Putting a period on the macaca story

August 24, 2006

Twelve days after Sen. [tag]George Allen[/tag] (R-Va.) kicked off quite a firestorm with his use of the word “[tag]macaca[/tag],” the senator hoped to finally put the story to rest with a direct apology.

Virginia Sen. George Allen apologized directly to S.R. Sidarth yesterday, telling the 20-year-old Democratic campaign staffer that he was sorry for offending him with remarks that have generated nationwide criticism for being racially insensitive.

Allen’s telephone call to Sidarth was the first direct contact between the two since Allen (R) was caught by Sidarth’s video camera calling him a “macaca” and welcoming the Fairfax native to “America and the real world of Virginia.”

[tag]Sidarth[/tag] said Allen told him that the [tag]apology[/tag] was “from his heart.”

There is, however, reason to doubt that. Simultaneous with Allen’s alleged contrition was his campaign manager, trying to fire up the GOP base with the exact opposite message.

Dick Wadhams, Allen’s top campaign aide, issued a carefully-leaked memo to Republican allies blaming the media for creating a “feeding frenzy.” While Allen was publicly saying, “I take full responsibility. I’m not offering any excuses,” Wadhams was shifting responsibility and making all kinds of excuses.

It’s an interesting, albeit cynical, strategy.

Allen has clearly been hurt by the controversy, so he wants to present himself as a contrite candidate who acknowledges that he made a mistake — not because of regret, but in the hopes of winning back some of the voters he’s lost over the last two weeks. At the same time, the Allen campaign wants hard-core conservatives to believe Allen really isn’t sorry, but rather, is an innocent victim of a malicious smear orchestrated by the Washington Post. As far as Wadhams is concerned, Allen didn’t do anything wrong; the media did.

It’s what makes Allen’s insistence that his apology was “from his heart” so hard to believe.

With Mr. Allen plummeting in the polls and his reelection prospects now in doubt, he and Mr. Wadhams are in damage-control mode. They have dropped their far-fetched insistence that the word “macaca” referred to Mr. Sidarth’s hairstyle. But they ought to get their stories straight.

As a rule, sincere regret usually doesn’t require inconsistent messages to different constituencies. As Matt Stoller put it, “Allen isn’t sorry for his racist comment. Allen put out some soft words to appease those who are uncomfortable with racism, but is also allowing his campaign manager to embrace the full-throated repudiation of that fake apology.”

Sen. George Allen is nothing but a hair-drier Californian in cowboy’s clothing, trying to tobacco dip and boot scuff his way into keeping his job. What a fraud.

  • Allen is toast. The more the media talk about the incident, the more the commentators refer to him as being “not the brightest bulb” in the senate. Just what we need….another moron.

  • It’s likely that Allen is done in the Senate. However, if this “faux Southern Gentleman” wishes to leave with any sense of “Virginia Honor” to his credit, he needs to fire Wadhams—NOW. He also needs to stand up in front of the cameras—not hide behind a telephone—and re-issue the apology, while simultaneously retracting Wadham’s message as part of Wadham’s nationally-televised termination….

  • Cal Thomas is on the blame the media bandwagon.

    Allen said he didn’t mean to be offensive and was just joshing with the young man, but The Washington Post twice treated the incident as front-page news, and one of its columnists, Eugene Robinson, unburdened himself in 770 words hinting, if not at Allen’s supposed racial insensitivity, then at his stupidity.

    “The Daily Show” produced a skit from the remark, and the liberal Internet blogs have been making jokes at Allen’s expense. …

    Note that Thomas uses one of his favorite rhetorical devises here. White’s are unfairly singled out for being racist when blacks are just as bad.

    ….It will be interesting to watch the reaction of all of these to far more serious and undeniably racist remarks by an icon of the civil rights establishment, Andrew Young.

