I suspect that a racial slur or two passed thru Allen’s lips as a college football player. I don’t know many guys who played sports in college and didn’t engage in lots of crass talk and behavior. I’m more concerned with what these guys stand for today, and how they would vote on issues affecting me and the rest of the country. Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to go and engage in some Cambodian genitial customs.
:dubious: The point is, it’s not Webb’s fault (if) the custom exists. He simply described it in a novel, that doesn’t make him a pervert, or whatever the Allen team or Matt Drudge is trying to imply.
Note that the latter doesn’t really contradict the former: no amount of “I don’t recall George and I using that language” (admitting to it, of course, would implicate not only Allen but them themselves). We have three witnesses to, for instance the deer head story. One was there. Two others recall being told about it occuring BACK THEN just after it happened. None of Allen’s character witnesses can or do say anything about it other than “I don’t recall.”
This from a guy who gave several different conflicting stories about the macaca comment. And note that Allen stopped issuing denials after the first round of stories. As more and more witnesses came out to defend the previous witnesses (who were, of course, personally attacked for speaking up), the campaign simply started going quiet on them.
Again, we have several accounts in which the witness not only is speaking now, but told people about it BACK THEN: long before Allen was in politics.
The fact is, Allen stupidly put his foot in his mouth by declaring, in trying to defend his macaca comments, that he had NEVER used the word. This brought all sorts of people out of the woodwork who had known or met him who knew damn well that that wasn’t true.
Why should you care about it now? Because Allen brought it up with his claims, and then cemented the issue by calling all sorts of different people outright liars for saying differently. All he had to do from the very start was admit his past and say that being such a person at one time makes him a MORE racially aware and caring person today. You know what? People might have bought it.
But his “you’re not from around here, boy, are you” macaca routine is just one in a long line of behaviors totally unacknowledged by Allen as being racially troubling. At this point, the claim that Allen had never used such language requires positing a conspiracy so vast and bizarre that it nearly requires the use of a time machine to orchestrate.
Yep, I grew up in Virginia and I was on the High School football team. A lot of people back then who were in my peer group threw around the word nigger quite a lot. I think most of them did so without a proper understanding for what they were doing. I mean, they realized on some level that, “hey, blacks don’t like that word.” But at the same time their parents and grandparents used the word freely in their childhoods. For example my dad got smacked by a black girl when he was in the second great because he called her a nigger, he said that until that point he did not know that one referred to blacks as anything else, it was the only term he had ever heard used. By the time he was an adult my dad had fought and bled side by side with people of many different races (jews, blacks, hispanics, et al.) and was fairly enlightened from that time onward.
Furthermore, the schools were still fairly segregated at this time, by virtue of the fact that eventhough Brown had come down before I ever started High School, it took some time before it was truly implemented. It was very common for all white High School football teams to be lining up against all black ones. And in such a situation some pretty nasty insults get thrown back and forth across the line of scrimmage, I don’t think the stuff said truly reflects how the persons in question feel or would act in the real world, but on the line of scrimmage you try your best to piss someone off. Twenty years later, using racial slurs to do that would be moderately unacceptable, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it is still done, but back in the 60s and 70s, it was to be more expected.
I personally see no reason for Allen to respond to spurious claims. Some of his accusers could easily be politically motivated, and several of the most prominent who claim they closely knew Allen have been dismissed by other persons who knew Allen at that time as not knowing him very well at all.
For example the incident where an old woman said Allen was using racial slurs at a Rugby game was dismissed by someone who was with Allen, and said he was with Allen the entire day in question and never heard him use any words like that or get involved in any sort of altercation with the woman.
Personally, I have no idea if Allen threw around racial slurs as a young man. If he did, in 1960s and 1970s Virginia, I don’t think that necessarily makes him racist, in fact I don’t really think it does. The south was still casting off some bad old habits and there were aspects of the old views still present at that time. I could care less what his explanation is, if I was a politician I sure as hell wouldn’t admit to something that could never be demonstrated as true.
I also genuinely don’t care what Allen was in 1970, I could care less if he was secretly the most racist man on the planet at that time. I’m concerned about George Allen in the here and now, and his congerssional record and actions as a politician has never given any indication to me that he’s a racist.
I’ve started a separate GQ thread on the question. Let’s see if anybody knows.
“Macaca”.
Things might be a bit stiff at the Allen family Thanksgiving this year…
But he did respond, repeatedly: both with the original claim and by calling those people liars and attacking them and their reputations personally.
Cite? And any evidence that this is any sort of substantive rebutall of the concrete claims made?
From what I read, this summary is simply false: the guy in question wasn’t with Allen on the day in question at all: he was just another character witness. Regardless, why would the woman have made up the story about Allen and then have told her aunt about it 20 years ago? Does the plot to elect Webb really extend back to before he was even in Reagan’s administration?
