis and the 7/11s/ Starbucks, Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown", KKK Byrd's "white nigger" comment?
There is no "stuff" to get away with. Do you understand, are you capable of comprehending that if he mispronounces someone's name so that it comes out as the Swahili word for feces, he will be roundly criticized for that.
This is moronic on a scale never before seen.
From Allen's Wikipedia biography:
Allen's mother emigrated from French Tunisia, and was "Italian, French and a little Spanish'
It is macaco in Italian and Spanish.
Allen should have just laughed it off and derided the ones deriding him. He didn't show much backbone on this one, instead letting his enemies successfully getting under his skin and giving them free footage of him abjectly humiliating himself before their phony outrage.
This makes him look defensive and weak. Bad move. No wonder he's dropping in the polls. He handed the other side an unexpected and unneccesary victory.
I agree it is moronic. It was blown way out of proportion. He's just got to be careful from now on because he will be more under scrutiney than before.
So, he was using both a racial slur and a sexual slur.
I prefer to think if he's going to be a vicious racist who grew up hearing his mom using racial slurs left and right and who had them so embedded in his brain at an early age that it was the first name he came up with when he saw a somewhat-dark skinned kid with a freakazoid haircut from the enemy campaign who was pointing a camera at him, that he wasn't using the feminine of a slur in his mother's first language or a bastardization of the slur in her third language (assuming her second language is English by the time he was born), but instead that he used the orginal Latin.
"Vote for George Allen because the other guy is a Mephitis mephitis."
I think it is more likely he was not aware of the masculine/feminine forms of animistic nouns in romance languages, and hearing his mother referring primarily to black women, thought it applied to black people in general.
I think he is also a complete idiot who wanted to fire out a racial insult at a man who was annoying him, thought he could use a term only he and a few others knew, and had not realized that while most Americans may not be familiar with Colon vernacular, these days you can look up anything on the internet.
I am not particularly exercised by his vocabulary, but I am tired, so tired, of politicians who are just plain stupid.
Wow. No matter how many times I mock you and your kind, you mock yourselves further.
Wow. You must think that Allen is incredibly clever and subtle for a moron.
My kind? How amusing!
Maybe your views are just so far out that one cannot tell the mockery from the seriously-intended lunacy?
You must think that Allen is incredibly clever and subtle for a moron.
What sort of subtlety is required to repeat an insult one learned at one's mother's lap? I can still remember racial slurs my grandmother used. I don't even know how to spell some of them.
Excuse me, but he wouldn't have learned "macaca". Even if your hypothesis is correct (and I just don't buy it, if you read the very first article on this from WaPo, the Webb campaign was floundering for a reason to be offended, the French/Spanish/Italian slur thing came a few days later), he got it wrong. Wrong. WRONG. She would never, under any circumstances, in no language, have used the word "macaca" even if something similar is a European racial slur (and I still have no evidence that it is).
I can still remember racial slurs my grandmother used. I don't even know how to spell some of them.
Aha! If you get someone on the couch long enough, you get to the root of their mental illness.
It is the Spanish or Italian word for a female monkey. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish should know that 'macaca' is the feminine of 'macaco'.
OK. So now our dear Senator Allen was now conjugating the slur so as to be doubly insulting?
This is fantastic! We have a multilingual, grammatically-correct bigot. This is great! I still say he was using the Latin. That makes so much more sense.
I knew you'd be stupid enough to bring that up. I figured that only a dishonest troll would go that route, I just had forgotten, given that it took you so long.
BTW, what was your screenname last time?
Oh dear, no. Verbs conjugate, nouns and adjective decline.
The arrogance of modern mathematicians fascinates me. Modern math, thanks to PC, is a girl degree. Mathematicians are merely so-so when discussing mathematics. When they're discussing real science, they're deficient. And in the humanities, cue the circus music.
Macaco boy monkey. Macaca girl monkey. Simple enough for you?
This editorial reads like it was written by a snooty feminist., "He's a bully"
As do you.
Modern math, thanks to PC, is a girl degree.
Thanks to PC??? By definition, mathematics is the only area of the academy not subject to PC. Oh, and people end up dropping out of sciences because they are too stupid to handle the mathematics. I haven't seen too many people picking up Combinatorics because 18th century French literature is just too hard of a concept.
When they're discussing real science, they're deficient.
"All science is either physics or stamp collecting." -- Lord Rutherford
And in the humanities, cue the circus music.
Funny, considering how the humanities have no standards at all. Or shall I direct you to another article on gravity as a social construct?
Macaco boy monkey. Macaca girl monkey. Simple enough for you?
Oh, puedo hablar un poco de Español, burra. Tú no puedes compreder "una trampa". ¿Verdad?
And I do know a few words in Latin. Most relevant here is "ad hominem". You're clearly familiar with the concept as is seen by your insipid post above.
Oh, and you never answered my question: What was your screenname, last time?
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