    Let’s see. A sitting US Senator makes a clearly mean spirited and racist remark in the course of a re-election campaign. On the other hand, a private citizen, who had been out of the public recently, also makes racist, but not mean spirited, remark. The media jumps on the first and pretty much ignores the latter. What comes to Thomas’ mind to explain the different treatment? Why of course, it’s because the Senator was white and the private citizen was black. The media, you see, practices reverse racism. Power white guys just can’t catch a break.

    You can be sure that it was to the Thomases that Allen was speaking to in the first place and to whom Wadhams is now reaching out.

  • eddiejoe,

    In a reality based world you are exactly correct. However, we live in a post 9/11 world where the GOP creates reality. Allen is known to be a big fan of the confederate flag, and feels really connected to Virginia in a Robert E. Lee sort of way. He is still a viable candidate. I cannot beileve that making fun of a colored person and callng them a foreigner is going to change many minds in a place where his past behavior was approved of.

    After the seperation of church and state, and the whole civil liberties mess is removed I expect seperate but equal will be revisited in some parts of the country. Look at teh imigration debate and unfortunately you see traction among the xenophobic biggots who abviously have never left Hazzard County except to escape Boss Hog and Cletus.

    Sad, but true.

  • George Felix Allen Junior’s appology does not sound all that sincere to me. And he has failed to admit to the meaning of the racial slur he used.

    Wadhams is just icing on the cake.

    I hope Allen loses for so many reasons. Of course, I hoped that Lieberman would lose the primary 🙁

    Oh, right, he did 😉

    Let’s see how this goes. Spend some money here Dr. Dean. We need to control the Senate to prevent a war with Iran.

  • MN
    Even if Allen isn’t toast, it’s nice to watch a racist sit and squirm right in front of our eyes. From this story, to that story, to this apology, to that press release. It is just very pleasant to watch people pay for their sins, so to speak.

    It also sends out a nice warning, we are done with it, say it in public and you are going to feel the heat.

  • Allen’s latest apology falls into the one I like to call the “I’m sorry I got caught” category.

    It’s clear as can be from Allen’s personal history that he was indulging in some of that good ol’ boy joshing the chimpster loves so much. Bullying by any other prettier name is still bullying.

    This guy is a willfully ignorant pig, in the mold of his hero Dubya. May they sink together into oblivion.

  • I love it.

    The people he pissed off the most aren’t going to believe he’s sorry, and they shouldn’t. Since his people obviously think the episode is helpful to him, I say keep it going by asking them what “macaca” means (since it’s not a hairstyle anymore). Ask Allen if his mother ever used that expression.

    LOL!

  • All I had to learn about George Felix Allen, Jr., is that he proudly chews tobacco. Everything else I learn about him is like drinking from the spittoon.

  • Rege –

    Great response to Cal, but you left out the very best part. Andrew Young, the private citizen, voluntarily or not immediately ceased to have the position in which he made the racist remarks. Oh that we could say the same of the more public, more powerful (and therefore more problematic) Mr. Allen. Wonder why Cal didn’t suggest consistency in outcome as opposed to just consistency in rhetoric?

    Rebutting Cal Thomas is like shooting fish in a small barrel with a really large gun.

  • Not only that, Zeitgeist, but the incidents would only be comparable if Young had, say, singled out the lone Korean-American in a mostly black crowd and directed his remarks at that person. Personalizing the insult increases the offensiveness.

  • Allen’s first apology was along the lines of “if you were offended when I hurled a racial slur at you and suggested you were not a real American in front of that otherwise all white crowd, I apologize.”

    You would hope he would have the decency to make it a real apology when he spoke to Sidarth directly, but considering the source, who knows what he said.

  • #5, MNProgressive:
    I have an acquaintance who’s a Daughters of Confederacy member and proud of it (and of being a Virginia redneck, etc, etc). She was inclined to shrug off Allen’s remarks at first; “a slip of the tongue” she said. “This whole thing is being blown out of proportion” she said.

