Hide the children. Foot-in-mouth-disease is back:
Virginia Sen. George Allen (R) apologized Monday for what his opponent’s campaign said were demeaning and insensitive comments the senator made to a 20-year-old volunteer of Indian descent.
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.
Allen should have realized that by using the name “macaca” his campaign would soon be in deep macaca.
But, then, politicos of both parties — reflecting the current American culture typified by insult-slinging talk radio (and these days in some blog comments) — often forget that the point of elections isn’t only to talk to people you agree with but to possibly win over some who might not agree with you by the power of your arguments, logic and ideas. MORE:
“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.” Allen then began talking about the “war on terror.”
The Washington Post article then makes it worse for Allen:
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.
Not a good phrase to use, then, Senator Allen. AND:
Oh. AND:
“The kid has a name,” Webb communications director Kristian Denny Todd said of Sidarth, a Virginia native who was born in Fairfax County. “This is trying to demean him, to minimize him as a person.”
Todd added that the use of macaca, whatever it means, and the reference welcoming Sidarth to America were clearly intended to make him uncomfortable.
Reached Monday evening, Allen said that the word had no derogatory meaning for him and that he was sorry. “I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologize if he’s offended by that. That was no way the point.”
But Allen’s journalistic ordeal wasn’t over just yet:
Asked what macaca means, Allen said: “I don’t know what it means.” He said the word sounds similar to “mohawk,” a term that his campaign staff had nicknamed Sidarth because of his haircut. Sidarth said his hairstyle is a mullet — tight on top, long in the back.
You can read the rest yourself. In reality, this won’t be the factor that will lose Allen the election. But it isn’t the best example of image-building we’ve seen in a candidate running for re-election this year.
From the standpoint of politics, it was a macoocoo thing to say.
FOOTNOTE: Of course, James Webb had his own bout with foot-in-mouth (or cartoon in release) disease earlier this year which created quite a lot of controversy. Our old (highly controversial) posts on that are here and here.
Here’s the You Tube video:
HERE ARE SOME LINKS THAT GIVE YOU A CROSS SECTION OF THE VARIED VIEWS OF SOME OTHERS (who might see things differently):
Hotline On Call, The Red Stater, Brendan Nyhan, The Ward View, skippy, Macsmind, TalkLeft, Legal Fiction, No More Mister Nice Blog, Giuliani Blog, Spank That Donkey, Seeing The Forest, Minipundit, Down With Tyranny! Real Clear Politics Blog
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.
