It just hit CNN’s web page in the last few minutes which is kind fo late for something that happened last week. Honestly, it hasn’t been a big story up here as yet, but if it grows legs that could all change. If this does knock him out in the Virginia senate race then he is over and done as far as President goes. I have no idea how badly this has hurt him down there though.
If he goes out, does Frist become the new conservative fav for the White House? Brownback?
When I heard this story yesterday, my first thought was: Isn’t his mother from Tunisia-- he knows damn well what that term means!
I doubt that this will hurt him in any meaningful way, though. He’s a very engaging politician with this uncanny ability to smile through any discussion he’s in. We’ve seen pletny of politicians recover from these one-off slip ups, and I’d bet he can, too. Whether or not he’s presidential material remains to be seen. He’s got some pretty big backers in the Republican party, but I think McCain beats him any way you look at it.
No, the intonation is that he doesn’t know what the kids’ name is or can’t remember, and so he comes up with something to stand in for it.
The problem is, he still directs his comments at the kid, not directly at Webb. Suffice to say that his rhetoric isn’t much better at Webb either: Webb has actual roots in “outside the beltway” Virginia in a way George Allen does not. He also ends up implying that half of NOVA (the predominant;y minority half) is not really part of Virginia, which I’m sure plays really really well up there.
Furthermore, he VERY clearly says “Let’s give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.” and this is very clearly directed at “macaca here,” not Webb. So, nice try, but no dice.
As I said, I think the evidence is pretty clear that he pulled up this actual word, most likely by accident. But regardless of that, he deserves a pitting for the scambling, bumbling way in which this all came down. He singled opposition staff, which is generally a bad idea unless you are going to have a really light touch, and worse, it was the one minority in a crowd of Republicans, making his “welcome to america” line relaly not quite so intelligent no matter how he meant it. He then made things even worse by offerring several different interpretations of how the word came out. And his staffhas just been instructed to claim not to have seen the video if asked about it by voters: which is pretty silly in itself. In short, the dude is an oaf.
What’s truly amusing is that half of the Republicans who are whining about how unfair this is will in just a year from now be working for his Republican primary opponents… and you can bet they will bring this up early and often against him.
Oh, and he now has a THIRD explanation for the use of the word:
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/08/a_new_explanant_2.html
Ah, so he’s just calling him a shithead! What a great excuse! Too bad it took four or more days to focus group that excuse together.
Within a day or two, expect to hear that Allen mistakenly believed the man’s name was Mark and he was pronouncing it with an authentic traditional Virginian accent.
This is the imlpication you draw. I doubt many others will.
Yeah, dice. You’re taking it out of context. And this is after I typed it up for you. Read what comes before it and it appears clear that he means “Let’s give a welcome to macaca, here. [As a representative of my opponent, let me say] Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”
Actually, I thought it was rather genius. He announced to his admiring crowd that that had an enemy in their midsts. I think that kid’s job just got a lot more uncomfortable. This political judo move also tells his opponent: if you keep sending these minions over here following me around I’m going to use that as an opportunity to have a one-way debate and slam you for something.
And you know this how? The video shows three, maybe four people, but you can hear many more.
Yes, I would like to hear from him how he came up with “Macaca”. Because I don’t think it was accidental, as he used it three times. If it is the slur you reference, I’ll join you in pitting him for that. If that was, in fact, that slur, he’s got some balls. To say it three times, when he knows it’s being taped And to look right at the guy and smile and welcome him. Wow.
My guess is that “Macaca” was indeed an insulting term that his staffers had been referring to him by. Maybe Allen heard that term used a few times, as if it were the guys name, and made an innocent gaffe. Pure conjecture on my part, of course. But I just can’t see how a successful politician would use what he knew to be such an insult while looking right at a camera held by his opponent’s camp.
Unfortunately, I fear you may be correct about this.
Come on. Why would his staffers use that term? It’s not part of the English language. It is, however, commonly used in North African Francophones, which is what Allen’s mother is. That’s the far simpler explanation.
And politicians slip up like this more than you’d expect. Allen is usually a lot smoother than this, but he fucked up this time. There just isn’t a more reasonable or plausible explanation.
Genius? Even if you think that singling out opposition in a big crowd is a neat rhetorical trick, in this particular instance it’s a pretty obvious political gaffe – whether you think Allen is in the right or wrong, it isn’t smart wording. Part of being a good politician is avoiding word choices that can be misinterpreted even if when technically broken down they are inoffensive.