    But, when I told her that it was no slip of the tongue (having been used twice — I sent her to view the film clip) she began to have second thoughts. And, when I explained to her that the damn Californian in fake cowboy boots not only made a fool of himself but made all of Virginia a laughing stock, she got really upset with him.

    So,all it takes is patient explanation (at least with some people).

    #10: I liked it better when you signed yourself “Fighting Felix” I think your site is hysterically funny and it’s getting better every day. I so wish you were in charge of Webb’s site or at least a part of it; that one is as dull as ditchwater.

  • This would all be over if Allen just got himself a macaca hairstyle… er, I mean Mohawk, scratch that… a mullet.

  • Macaca Allen is a racist period. He will lose in Virginia this november. Vote for Webb for a better America for you and me!

  • Macaca Allen’s very long list of racially insensitive actions has grown again. He’s twice referred to his opponent’s non-white campaign staffer using macaca a term that means monkey or racial slur for dark-skinned people of color, hung a noose from a tree in his law office, displayed a Confederate flag on numerous occasions from 1967-2000, featured the flag in his first statewide television ad in Virginia, signed a Confederate Heritage Month proclamation that described the Civil War as “a four-year struggle for independence and state’s rights,” opposed the 1991 Civil Rights Act, opposed creating a holiday for Martin Luther King, voted against changing a racially offensive state song, and defended Trent Lott after he praised Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat presidential candidacy. The question now is Allen a racist? You be the Judge!

  • As a rule, regrets about racist comments are never sincere; we hardly need ambiguous messages to tell us that Allen is lying through his teeth.

  • Cal Thomas is himself a racist jackass and a blazing hypocrite. He writes “Silence when the racist shoe is on the other foot”, but there wasn’t silence. He says “If the mockers, bloggers and columnists who jumped on George Allen don’t jump with at least equal fervor on Andrew Young, their political bias is showing” — talk about other foot! What about his own political bias, evidenced by his very words?

    And, of course, “Jews”, “Koreans”, and “Arabs” are not racist epithets. Allen is a blatant racist; Young engaged in stereotyping with his comment about moving to Florida, but there’s nothing racist about noting that stores owned by Jews, Koreans, and Arabs are not owned by blacks.

  • ….It will be interesting to watch the reaction of all of these to far more serious and undeniably racist remarks by an icon of the civil rights establishment, Andrew Young.

    Andrew Young beat them to it: he apologized and resigned from the post running Wal-Mart’s astroturf lobby (Working Families for Wal-Mart) under whose auspices he made that remark.

  • James Webb: More Than Senator Macaca’s Opponent
    By Janar Joseph Wasito

    James Webb is more than Senator George “Macaca” Allen’s opponent. At a now infamous campaign stop in Virginia, Senator George Allen twice addressed S.R. Siddarth as “macaca” and welcomed him to Virginia and America, even though Siddarth is an American citizen and a native Virginian. Siddarth could rightly say, “Welcome to Virgnia, Senator.”

    Macaca refers to a genus of monkey and is a racial slur in the same European cultures in which Senator Allen’s mother was raised.

    By contrast, James Webb’s book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, discusses how Scots-Irish culture embraces members of other ethnic groups. The following passages are from page 38:

    The “Celtic tie of kinship”… helps explain why such a high percentage of American combat units in today’s volunteer military are from Scots-Irish and Irish Catholic backgrounds. From the earliest known history of the Celts, military service was viewed not simply as an obligation, but as a high honor. Fighting for – and alongside – the tribal leader … or, as now, one’s branch of military service brought one into the family. And at this level – the willingness to face danger collectively – every family member was equal regardless of rank or wealth.
    Another aspect of this notion of extended kinship is that it tended to embrace members of other ethnic groups rather than to demean them. …in the Celtic societies, if one stepped forward to serve, he was ‘of the kin’ so long as he accepted the values and mores of the extended family.

