Is it really an insult if folks are still writing multi-paragraph articles about a word, trying to find out what it actually means, half a week after it was uttered?
Is it that important to figure out if George Allen insulted an opposition campaign worker who has been following him around for the past couple or few weeks recording everything he possibly can?
To be honest, I would have insulted the guy, too. That kind of behavior strikes me as a perfect mashup between anal-retentive and smirkingly stalkerish. I think Allen’s only major mistake was in not making the insult plain enough that there would be no question about it.
That aside, my pundit friends, let’s ask ourselves a question or two. Aren’t there more important things we can be doing that plumbing the etymological depths of the word “macaca” or whatever it is we think he said on that handheld camcorder recording. Is one word so important that it’s worth four days of scrutiny the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Zapruder film?
I honestly don’t think so.
Let’s move on. I hear that some politician might have called a homeless guy a “zamboofle”, whatever that might be. I bet if we Google it hard enough, it’ll turn into something!
UPDATE: Welcome, readers of The Daou Report!
I’m not quite sure I was being specific enough in my earlier post, which seems to have confused many of you. Let me clear it up for you.
Until the Google Searches lit up the internet on Sunday, not one of you had the faintezst clue what a “macaca” was and a good number of you still aren’t quite sure. It could be a monkey. It could be a racial slur. It could be some sort of errand-boy. It could be a haircut. It could be a mishmash of two different words.
That’s the point I’m making. It’s been four days since George Allen delivered his Slur Most Foul and we’re still trying to figure out the nature of the insult. Oh, we’re sure it was an insult. We just don’t know what kind of insult it was.
Yeah, so George Allen picked on some opposition staffer cause he felt “mean”. Okay. Let’s summon him for his seven lashes with a wet noodle and get on with life. This incessant seeking for insults, no matter how long we have to look nor how obscure the source on which we hang our sense of indignation is beyond ridiculous.
So you would have insulted him also? Fine, he was from the other guy’s team and at your party. But: Would you have called him a name which is considered a racist insult? (Even if everyone doesn’t know means “monkey”, it still sounds like a racist insult.) Would have given a snide “welcome to america” to the only dark face in the audience? (Stupid because the photographer was born in the USA and a virginian citizen.)
If so you, too, will be labeled a racist cracker. And this will be a problem if you, too, want to be elected president of this country in 2008.
It’s a self control issue where Allen revealed his true self (racist cracker). Whether it’s a president that can’t keep his hands off an intern or a president who can’t keep his hands off another country, I don’t vote for people without self control.
[[To be honest, I would have insulted the guy, too. That kind of behavior strikes me as a perfect mashup between anal-retentive and smirkingly stalkerish.]]
Having such “stalkers” is now standard operating procedure for major political campaigns these days. Allen has two trailing Webb, one of whom actually almost got into legal trouble for following Webb into the can. So whatever your criticisms of Allen’s critics, that one won’t fly.
[[Is one word so important that it’s worth four days of scrutiny the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Zapruder film? I honestly don’t think so.]]
Welcome to the blogosphere. That’s how things work nowadays.
One other thing: I’ve been a Republican since 1978. If we’re going to call out the Al Sharptons of the world (and we should), then we’ve got to call out crap like this, too.
And jeff makes a good point: Racial issues aside, calling the guy out at all was just dumb. If someone wants my vote for president, I expect him to have better judgment. And, yeah, anyone can say something stupid in the heat of a moment, but Allen’s response since — a response that he’s had time to think about, talk over with aides, etc. — isn’t inspiring confidence.
Considered by whom, jeff? It took how long – a couple hours? a day or so? – to decide that it was in fact an insult? And we’re still trying to find out what the nature of the insult was, complete with competing theories?
In my book, Allen should have called him the toadying lackey of a man who can think of no better use of a person’s time than to dedicate him to playing “gotcha” politics. Welcome to America? Well, yeah. Welcome to an America where we fight our political battles out in the open, not with little Gollums carrying camcorders.
I think that would have been just fine.
Hey Jimmie you hypocritical scumbag how about all of karl roves tricks over the years…since they were for your side those were ok huh? You are scum just like Allen is.
1. The kid was a native Virginian, something Allen can’t even claim himself. To take a look at the color of his skin and make a determintation that he “must not be from these here parts” may not be ugly, but it is a pre-judgement none the less.
2. Sidarth was a “stalker” but as said earlier, these are common practices from campaigns. Even so common that earlier in the week Sidarth met Allen and his staff and politely identified himself and what he was there to do.
