George Allen: the stale cracker

This story has been covered well on other blogs (AmericaBlog has been relentless), but I'm sure you all want to put your two cents in on this good old boy.

U.S. Senator George Allen (Rethug-VA) is a bigot who's a proud Reb at heart and cannot even bother to paper over his longing for the good old days.

While on the road, the senator (and 2008 presidential aspirant) should have kept his mouth shut. No couth in evidence here. (AP):

[Democratic challenger Jim] Webb's campaign distributed to reporters a video clip of Allen's remarks about [S.R.] Sidarth, a 20-year-old University of Virginia senior who spent last week videotaping Allen's "listening tour" for the Webb campaign.

"This fellow over here with the yellow shirt — Macaca or whatever his name is — he's with my opponent," Allen said. "He's following us around everywhere."

After mentioning that Webb was in California on a fundraising trip, Allen exhorted the crowd: "Let's give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

[You can watch Allen in action (from the Daily Show).]

Macaca, as we've come to know, is a racist slur. John:

Nice of the Washington Post to, yet again, ignore the fact that Macaca isn't just a genus of monkey - in French it's also a slur for dark-skinned people of North Africa, and George Allen's French-speaking French mother just happened to come from North Africa. No, that's not relevant to the story, but the genus of Macaca in Latin is. Uh huh.

Unfortunately, Allen issued one of those all-too-familiar non-apologies -- and issued it to the media, not Sidarth himself. What a class act.

"In no way was it meant to demean him, and I'm sorry if he was offended."

...On Tuesday, Sidarth said he took little comfort in Allen's attempted amends.

"If he wants to make an apology to me, he can talk to me personally rather than doing this through the press," Sidarth said.

***

Bonus redneck points for the senator, who, according to the article, wore a Confederate flag pin in his high school yearbook photo, had a Confederate flag in his living room, a noose in his law office and kept a picture of Confederate troops in his governor's office. What does he have to say about that? He said "he has grown since then." Apparently precious little.

The New Republic has a laundry list of evidence outlining Allen's race problem.

It's hard to imagine a candidate for president that promises to surpass the moral deficits of GWB, but Allen is clearly a man up to that task.