[TommyDale]

The Washington Post defeated George Allen by pursuing the Macaca incident.

[proudpapa]

Exactly. The Macaca incident was way overblown.

Methinks Allen will be back on the stage some day.

[svcw]

What does that mean anyway?

[linda_22003]

Then perhaps he should have avoided HANDING them the macaca incident.

[stuartcr]

As a senator, he should have smart enough to not let that happen.

[steve-b]

The macaca incident, in isolation, would have blown over. The problem is that it opened the floodgates to all the other stuff in Allen's past that made him sound like a Neanderthal.

[muawiyah]

Naw, Makakka didn't do it ~ but the Post was instrumental in leading an anti-semitic attack against Allen using his mother.

That brought out the Ku Kluxers to vote for their boy, Webb. As you recall, Webb also benefited from an antisemitic attack against one of his opponents in the Democrat primary.

We also have the example of the leader of one of the Confederate heritage groups (who used to speak highly of Allen) coming out and criticizing him once he'd heard about Allen's mother.

I don't think it takes much detective work to see what happened, and students of Virginia history really shouldn't be surprised.