So, in other words: you are perfectly okay if he lies and calls other people liars for objecting to him lying?
Some people beg to differ. At the very least, given the criticisms of his political record, his beliefs and utterances and alligences are certainly very much open to question.
Based on responses there, it’s a real custom, and not only in Cambodia.
I refer you to my other posts in this thread.
I’ve stated repeatedly I do not feel using a racial slur makes one a racist.
Doo doo, dee doo doo.
Well, that was a mistake. George Allen isn’t me, after all. I wouldn’t have responded to the allegations, I never made the claim Allen didn’t respond to the allegations. My only response would have been, “These claims aren’t true, and these people can offer no evidence to support them, I will not answer any questions about these allegations in the future.” And that would have been that for me.
It’s he-said-she said, why do you need a substantive rebuttal when the allegation itself is without any evidence whatsoever?
That’s not how I read it. In any case, I’ve already said I actually don’t care if Allen 1) used racial slurs in the 1970s nor do I care if he 2) was in fact an actual racist in the 1970s.
In the political arena where none of these claims can be substantiated with facts I’m pretty much just ignoring that entire aspect of the campaign.
So they are, my opinion is he isn’t a racist. One can’t prove or disprove very easily whether someone is or is not a racist.
As for the macaca controversy, I have a hard time really judging that. The racial slur macaca does not refer to Indians, it refers to Tunisians/Arabs so even as a racial slur Allen used it inappropriately. I have a feeling he did know it was some form of slur, but didn’t know its proper meaning as all evidence suggests Allen knew the man in question was Indian and not Arab.
I think Allen’s wriggling in response to the macaca controversy was pretty ludicrous, but I’m not putting George Allen on a pedestal. He’s a politician who committed a gaffe then tried to wriggle out of it. If you were his campaign manager would you have advised him to just own up to it and not try to defray blame? Not if you were a good campaign manager.
Everyone on this forum and pundits in general are always clamoring for our elected officials to simply “own up” to the mistakes they’ve made. However I’ve never once seen anything happen to a politician who “owns up” to his mistakes other than crucifixion. Owning up to things just means it allows your opponents to use them against you as undisputed facts as opposed to simply allegations.
When Robert Byrd used the word nigger on Fox, he later explained that it was a word from his boyhood and one that could be used more casually throughout most of his life. He offered that as an explanation, apologized, and said it was inappropriate to use it in the modern day and he was sorry that he did so.
I tended to believe Byrd, I think most people did. I tend to think Webb used macaca as a term he too heard from time to time growing up without really thinking about the implications of the word. No, he didn’t own up to it like Byrd did. But I’m almost certain no one hear would accept his explanation if it was worded precisely the same way as Byrd’s because all of this really boils down to partisanship. Furthermore, I question as to whether or not Byrd would have owned up to his mistake so openly if he was actually in a Senate seat that was even remotely contested.
So why do you believe that he isn’t a racist?
Indians look a lot like Arabs in appearance. It’s quite possible that Allen saw the dude’s brown skin and dark hair and “macaca” immediately came to mind, free association-style. But so what? Since when did racist slurs have to align with common usage 100% anyway?
Like others have said, if the macaca incident was a one time thing, I don’t think this would be a big deal. But it looks as if he might have a history of saying and doing undeniably racist things, and those things are hard to ignore just because they happened in the past. Especially since he hasn’t owned up to anything or apologized. I have a heard time believing that all the folks who have come out of the woodwork are lying about him. As you said, it’s hard to prove whether someone is racist, but if there is a lot of damaging testimony from past acquaintances that point to truly bad character, that counts as something. There’s no way I could ignore it.
How about his 40-year-old admiration of the Confederate Flag? Or his fraternization with white supremacist groups? Or endorsing “Confederate Heritage Month” while opposing a state holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.?
The group in question was not considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center until two years after Allen met with them.
Admiration for the Confederate Flag isn’t uncommon at all in the South and most Southerners don’t equate that with racism.
Maybe, but the group in question also hadn’t changed its views in the two years between when Allen met with them and when the SPLC put them on their hate group list. So, even when Allen met with them, they still had racist views.
And Allen’s a Californian. He can’t use the whole “Confederate Flag is part of my heritage as a southerner” dodge. He’s got a long history of sympathy to neo-Confederate causes and hostility to black civil rights.
Look: there are at least 12 if not more people who have gone on the record, their reputations out in the public, on this. Some of those people have corroboration of further people on the record who confirm that they mentioned these events and exchanges back WHEN they happened. The only true and direct “she said” is Allen himself, and he of course has absolutely every reason in the world to lie.
Do you care if he lies about it now, including calling other people liars because they contradicted his attempt to ass cover for macaca? Does it matter that he has a huge and long history of this stuff?
