Sen. [tag]George Allen[/tag]’s (R-Va.) “[tag]macaca[/tag]” controversy is still going strong. In the latest twist, Allen campaign staffers have a new spin to explain the whole sordid mess.
What does Macaca really mean? Three Virginia Republicans confirmed to the Hotline that several Allen campaign aides and advisers are telling allies that the word was a made-up, off-the-cuff neologism that these aides occasionally used to refer to tracker S.R. Sidarth well before last Saturday’s videotaped encounter.
According to two Republicans who heard the word used, “macaca” was a mash-up of “Mohawk,” referring to [tag]Sidarth[/tag]’s distinctive hair, and “caca,” Spanish slang for excrement, or “shit.”
Said one Republican close to the campaign: “In other words, he was a shit-head, an annoyance.”
Where to begin. First the Allen said he didn’t know what the word meant (apparently, the senator has no qualms using words without understanding their meaning). Then the defense was that “macaca” was in reference to Sidarth’s “Mohawk” hairstyle. Now the explanation has evolved into a more elaborate hair-based nickname, in which the Allen campaign labeled the young man a “sh*t-head.”
See how innocent the whole incident was? As Michael Froomkin paraphrased Allen, “I just happened to pick a nickname for the sole dark face in a white crowd that just happens to be the same as a common racial epithet. Could happen to anyone, right?”
The next question, of course, is whether any of this is going to hurt Allen politically. At least in the Senate race, it’s a debatable point.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Tuesday that Mr. Allen was strong enough in Virginia that the verbal gaffe would probably not keep him from being elected to a second term.
But should Mr. Allen run for president, the word “macaca” will hurt him, Mr. Sabato said, “not only because it is offensive on its face but also because it fits into a long pattern of insensitivity by Allen on racial and ethnic matters.”
For all the talk of a “new South,” a senator using a racial slur in front of an all-white audience is not necessarily an issue that will derail his campaign. It’s not exactly encouraging.
One last point: The WaPo reported that there may still be some ambiguity about Allen’s poor choice of words. The Post question whether it was “a deliberate racist epithet or a weird ad-libbed word with no meaning.” As Jonathan Chait noted, the Post is being far too kind.
The Post ignores the crucial point here. “Macaca” isn’t just some obscure term for “monkey,” it’s a French slur for dark-skinned people. And, as Ryan explained yesterday, Allen’s mother is French-Tunisian, and Allen speaks French. This may not be the sort of proof that would hold up in court, but it’s pretty clear that even if Allen was trying to make up a silly name for the foreign-looking cameraman, the association he came up with was a racial slur he knew.
Exactly. Any of the nonsensical explanations regarding the young man’s hair, or the senator using words he doesn’t know, are absurd.