"... or whatever your name is."
OK, we all know what he said and did.
Well, if you didn't, here it is again:
George Allen last Friday, August 11th,
in Breaks, Virginia (very very rural Virginia, deep in the Appalachian Mountains. George Bush could spend the rest of his presidency clearing brush up here - hint, hint George)
But I'm not sure all of us know why he said it. I wasn't convinced at first. Some say he said it arrogantly; others say it appears to be a genuine introduction. I had a hard time believing he was mocking Sidarth.
But then it sets in. Unless spoken by someone younger than a 5 year old, there may be ignorance, but there is no doubt as to the grownup meaning of the word "macaca":
As per
Jeffrey Feldman:
Here are the three choices:
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.
Follow here to discover which:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Also, Feldman's frameshop on "macaca": http://jeffrey-feldman.typepad.com/...
Personally, I think it means "sand nigger" after a little lite reading up on it, but what do I know?
So he chose the wrong nickname. But he's innocent I tell you! It could have been an innocent mistake! Someone could have fed him that nickname (OK, he didn't try that excuse).
But its documented that George speaks French well, probably tried to make his mother proud. If you've been following the story here at Dkos you've discovered much about his Franco-Maternal background.
Altogether it would be enough to develop enough picture of the possibility of the bastards guilt. At least you can identify it behind the smoky clouds of doubt. All the elements are certainly there now, aren't they?
But there is one reference here and in the press that came up a few times that bears out everyone's attention, because it makes the bigoted guilt crystal clear, as clear as the fresh Appalachian Mountain air.
I now have no doubt George Allen knew the meaning of the word "macaca" when he used it as a pet name for the only brown man in his presence that day. And my doubt of the evil intent in the "calling out" (as Southerners in the know here have called it) of Sidarth has evaporated.
In April The New Republic magazine's Senior Editor Ryan Lizza already deliberated George's racist character accompanied by a fairly good resolution picture of his history. It's not a pretty picture when you put it up with the video. And Ryan also had an Aha moment of how George Allen may be trying to hide who he really. Ryan pens it out the way he experienced it.
The article "George Allens Race Problem" (unfortunately subscription only) describes campaign events and interviews with George Allen. As said before here, the whole article is a Must Read, especially if you are in the press. It is an excellent anthropological piece on our monkey man from Virginia, or is it California? If only our press would always do it's research to this extent. And I believe this article united with the viewing of George Allen above will be the barrier that Allen cannot pass in his dead end journey to the Democratically locked gates of the Whitehouse.
Ryan's research pick ups in the article with Allen's stumblings on race issues early in his political career. Ryan writes about a number of insensitive and questionable stances on race:
1. Allen fought a congressional redistricting plan that enabled the election of Virginia's first post-Reconstruction black congressman.
2. He focused on crime and welfare issues, usually voting in the minority on racial issues.
3. Voted against a state holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. and for a resolution for "regret and sorrow" for William Munford Tuck, who offered fierce opposition to every step forward in legislation in the Civil Rights Era.
4. Allen had a Confederate flag in display in his living room up until his run for Governor in 1993.Ryan has an earlier article about the Flag on TNR here.(unfortunately subscription only again)
5. He kept a noose hanging from a ficus tree in his law office as "Western memorabilia".
6. After becoming governor he accepted, then quickly rejected, honorary membership at a discriminating Richmond social club.
7. He replaced the only black member of University of Virginia's Board of Visitors with a white one.
8. He issued a Governors proclamation declaring April Confederate History and Heritage Month on the Sons of Confederate Veterans wishes:
The text celebrated Dixie's "four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights." There was no mention of slavery. After some of the early flaps, a headline in The Washington Post read, "governor seen leading va. back in time."
After Allen adjusts to the public eye in the Governors position he seems to Learn to behave himself, and in the article Ryan acknowledges Allen's visible steps to bring himself into the redeemed mainstream of the "I'm not a racist Republican" fold.
So Did Allen really mean all those terrible things? I mean, he's really not from the South, how could he be a southern style bigot? Ryans analysis begins:
None of this means Allen is a racist, of course. He is certainly not the same guy today that he was in the `80s. But his interest in Southern heritage and his fetish for country culture goes back even further.
Ryan alludes to the possibility that Allen may have had a taste of tyranical urges in the shadow of his father's tyrannical rule and childrearing methods. More details can be found in his sisters story, who was motivated enough to pen it in her book
"Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter". From the Amazon review
Jennifer and her three brothers knew to stay out of their father's way.
