Allen: Senator of the Old Dominion
VIDEO
[it would appear that this is the first video that actually BROKE youtube. Video is back up now.]
I'm going to nail my colors to the mast right here: I don't like George Allen one bit.
I was not terribly surprised when it was reported widely today that Senator Allen had used a racial slur to describe a campaign volunteer for his opponent:"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. . . . Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
Depending on how it is spelled, the word macaca could mean either a monkey that inhabits the Eastern Hemisphere or a town in South Africa. In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants, according to several Web sites that track ethnic slurs.
Turns out that "macaca" was UVa senior S.R. Sidarth [a preliminary google of Mr. Sidarth returned several stories from The Daily Cavalier, TDC's servers are b0rk3n at the moment]. It was nice of Senator Allen to "welcome" Sidarth to "America and the real world of Virginia," if somewhat late--Sidarth was born in Fairfax County.
The entire blogosphere has been boiling. Joel Achenbach notes, drily, that most of the immigrants to the DC metro region live in Senator Allen's state. Besides: Any attempt to probe Allen's brain in search of the etymology of this term would surely be a perilous journey. He may have overheard it at a kegger back in college. Maybe he invented the word on the spot. It doesn't have the ring of a compliment, whatever it means.
I disliked Allen before, when, as governor, he presided over the repeal of Virginia's car tax--easily populist, but fiscal suicide. He persisted in its repeal even as the dot-com bubble became the dot-bomb disaster. Tax revenue collapsed, and the boomtime budgets were no longer possible--setting the stage for the kind of budgetary brinksmanship that continues to rage in Richmond.
But I've disliked Allen for other, less tangible reasons. Allen has traded on his aw-shucks, downhome, good ol' boy appeal for his whole political career. I've seen it myself--he's often here in Fairfax on the Fourth of July, spitting tobacco juice everywhere, riding a white horse, wearing a white hat. In all respects, he seems to be running as the candidate of the Old Dominion, obviously not above a bit of race-baiting here and there.
This entire sorry episode would be bad enough if Allen weren't also considered a potential Republican presidentiable, too.
Don't get me wrong: I love Virginia. I know that NoVA is definitely not representative of the Commonwealth as a whole. I know that anyone who wishes to be elected to statewide office here needs to find some way of appealing to all Virginians. But tell me: isn't having a bluegrass song written about you (as Mark Warner had done, famously--"Warner," by The Bluegrass Brothers) better than race-baiting a brown Virginian in front of an all-white SW VA crowd?
Allen has since apologized, and his supporters and partisans have sprung to his defense:House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem), who represents southwest Virginia, said the Webb campaign is just "grabbing for stuff" to gain traction against Allen. Griffith said he doubts anyone at the rally even picked up on Allen's use of the word macaca.
"Not many people in southwest Virginia would think it is derogatory," Griffith said. "I didn't have a clue what it meant, and I doubt Allen did, either."
Well of course no one at the rally would have picked up on the comment--Sidarth was the only non-white person at the rally.
Allen's protestations of innocence, or that "macaca" referred to Sidarth's "mohawk" hairdo [Mohawk? You be the judge] ring false. "Macaca" is a slur used on black North Africans by French colonists in Tunisia...not coincidentally, Allen's mother came from Tunisia (of French/Spanish/Italian descent). What's the matter, Senator? Good old American words failing you? was nigger not good enough? What will the Base think of you for choosing a European slur? Isn't that unpatriotic? At least he didn't use the French version--"macaque".
Blogger Jeffrey Feldman managed to do a bit of astute googling of "macaca." The results are quite surprising. Apparently, the word "macaca", or its French equivalent "macaque" appears regularly on the forums of known white-supremacist organizations such as the Vanguard News Network (Motto: "No Jews. Just Right.") and Stormfront. Is this the "real world" and "Virginia"?
I hope not. Most political observers will note that this sort of thing won't cost Allen the Senatorial election--he'll lose votes in Northern Virginia, but voters elsewhere won't care. But I hope that this, if nothing else, scuttles Allen's ambitions for the Presidency.