    I identify with Webb’s description of the “Celtic tie of kinship” based upon military service for personal reasons. My father is Indonesian and my mother is German, but I was born in San Francisco. My father left when I was 4, and my Godparents, a Retired Air Force Colonel and his wife, helped my mother to raise my sister and me. From my Godparents, I learned to admire the military. I applied for the US Naval Academy while I was in high school. I read James Webb’s novel, A Sense of Honor. Though I did not attend the Naval Academy, I did follow Webb’s example in boxing in college, in serving in the US Marine Corps, and in attending law school after my military service. I wrote my college senior thesis on another of James Webb’s books, Fields of Fire. I’ve read his other 4 novels, and his non-fiction book, Born Fighting. Born Fighting describes the Scots-Irish culture of the Jesuit College Prep which I attended (I had a Murphy as a teacher or coach in 7 of 8 semesters), and it describes the culture of the US Marine Corps.

    I don’t really think of myself as a “person of color.” But I am half Indonesian and I have a darker complexion than the majority of Caucasians. Personally, I took great offense to Senator Allen’s “macaca” comments. I felt bad for the Country and for Virginia, where I spent a total of a year between 1988 and 1992 when I was going through Marine Officer training. According to Goldman Sachs, the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are the rapidly growing countries which will shape the coming decades. In such a future, George Allen simply has no place as a leader in America.

    At another point in his now infamous comments, Senator Allen states that Jim Webb is “with a bunch of Hollywood movie moguls… we care about fact not fiction.”

    This reference to “Hollywood Movie Moguls” plays on a stereotype of left leaning, liberal, Hollywood movie producers. However, if we take a close look at the one movie that Jim Webb wrote and produced, we find that it contains many factual warnings of the challenges the country would face in 9-11 and beyond.

    James Webb was the co-producer and writer of the screenplay for Rules of Engagement, starring Samuel Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. In that movie, a Marine Expeditionary Unit reinforces an American Embassy in Yemen, which is near Iraq and Saudi Arabia, under attack from a hostile Islamic crowd. The Marines fire into a crowd which had been firing weapons at the Marines. Although the videotape evidence of the weapons in the crowd has been destroyed by corrupt policy makers, the defense attorney does find audio tape evidence which he presents at the trial. The audio tapes contain recordings of Osama Bin Laden inciting Muslims to anti-American violence. In the commentary by the director of the film, we learn that the tape is an actual recording by Osama Bin Laden. The defense attorney finds the Bin Laden tapes in the ruined American embassy, in the police station, and in the hospital where the injured are being treated.

    The movie was released in 2000, a year before 9/11.

    So much for Senator Allen’s attack on James Webb as consorting with “Hollywood movie moguls” who are out of touch with fact.

    James Webb’s novels, his screen play for Rules of Engagement, his Emmy Award winning reporting from Beirut just weeks before Hezbollah killed 242 Marines, his article on Marines in Afghanistan – all together show that Webb has a detailed grasp of national security issues far beyond that of Senator Allen. In an age where an action by a Marine junior officer or non commissioned officer can have immediate, global consequences, we need elected officials like James Webb, who never forgot his roots as a highly decorated junior officer in the Marine Corps. During the same period in his life, George Allen declined to serve in uniform.

    Senator Allen’s campaign will try to paint James Webb as a liberal who is aligned with Senator’s Clinton and Kerry. While this may be accurate with respect to some domestic issues, on foreign policy issues, Webb is closer to President Bush – George H.W. Bush. In September 2002, Webb wrote a criticism of the pending invasion of Iraq which was very similar to criticisms made by Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Adviser to President George H. W. Bush, and by Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President George H. W. Bush. In this regard, James Webb, who served as Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, should be classified as a foreign policy realist. As Webb told Inside the Navy in January 2003, “I am not against fighting when fighting is necessary… What I am for is making sure you are fighting the right war.”

    Janar Joseph Wasito is a former Marine Officer who lives in San Diego, California.
    Email: janarw@gmail.com

  • Let’s not forget that macaca is a racial slur used by Former French Colonials in Northern Africa. How can Allen say that he made it up when his mother was a French national from Tunisia?

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