Daily Show leads with Allen’s ‘Macaca’
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When Senator George Allen pointed to a campaign volunteer for his Democratic opponent James Webb and uttered the words, “Let’s give a welcome to our friend Macaca here” at a rally over the weekend, it was a gaffe so bizarre that it cried out to be lampooned on a certain 11pm fake newscast. As it turns out, the incident not only got the Daily Show’s attention, but Jon Stewart and company led with it on the August 15 episode.
After playing portions of the clip in which Allen singled out UVA fourth-year S.R. Sidarth– who is Indian-American and has been video tapin
g Allen for the Webb campaign– Stewart said it wasn’t nice for the Webb camp to try to capture Allen on film “because George Allen says some really stupid sh*t.” He then brought in “correspondent” Rob Corddry who delved into the more scatalogical interpretations of Allen’s remarks before finally concluding, “It sure as sh*t sounds racist, and here in Virginia, I’m still not sure if that helps or hurts.”
Allen has since apologized for the remarks, telling the Washington Post “I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologize if he was offended by that. That was no way the point.”
Nobody’s quite sure what, if anything, Allen meant by calling Sidarth “Macaca,” but it has the Internet abuzz with “Macaca” and “George Allen” being the second and fourth most blogged-about topics on the web right now, according to Internet aggregator Technorati.
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Watch the video! Sen. Allen’s comments were unbelievable. Reminded me of being a “Jungle Bunny” in third grade.
In any case, I made up some funny t-shirts and other stuff to celebrate the end of Allen’s campaign. Thought you might want to check it out.
I’m donating 30% of the profit to Allen’s competitor, Democratic candidate Jim Webb.
http://www.cafepress.com/macacashop
Racists call people with different skin colors offensive names and treasure Confederate flags and stuff like that. They use “code words” to let other racists know they’re with them in the fight to purify America. George doesn’t…wait a minute…
DailyKos deconstructs Allens “apology” quite nicely. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/15/193311/003
George will win this race, and he has a shot at the GOP nomination in 2008. He’s a dirty, sarcastic, mean person willing to ridicule anybody who disagrees with or criticizes him. In George’s world, just like the “other” George’s world, you’re either with him or against him. If you’re against him, you’re of no value - he goes out of his way to make that clear. And he has lots of money to get his word out.
I was watching that last night and got a good laugh. That conclusion of “It sure as sh*t sounds racist, and here in Virginia, I’m not sure if that helps or hurts,” had me rolling off the couch and I knocked my cereal over.
So Very Virginia.
There’s a great article — or title of the article anyway — on slate.com — check it out —
“Is George Allen Too Stupid to Be President?” hehe — answer: Certainly not if W set the bar.
As funny as this clip is, does anybody really believe Allen meant “macaca” as a racial slur in and of itself? After having watched it a few times, it seems like he was just fishing for some nonsense word because he didn’t know the guy’s name. It was a poorly chosen nonsense word, to be sure, but I don’t think he meant “macaca” to be taken as anything more than nonsense.
We can never know what George’s thought process was, all we know - and we do know - is that he directed racial slurs at and said things that clearly were demeaning toward a person who isn’t White like him.
I expect a hell of a lot more out of my Senator. Don’t you?
Virginia is for… haters
Using excuses like “he didn’t know the guy’s name” would work pretty well except for the fact that the young man in question introduced himself to Allen a few days before the Macaca incident. Is it a nonsense word? I don’t think so. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/macaca
I doubt he meant to call the dude a racial slur, but what he most definitely did was make a minority the target of
ridicule as 100 or so rednecks whooped it up with approval. S-K-E-T-C-H-Y.
So long proportion, you have been blown out. Nobody can know what his intentions were with the word, the honorable thing to do would be believe he was not throwing out a “closet” racial term and move on. But since I haven’t and won’t move on from Howard Dean screaming like a pro wrestler, I guess I’m not the one to throw stones.
DVD, I meet a lot of people whose names I can’t remember two minutes later. And I meet way fewer people than does George Allen. So that means nothing.
This will be forgotten quicker than the fact that Hezbollah started the conflict.
We can’t know what his intentions were? Yeah, right. The “welcome to America” comment explains everything. Allen is a racist, plain and simple, and he is unfit to serve.
I don’t think Allen will win the nomination, Romney will, but I believed it before this. Everybody that has posted on here has said something they want to take back. Something that can be construed as racist, since pretty much anything can if you want it to badly enough. Arguing over a word whose connotations have to be really stretched to be construed as racist is like someone getting fired over the use of the word “niggardly.” Oh, wait.
There’s no way GOP primary voters will elect Romney due to his Mormon faith.
Jesus! How’d I miss that?!
Aww, come on. He didn’t mean to call the kid by a racist slur; he only meant to call him a shithead! And no, I’m NOT making that up: http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/08/a_new_explanant_2.html
Allen needs to get himself some spin doctors who actually graduated from grade school.
Here are some definitions of the word Allen used:
1. ‘Macaca’ - French : racist slang; similar to English ‘nigger,’ used to describe Arabs.
2. ‘Macaca’ - English : racist slang; similar to ‘nigger’ used to describe Arabs.
3. ‘Macaca’ - English : racist slang; used by American white supremacists in ‘insider’ talk about African-Americans.
The French term is particularly used by French colonists in Northern Africa, which Allen’s mother was. She is French and from Tunisia. Still think it was a nonsense word?
We ALL KNOW…some of us just have our heads in the sand.
The fact that Allen said what he said isn’t surprising. The fact that he said what he said when the kid had a video camera pointed at him and Allen knew it was a video camera owned and operated by the opposition says a lot. It says that Allen considers himself above criticism, and believes what he says is RIGHT. What he said was at best insulting and derogatory, and at worst outright racist. When you combine that with the fact that he said he wished he had been born in Iowa (said while campaigning for president in Iowa), and combine that with the notion that he’s (at least now) planning to run for president in ‘08, maybe we should elect somebody who doesn’t hate anybody who opposes him, and who will is committed to serving the full six year term.
He’s a moron.
Dave should be careful. The term “rednecks” is racist to me…I am Appalachian-American and don’t ever
forget that.
[...] However, the event seems to play right into one of Allen’s ongoing lines of attack, which has involved ridiculing Webb’s literary pretentions. In the wake of the “Macaca” fiasco, in which Webb has taken a slight lead in the polls, Allen’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, wasted no time getting back on message. [...]
[...] It could be a key point in a race that’s proving to be tighter than most pundits expected. Following “Macaca-gate,” Allen’s lead has slipped from 12 percentage points in July down to just four with a four percent margin of error in the most recent Mason-Dixon poll. [...]