3. In Sidarth’s culture, that is a slur… try going to Compton and using the N-word… doesn’t fly. Whether Allen knew it or not, once it was obvious that it was an ethnic slur, He could have been a man and apologized for any potential misunderstanding to Sidarth directly… that probably would have closed the case before it got any traction… but the dumbass still denies it was a slur… or wait what hour is this? I think this maybe the hour where he denies he actually said it.. hmm no… I think it is back on his schedule to say it was his haircut.
I wanted to watch the tape before I made any decision and when I did there was no doubt in my mind that this guy was being a bully and decided to show he was the alpha male by picking on someone in the audience, someone lower than himself, hey, that dark fella will work. I didn’t know much about Allen so I checked him out. Apparently this behavior is par for the course, he hung a noose from the tree outside of his law office around MLK day. Nice. What is the Republican party thinking endorsing people like this? To paraphrase something W said, we need uniters, not dividers. If the Republicans wants to hold onto the Congress and the White House in 2008 that’s what they need. I saw another quote from Allen, and I cannot verify 100% its authenticity but basically he said in real America there are no homosexuals. That made my stomach turn. Another thing I’m tired of is this “real America” or “heartland” nonsense. The last time I checked the map it was all “real America”. I love ALL of this country, and don’t trust anyone who doesn’t.
Post removed by the site owner. I don’t need Google to look up your obscenities. Once more and you’re banned.
While I find Jimmies post to be a sloppy and dismissive peice, I am heartened to see so many conservatives willing to take Allen to task for his lack of self-control. This is politics. If you can’t control what comes out of your mouth, you don’t deserve to represent anyone. And as the gentleman said, Mr. Allen has TWO employees doing the SAME thing to his opponent. I think it is rather nervy of you to call the gentleman filming Mr. Allen a stalker. You might want to get a bit more familiar with how campaign strategists work. They have been filiming their opponents every move for a long time now. Each night, the campaign reviews speeches and off the cuff remarks of their opponents and they devise strategy from it.
Mr. Allen deserves everything that is coming to him. He is a man who seems to think he can use the politics of division when he so choses, but he does not have the balls to even admit it. What a loser.
Yes, yes. Allen’s a big ol’ meanie-face. He corked off to a campaign activist. Cry me a river.
I’m amused, though, by how many Salon.com readers are showing up here decrying the “politics of division”, though. I expect your support in several other recent threads I’ve posted about Democratic activists resorting to blatant racism and homophobia.
Well, no. No I don’t expect it. But it’d sure be nice to have less hypocrisy going on, don’t you all think?
Oh waaaah Jimmie, all us awful Salon readers are reading your blog, how awful.
No, Jeremy, it isn’t in Sidarth’s culture that “macaca” is a slur. It’s in George Allen’s mother’s culture. Allen’s mom is a French Tunisian, and “macaca” (actually “macaque”, but pronounced that way) is the word used there as a slur for Arabs and Africans. The word’s also used that way on some hate sites.
So, did George Allen learn this word at his mother’s knee? Did she use the word?
And why is his staff putting out the absurd claim that it’s a combination of “mohawk” and “caca” and this is a refence to Sidarth’s hairstyle? He has a perfectly ordinary hairstyle that doesn’t resemble a mohawk. Better to just shut up than tell obvious lies.
Mr Blogger, congrats on getting noticed by the liberals from Daou Report – as Ann Coulter knows, thats what its all about, getting noticed. Nows the best time to get the book contracts signed.
Ask yourself, if the same macaca comment was uttered by a Democratic politician, would you have considered this to be a similar non-event? Or put in your own multi-paragraph rant on how the incident was merely representative of the entire lefts bigoted hypocricy?
Of course it was a slur. He used this supposed “random” grouping of syllables twice in perfect context of its racial-slur origins!
I hope this solidifies his loony base and gets him reelected – his district gets what they deserve, and us lefties have more years to scrutinize this guys every embarrassing word and show how representative he is of the rights bigoted hypocricy.
My work here is done. Back to the seas of the liberal blogosphere where I will continue to shoot occasional cannon balls across the blue/red divide – best of luck to you!
So because person A doesn’t know what a slur means, one could feel good about calling person B this same insult.
Get a grip. Can’t you be honest with yourself? Sad, how you reach. The guy blew it. Showed his thoughts. They’re ugly.
Ok, so lets give him the benefit of the doubt and say “Macaca” was just a random made up word, It still means that what Allen was saying was; “look at that brown skinned guy over here, he’s not like us, He has some wierdo ferrin’ sounding name that I can’t be bothered to learn, “Macaca”, or whatever it is, he’s with the other side, not one of us.” Even if he didn’t know it was a racial slur (which I kinda doubt) His whole attitude is that of a bully who gets off on picking on someone who is different. Yeah, great qualities there!
Exactly, E.T.
