I just finished watching an interview with Sen. Felix Macaca conducted by Gordon Peterson, a veteran television journalist in the D.C. area. I'm not sure that I've heard Felix asked the question before, which is why I am blogging his response here. Peterson asked Felix whether it is possible that he could have heard the term "macaca" while growing up in his home.
Many have speculated that Felix's mother, who is of Tunisian descent, may have very well employed the term "macaca" in the Allen home during Felix's formative years. Felix flatly denied the possibility that he could have heard the term "macaca" used in his home. (I'll try to post the link to to the transcript and/or video when it becomes available).
Felix also maintains that he does not know what the term macaca means. This was a particularly curious statement. He doesn't know what macaca means?
It sort of begs the question, doesn't it? If he doesn't know what the term means, then why apologize for using it? Felix was very deliberate when he made this statement. He didn't say that he didn't know what "macaca" meant at the time he used the epithet. He said he doesn't know what macaca means.
Rather than parsing his statements to Peterson, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to Felix - a benefit, by the way, that Felix himself generally reserves for the Council of Conservative Citizens when deciding whether it would be wise to associate with such an outfit.
I performed a wholly unscientific statement to determine if I could be so unfortunate as to utter a racist epithet. So I wrote down the first ten, three-syllable "words" that I could conjure up and then looked up their definitions on dictionary.com:
Grabado - "no results"
Malake - "no results"
Gretoris - "no results"
Monmotor - "no results"
Linseffa - "no results"
Valador - "no results"
Neminzine - "no results"
Lolefetz - "no results"
Danteris - "no results"
Rabado - "no results"
Damn. What are the chances that a guy with such a dubious record on race would just happen to let slip a three-syllable word that actually was a derogatory term for black people?
I don't care what anyone says. Felix is just unlucky.