2) When your opponent and his minions accuse your of racial incidents, you get up on a podium and denounce them in the LOUDEST VOICE POSSIBLE for as long as you must. You DEMAND the person making the accusation be brought forward, and you file a suit if you must. Just saying "it didn't happen" won't work.
3) Know your ethnic heritage. Maybe he didn't know his mother was Jewish, but I have doubts. But even if so, you stand up and in the LOUDEST VOICE POSSIBLE for as long as you must you DEMAND the reporter apologize to yourself, to your family and that they explain in great detail why they even asked such a question, and you don't stop until you get that reply.
4) Wonder aloud why slurs against you and your name keep coming from people who support your opponent?
5)Hire a better staff for opponent research. A letter from 1979 was the best "dirt" he could come up with?
6) Talk about the economy, your record. Explain why you voted against a particular bill he's throwing out there. I Voted against it not because of this as he says, but because I didn't want $40 million to be used studying the life history of dung beetles".
7) If you can't do these things, give up.
I don't buy the idea that he didn't know what it meant either.
His mother was a French colonial in Africa---the words "macaca" and "macaque" were often used by French colonials when reffering to dark skinned Africans. It was their equivalent of the n- word. I am sure he probably heard her say it when he was younger.
His move in saying that to a dark skinned person videotaping his speech was downright idiotic.
I know that Czar Nicholas II used those words to denigrate the Japanese, as well.
Sorry for being impatient with you, but I severely doubt that you know what the word macaca means. So when you say that "I doubt you can make up a word that would be an ethnic slur that pretty well describes the guy you're trying to point out," I think you're either parroting the lewinsky press, or you're straining to make a weak argument.
Somebody please tell me how "macaca" is an ethnic slur. To whom? ¿¿¿Francophone colonials in Central Africa's Belgian Congo????? Oh come on. The whole being-shocked thing was fabricated. Caca is one thing, certainly not ethnic, but a child's word - my kids use it all the time - es una palabra fea, pero no mala. And Macaco is not an ethnic slur either. It can be used for all sorts of things. Es un mono, un joven activo y quapo, and so on. In fact, es el nombre de una banda rock no tan secreta. Maybe Allen was thinking about "Buenas noches, América." Maybe he was thinking about quilombos? Probably he was just stringing sounds together, had heard caca so many times, and just kept on going. The "ethnic slur" accusation was a pure invention – ignorant reporterettes repeating that it is a slur, someplace to somebody at sometime, without details, is just a bunch of BS to stampede the skittish easily spooked by anything "insensitive."
I have been irritated by this macaca thing from the first, but now I get to rant.
What you posted applies to all losing Pubbies, they didn't fight back hard.
A lot of times it's not the original incident (using the term 'Macaca') that gets you into trouble, it's how you handle the resulting controversy that gets you into trouble (see Richard Nixon).
Good advice. Robert Moses (the New York parks and highways guy) got out of elective politics because he had trouble saying just what religion he was. Of course there was no disgrace in a Republican losing in 1934 as Moses did.
Kind of sad about Allen. If you're a guy from California, whose father was from Michigan and whose mother was from Tunisia, you're probably better off not trying the whole good ol' boy Confederate thing. John Warner got along fine without it. Jim Webb was also from out of state, but he could pull off the Dixie bit better than George.