Because calling him a “monkey” would be unambiguously racist. Gotta maintain that plausible deniability…
But, regardless of the racial slur (and I do believe it was one)…it is incredibly rude to assume, as this stellar representative of GOP values did, that this dark skinned young man was NOT an American citizen. What is this “welcome to America” crap? How dare he? (oh, yeah-he dares because he’s an entitled rich Southern white boy–I keep forgetting these things).
He deserves pitting for that welcome comment alone, never mind the rest of his spewing.
Regarding the idea that “macaca” was a corruption of “mohawk,” I found some sites that indicated that S.R. Sidarth’s hair is actually a mullet, and I can’t see how one can confuse a mohawk and a mullet. (When did you last see a mohawk anyhow?) And if you accept his explanation that he was calling him “macaca” as a combination of “mohawk” and “caca,” is “shithead” supposed to be an improvement over a racial slur?
I think it’s pretty clear contextually that the “Welcome to America” statement refers to the supposed Hollywood elite status of Allen’s opponent and his supporters. Would it be less offensive if he had said “Welcome to the real America”?
It doesn’t really look like a mullet to me. Trust me, I live in Pittsburgh. I know a mullet when I see one!
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_08_13_atrios_archive.html#115558801832716030
It looked like a cross between a mullet and mohawk (if you can imagine that!) in the news story I saw last night. Not that I’m buying this explanation for the use of that word, mind you.
A mohullet? A mullohawk?
Your interpretation is not only strained, but you had to insert parantheticals to even make it pass a laugh test. Look, it’s even clearer in the video, but it’s plain on the transcript: he may ultimately want his bil directed at Webb, but in the immediate here and now he turns to and addresses “macaca here.” There isn’t any denying that.
Right… which unless the kid is being disruptive (he wasn’t) is a really dick thing to do, even if he’s the volunteer or your opponent. It’s odd that you would argue the point given that Allen has apologized for this (and, really, only this). These trackers are used by all campaigns. Allen had trackers following Webb: TWO of them. And one actually DID start harrasing Webb… and ultimately got an arrest warrant for his trouble when he wouldn’t leave private property.
So you can tell the color of people’s skin by hearing them? Even Allen’s supporters described this as an all white or nearly all white crowd. Suffice to say, the kid stood out in more ways than one and calling him out was pretty darn dunderheaded.
I’m not cutting Allen any slack here, but it seems difficult to believe he was truly aware of the…eh…simian implications of what he was saying. You figure he just overheard his mother using that word for darkies when he was a kid, and mistook it for a tacky term of affection, like “muchacho” or something? It’d still be an amazingly stupid to thing to say in public even under those circumstances, but effectively calling the guy “monkey boy” at a rally pushes the stupid to an almost surreal level. I have to suspect he was unaware of just how big of a jackass he was making of himself.
He doesn’t even have that excuse. He’s an entitled rich Southern California white boy. He didn’t grow up in the South; he didn’t pick up racist attitudes through the culture of his upbringing. He’s adopted those attitudes; he’s chosen them.
Nonetheless, he’s been a Virginian for practically all of his adult life, long enough to know the difference between a Mohawk, the punk-era hairstyle that hasn’t been popular much of anywhere in a couple of decades, and a mullet, the hairstyle that Webb cameraman S.R. Sidarth was wearing, which has been and continues to be inexplicably quite popular among young people in Virginia. So the whole ‘Mohawk’ excuse doesn’t fly, AFAIAC.
That’s possible. He’s supposedly fluent in French (like Kerry! :eek: ), and perhaps he doesn’t know that a macaque is a type of monkey. Maybe, but I’m still doubtful.
It’s pretty bad spin, in retrospect, for Allen to say that he meant nothing racially derogatory by the “nickname I made up” for the kid… and then later have your staffers claim that the meaning of the term is “shithead.” Sure, it’s not racially derogatory, but you went on national TV to say that you weren’t trying to insult him and you’re sorry if that anyone got that impression… and THEN it comes out that the term supposedly means “shithead?” That looks even more dunderheaded than the original slipup.
My mother called me and my brothers Tojos, a slur against the Japanese used mostly during WWII, when we were misbehaving as children and teenagers until I informed her of the term’s racist origins (Sample: “You kids are acting like a bunch of tojos!”). She thought that it meant “misbehaving or rambunctious kids” because that was the way her own mother had used the term when she was growing up.
It is entirely possible that Allen grew up in a French-Tunisian household in which “Macaca” was used to chide people regardless of their race, and as an adult was simply unaware of the racist origins of the term – it’s certainly obscure enough.
Although if this was the case I’d expect that Allen would explain it as such, rather than calling “macaca” a cross between a mohawk and how a three year old says “shit”.