I don’t really care that much if you don’t think the issue is important. But it boggles my mind the utterly bizarre lengths people have gone through to claim that nuh unh, George Allen never did those things. You yourself are pretty incredulous that it wasn’t part of football culture. And yet, you seem willing to give Allen’s denial the benefit of the doubt when there are a horde of people who say he’s a liar.
In the political arena where none of these claims can be substantiated with facts I’m pretty much just ignoring that entire aspect of the campaign.
So they are, my opinion is he isn’t a racist. One can’t prove or disprove very easily whether someone is or is not a racist.
As for the macaca controversy, I have a hard time really judging that. The racial slur macaca does not refer to Indians, it refers to Tunisians/Arabs so even as a racial slur Allen used it inappropriately. I have a feeling he did know it was some form of slur, but didn’t know its proper meaning as all evidence suggests Allen knew the man in question was Indian and not Arab.
I think Allen’s wriggling in response to the macaca controversy was pretty ludicrous, but I’m not putting George Allen on a pedestal. He’s a politician who committed a gaffe then tried to wriggle out of it. If you were his campaign manager would you have advised him to just own up to it and not try to defray blame? Not if you were a good campaign manager.
Everyone on this forum and pundits in general are always clamoring for our elected officials to simply “own up” to the mistakes they’ve made. However I’ve never once seen anything happen to a politician who “owns up” to his mistakes other than crucifixion. Owning up to things just means it allows your opponents to use them against you as undisputed facts as opposed to simply allegations.
When Robert Byrd used the word nigger on Fox, he later explained that it was a word from his boyhood and one that could be used more casually throughout most of his life. He offered that as an explanation, apologized, and said it was inappropriate to use it in the modern day and he was sorry that he did so.
I tended to believe Byrd, I think most people did. I tend to think Webb used macaca as a term he too heard from time to time growing up without really thinking about the implications of the word. No, he didn’t own up to it like Byrd did. But I’m almost certain no one hear would accept his explanation if it was worded precisely the same way as Byrd’s because all of this really boils down to partisanship. Furthermore, I question as to whether or not Byrd would have owned up to his mistake so openly if he was actually in a Senate seat that was even remotely contested.
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He went to UVA and has lived in Virginia for a long time.
Also, Allen didn’t “meet” with the CCC. He was at a Conservative Political Action Conference, a conference where tons of reputable politicians on the right meet annually. He wasn’t there specifically to meet members of the CCC, and simply had a photo-op with them. Furthermore, the CPAC no longer to my knowledge invites the CCC, and from all accounts I don’t think there’s any reasonable proof CPAC was materially aware of some of the darker sides to the CCC until after the 1998 controversy.
So? There’s lots of reasons lots of people would lie. Unless you have Allen on tape or being quoted in a reputable media as using a racial slur from that time period, I’m just simply going to say there’s no way I can ever know if it happened or not and no amount of spurious claims by persons who quite likely could just want media attention will change my mind on the matter.
If there’s substantive proof I’d expect Allen to say he’s sorry that he made those comments in the past, otherwise I see no reason for him to even respond to the allegations.
By “huge and long history” you mean, “when he was a kid he used racial slurs” and he used one in one incident this year? Because I don’t consider those a “huge and long history.” Certainly not even remotely approachable to the long history of Robert Byrd, who if I was a West Virginian I’d seriously consider voting for despite his liberal politics just simply because he’s a huge financial boon for the state.
I honestly don’t think it matters one fucking bit if George Allen was a racist in the 1970s. I don’t think it matters one bit now as long as he doesn’t attempt to enact racist policies, and in my experience with Allen’s legislative record he has done the exact opposite to that, even sponsoring a Senatorial apology on behalf of the U.S. Senate for not passing anti-lynching legislation in the early 20th century.
I just don’t see any credible evidence to support the fact that Allen is a racist now. He used the word macaca he didn’t filibuster the civil rights amendment. If a politician attempts to enact racist policies, that’s a serious problem and I wouldn’t vote for a politician that did that. Allen has taken the exact opposite stance in his legislative career. If he’s privately racist, that’s a personal flaw but as long as it doesn’t affect his abilities as U.S. Senator I honestly just don’t care.
I think the chances are he is definitely not a racist, and I’ve seen no evidence as a voter to compel me otherwise. Evidence would have to be a lot more than just showing me he used inappropriate language as a young man or that he let slip a racial slur at a political event.
It isn’t important, what’s important are his policies and his past legislative acts. If there’s no evidence in his legislative record that he’s a racist then it doesn’t matter what he does in his private life, he could fuck cattle and collect Nazi memorabilia for all I care as long as legislatively he has never shown any sign of attempting to enact discriminatory legislation.
I’m not saying George Allen never did any of those things, I’m saying I’ve never seen any proof and thus I consider the allegations pointless.