Tuesday, August 15, 2006

George Allen in Trouble

Senator George Allen has gotten himself into a lot of trouble, and placed his presidential ambitions in serious jeopardy.

The Washington Post and a collection of Virginia bloggers are running with the story that Senator Allen used racial slurs toward an Indian-American member of his opponents staff.

What makes the story worse? There's video of the incident.

From the WaPo:
At a campaign rally in southwest Virginia on Friday, Allen repeatedly called a volunteer for Democrat James Webb "macaca." During the speech in Breaks, near the Kentucky border, Allen began by saying that he was "going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas" and then pointed at S.R. Sidarth in the crowd.
"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," Allen said, as his supporters began to laugh. After saying that Webb was raising money in California with a "bunch of Hollywood movie moguls," Allen said, "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." [Emphasis added]
WaPo defines "macaca":
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. [Emphasis added]
This may very well kill Allen's presidential bid, especially because it allows the WaPo to bring up Allen's questionable past on the issue of race. Allen has decorated his office with the Confederate flag and noose.

Prior to this incident, Allen was on the top of my list of presidential contenders. Allen's monkey business promotes Sam Brownback to the top of the list for '08. [Yes, the pun was intended]

Watch the video here, its bad. Can you say malice and fore-thought?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, couldn't find any other way to contact you... but check your spelling on 'heros'. I think it is 'heroes'.

Anonymous said...

So Allen is wrong for his remarks but Andrew Young is free to make the remarks he did about small business owners of a certain ethnic persuasion?

I don't think so.