The end of George Allen Jr.’s (R-VA) presidential hopes? … I don’t know if I’d go that far; after all there’s no live boy or dead girl involved here, but it’s pretty darn close. Nice going, George Jr.
Democrat James Webb’s Senate campaign accused Sen. George Allen (R) of making demeaning comments Friday to a 20-year-old Webb volunteer of Indian descent.
S.R. Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, had been trailing Allen with a video camera to document his travels and speeches for the Webb campaign. During a campaign speech Friday in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen singled out Sidarth and called him a word that sounded like “Macaca.”
“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. We’re going to places all over Virginia, and he’s having it on film and its great to have you here and you show it to your opponent because he’s never been there and probably will never come.”
After telling the crowd that Webb was raising money in California with a “bunch of Hollywood movie moguls,” Allen again referenced Sidarth, who was born and raised in Fairfax County.
“Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” said Allen, who then began talking about the “war on terror.”
In an interview, Sidarth said he suspects Allen singled him out because he was the only non-white face in the audience, which he estimated included about 100 Republican supporters.
“I think he was doing it because he could and I was the person of color there and it was useful for him in inciting his audience,” said Sidarth. “I was annoyed he would use my race in a political context.”
Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams said the Webb campaign’s complaints about the comments are unfounded and he said Allen had “nothing to apologize for” to the young man.
The early supposition was that he was saying ‘macaque’ like the monkey or just some furrin-sounding type name.
Now I know that ‘macaque’ is an ethnic slur used to refer to some Africans, but I’m going to be generous here and assume that Allen was trying to refer to the macaque monkey, but is too stupid and thuggish to know or care about the proper pronounciation. Also, I don’t think ‘macaque’ as a racial epithet is very well established in the states. For one, it’s too frenchified. Like I said, I’ll be generous. After all, it is better that he’s an ignorant fucktard than a racist asshole who’s too much of a coward to say ‘sand nigger’ to the brownie’s face, right?
Nice.
Update: now they say they were calling him ‘Mohawk’ because of his hair (use the WaPo link above).
This is what Sidarth looks like:
To quote Borat: niiiice!
Update 2: general consensus is now that Allen was directly using White Power wording in a speech to his peeps. Niiiiiice.
Bonus points if you can name the pop culture reference in the title of this post
Embarrassing, Idiots, News, Race