[it would appear that this is the first video that actually BROKE youtube. Video is back up now.]
I'm going to nail my colors to the mast right here: I don't like George Allen one bit.
I was not terribly surprised when it was reported widely today that Senator Allen had used a racial slur to describe a campaign volunteer for his opponent:"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. . . . Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
Depending on how it is spelled, the word macaca could mean either a monkey that inhabits the Eastern Hemisphere or a town in South Africa. In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants, according to several Web sites that track ethnic slurs.
Turns out that "macaca" was UVa senior S.R. Sidarth [a preliminary google of Mr. Sidarth returned several stories from The Daily Cavalier, TDC's servers are b0rk3n at the moment]. It was nice of Senator Allen to "welcome" Sidarth to "America and the real world of Virginia," if somewhat late--Sidarth was born in Fairfax County.
The entire blogosphere has been boiling. Joel Achenbach notes, drily, that most of the immigrants to the DC metro region live in Senator Allen's state. Besides: Any attempt to probe Allen's brain in search of the etymology of this term would surely be a perilous journey. He may have overheard it at a kegger back in college. Maybe he invented the word on the spot. It doesn't have the ring of a compliment, whatever it means.
I disliked Allen before, when, as governor, he presided over the repeal of Virginia's car tax--easily populist, but fiscal suicide. He persisted in its repeal even as the dot-com bubble became the dot-bomb disaster. Tax revenue collapsed, and the boomtime budgets were no longer possible--setting the stage for the kind of budgetary brinksmanship that continues to rage in Richmond.
But I've disliked Allen for other, less tangible reasons. Allen has traded on his aw-shucks, downhome, good ol' boy appeal for his whole political career. I've seen it myself--he's often here in Fairfax on the Fourth of July, spitting tobacco juice everywhere, riding a white horse, wearing a white hat. In all respects, he seems to be running as the candidate of the Old Dominion, obviously not above a bit of race-baiting here and there.
This entire sorry episode would be bad enough if Allen weren't also considered a potential Republican presidentiable, too.
Don't get me wrong: I love Virginia. I know that NoVA is definitely not representative of the Commonwealth as a whole. I know that anyone who wishes to be elected to statewide office here needs to find some way of appealing to all Virginians. But tell me: isn't having a bluegrass song written about you (as Mark Warner had done, famously--"Warner," by The Bluegrass Brothers) better than race-baiting a brown Virginian in front of an all-white SW VA crowd?
Allen has since apologized, and his supporters and partisans have sprung to his defense:House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem), who represents southwest Virginia, said the Webb campaign is just "grabbing for stuff" to gain traction against Allen. Griffith said he doubts anyone at the rally even picked up on Allen's use of the word macaca.
"Not many people in southwest Virginia would think it is derogatory," Griffith said. "I didn't have a clue what it meant, and I doubt Allen did, either."
Well of course no one at the rally would have picked up on the comment--Sidarth was the only non-white person at the rally.
Allen's protestations of innocence, or that "macaca" referred to Sidarth's "mohawk" hairdo [Mohawk? You be the judge] ring false. "Macaca" is a slur used on black North Africans by French colonists in Tunisia...not coincidentally, Allen's mother came from Tunisia (of French/Spanish/Italian descent). What's the matter, Senator? Good old American words failing you? was nigger not good enough? What will the Base think of you for choosing a European slur? Isn't that unpatriotic? At least he didn't use the French version--"macaque".
Blogger Jeffrey Feldman managed to do a bit of astute googling of "macaca." The results are quite surprising. Apparently, the word "macaca", or its French equivalent "macaque" appears regularly on the forums of known white-supremacist organizations such as the Vanguard News Network (Motto: "No Jews. Just Right.") and Stormfront. Is this the "real world" and "Virginia"?
I hope not. Most political observers will note that this sort of thing won't cost Allen the Senatorial election--he'll lose votes in Northern Virginia, but voters elsewhere won't care. But I hope that this, if nothing else, scuttles Allen's ambitions for the Presidency.