I’m amused, though, by how many Salon.com readers are showing up here decrying the “politics of division”, though. I expect your support in several other recent threads I’ve posted about Democratic activists resorting to blatant racism and homophobia.
Well, no. No I don’t expect it. But it’d sure be nice to have less hypocrisy going on, don’t you all think?
Well, I’m not American thankfully, and you’ll encounter no opposition from me when decrying racism and bigotry from your scary, craven politicians down there. So yeah, no hypocrisy. Maybe you could try ity too?
Oh, and Ann Althouse hardly qualifies as some fire-breathing agenda-driven socialist, so it might be a decent idea to read this too in your admirable quest to eliminate hypocrisy.
Yeah it was a shitty thing to say and probably racist.
But that’s not why it’s a huge deal.
We want the Senate back. Duh! Of course we’re going to make it a big deal. This isn’t kindergarten. This guy has Presiendial aspirations. He shouldn’t even have addressed the guy, period.
Your side would do the same thing if one of ours handed you this gift.
Don’t kid yourselves.
Hey, thanks. Actually, this isn’t my first Daou Report link. I think it’s my sixth or seventh. I’m quite thankful that they think my blog is worth reading and have told Mr. Daou that.
Yes!! If I can’t figure out that it was an insult a moment or two after it’s uttered, it can’t be much of an insult, now can it? It certainly can’t be such a terrible invective if it takes a good chunk of the blogosphere rummaging through online dictionaries four days to narrow the nature of the insult down to two possibilities.
Certainly not. I save the multi-paragraph rants for when a noted campaign activist posts racist and homophobic pictures of her preferred candidate’s opponent. I add an extra paragraph or two when said candidate (whose first campaign commercial featured the left’s most famous blogger more than the candidate himself) responds to the revelation with something akin to “Blogs? What on Earth is a blog?”.
That’s when I point out the left’s sanctimony when it comes to racism.
Yeah I’d be in a hurry to change the subject if my guy screwed up this bad.
What he did was to look at a non-Caucasian and say to him “welcome to America” and also refer to him by what turned out to be a racial epithet. The welcome to America isn’t politically incorrect, it was just plain scummy. Maybe he didn’t realize the word he used, macaca, was already an ethnic slur; maybe it’s just his gift to invent words that are insulting to non-racists.
At any rate why are you defending this pig?
Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy…we are not talking about “racist leftists” now are we? We are talking about George Allen.
Get a spine honey. This is politics.
As some other posters have noted, it’s not just the made-up name, “Macaca”, that’s at issue here, though given that Siharth had introduced himself, it’s odd that Allen couldn’t even be close on the name.
The fact that Allen assumed that Sidarth was new to the country because of the color of his skin–”Welcome to America”–shows a deep level of prejudice.
His attempts at explanations have been absurd. Sidarth’s hair style is nowhere near a Mohawk. Imagine if John Conyers called a white person with long hair “Cracker”, then tried to explain it away as “oh, it’s because he had a crewcut.”
It remains to be seen what effect this incident will have on Allen’s re-election campaign, but this Presidential aspirations are now toast. Though many Republicans will have no problem with this, enough of them will realize that this incident would get played over and over in campaign ads for the opposition in the General Election.
of course, the guy allen pointed to was actually born in virgina, not like the california-born allen. and allen is fluent in french. he knows what the word means.
allen is fluent in french.that’s a god-damned lie. george allen is a true blue american. next thing you’ll tell me he avoided going to vietnam. liberal propaganda!
Wingnut.
It shure sounds like you have a problem with Allen speacking French.
Your remark is hilarious.”. Allen fluent in French is a god-damned-lie. Allen is a true Blue American”
First, I’ll guess you ment to say a red bloded American. Unless Allen is another one of the in- house breeding red neck Republicans that have been marring family members for generations. If that is the case I would not be surprised if he indeed has blue blod , and possibly three legs, and hawls on fool moons.
Second, I know that is hard for you people to accept that Americans can actually be literate and do things like learn lenguages. I however never expected , that speaking French was considered unpatriotic in your circles. Goes to show, that you learn something every day. Just when I tough that Republicans could not get any dumber.
You keep repeating the lie that it took four days to figure out what Allen meant. Just because people like you deny it for four days, and liberals have to keep setting you straight, doesn’t mean that no one knew what Allen meant. I didn’t know what it meant, because I don’t frequent white supremacist websites. But a quick look at those sites will show that macaca is a commonly used slur for blacks. They use it when nigger starts to seem too repetitive.
It seems to me you’re still posting on it, and continuing to spread untruths. If you guys on the right could just face up to the fact that Allen is a rascist, you’d find a lot fewer of us having to set you straight.
I think Allen meant Mohican.