...
In this touching and often unsentimental story, George Allen emerges as a self-centered man ...
That's George Senior she is talking about though. I digress.
Ryan digs:
He hated California and, while there, became obsessed with the supposed authenticity of rural life--or at least what he imagined it to be from episodes of "Hee Haw," his favorite TV show.
Ryan reports that Allen's high school peers remember his confederate license plates standing out oddly in California, and apparently Allen had an affinity for agressively showing the colors even in school.
While Allen did not grow up in the south, it is pretty clear that his heart was always in Dixie.
Let me elaborate again here. One element of the whole picture of the "macaca" incident is where the incident took place. We can thank Kossack surfbird007 for a little insight here.
... As to the why Allen chose to use a white power code word at this particular appearance, I have a pretty good idea. The appearance at Breaks Interstate Park in Breaks sits along the Kentucky/Virginia border very close to Dickenson and Buchanan Counties, the latter of which is a pretty significant Blue Dog Democratic hold-out in Appalachia, and especially when talking about Appalachian Virginia.
The key to his actions might lay in Buchanan County's past and unique cultural situation. Buchanan County is both the cultural descendant of pro-Virginia, anti-Reconstruction, anti-Republicanism, and a historical hotbed of overt racist culture. Pride in the Confederacy is rampant. In fact, Hurley High School is adorned with massive Rebel Flags painted across its doors, and it's team is proudly named, not surprisingly, the Rebels.
But is George completely like the Southern Bigots of Old in Buchanan County? Could the California transplant have anything in common with his culturally aged audience?
Is George Allen capable of the actions of a bigoted racist?
Our Intrepid reporter Ryan had been wondering the same thing.
Talk is cheap they say. But Allen backed his words up. Ryan says he was caught after a spray painting spree in the his own high school the night before an important game he was to play in against an inner-city Los Angeles school. Words such as "die whitey" and other racial insults to whites were found and attempted to be blamed on the black inner-city school before Allen and his gang was caught.
" The purpose was to get your team riled up against a rival."
Allen is suspended, but manages to graduate from High School. Somehow he makes it into college. Thanks Coach!
Next, I'm sure we've all seen a few of these types when we were in college:
... He drove a pickup truck... wore cowboy boots... He once shot a squirrel on campus, skinned it, ate it, and hung its pelt on his wall. "He was trying to be more Virginian than the average Virginian," says Sabato.
Perfectly understandable if you've ever eaten cafeteria food at a state school. But this guy has graduated all the way up to the Senate?
So the history and analysis complete, what stands out? What is the Prognosis?
Ryan finds a rich vein:
But there was one nagging question ... I had Allen's high school yearbook open in front of me. I ... And then I noticed something on his collar. ... Seventeen-year-old George Allen is wearing a Confederate flag pin.
...
Still, I wasn't sure I'd ask him about it. And then he says something that changes my mind. As a child, Allen tells me, before he even moved to California, he learned about the painful history of the South when his dad would take the kids on long drives from Chicago to New Orleans and other Southern cities for football bowl games. There was one searing memory from those trips he shares with me. "I remember," Allen says, "driving through--somehow, my father was on some back road in Mississippi one time--and we had Illinois license plates. And it was a time when some of the freedom riders had been killed, and somehow we're on this road. And you see a cross burning way off in the fields. I was young at the time. I just remember the sense of urgency as we were driving through the night, a carload of people with Illinois license plates--that this is not necessarily a safe place to be."
Now the pin seemed even worse. Why would a young man with such a sensitive understanding of Southern racial conflict and no Southern heritage wear a Confederate flag in his formal yearbook photo?
I finally ask him if he remembers the pin ... he says, "a rebellious kid. I don't know. Unless we were doing something for the fun of it. ... Let me think. ... Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I'll have to find it myself." Another pause. "I don't know. We would probably do things to upset people from time to time."
He stammers some more, ... "I don't know, I don't know," he continues. "It could be some sort of prank, or one of our rebellious--we would do different things. But I remember we liked Texas."
Now, fast forward to the uttering of "macaca".
It's not possible George Allen, a son of the old southern traditions and Virginia in his own mind, "even more so than native Virginians", didn't know what "macaca" meant.
There is more information and good links to what you need to know on Boy George at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/...