OT: There is something seriously wrong with G. Felix Allen

[ProSense]

Monday, August 14, 2006

Macaque

I was thinking that the assumption that George Felix Allen had been invoking a species of monkey was a bit of a stretch and that he was probably just speaking gibberish for "furrin name." But it is actually an established racial/slur, specifically directed at North Africans. If you search the nastier corners of the internet you'll find it's in surprisingly common usage.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_08_13_atrios_archive.html#115559029299377045

Mohawk

Oy:

Wadhams said Allen campaign staffers had begun calling Sidarth "mohawk" because of a haircut Wadhams said the Webb staffer has. "Macaca was just a variation of that," Wadhams said.


Mohawk.



http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_08_13_atrios_archive.html#115558801832716030

[Mass]

1. Given Allen's mother's origins, there is no chance he does not know that.

[fedupinBushcountry]

2. The real barfbag in action

"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. We're going to places all over Virginia, and he's having it on film and its great to have you here and you show it to your opponent because he's never been there and probably will never come."

"?Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7gq7GQ71c

[TayTay]

3. OMG, what a horse's arse he is.

My deepest sympathies to the suffering people of Virginia who have to put up with this moran. It certainly does prove, once and for all, that Allen is a bully and dumb as a post.

Webb isn't the one who said he wished he'd been born in Iowa, or the one who uses football metaphors to describe the situation in Iraq.

I hope the good people of Virigina are rewarded with a good Democratic Senator come Nov. They deserve that.

[sandnsea]

4. oh my good heavens

:wow:

Who are these people who would think such a thing, let alone say it and then to go on about welcome to America... and the people that laughed... oh my lord it's just stunning. The DNC has really got to put a clip of some of this stuff together, starting with Bush and his ebay comment, or maybe ending with it. These people are just pond scum.

[JI7]

5. Senator Stupid was the one born in California

glad his stupid ass is no longer here. but Sidarth was actually born in Virginia unlike Senator Stupid.

Senator Stupid should step down. dumb ignorant fucker.

i would love to see what the token Indian Americans in the Republican Party who only care about money have to say about this.

[ginnyinWI]

6. not only Allen--it's all of them--they're losing their minds.

We're witnessing the destruction of a political party. And each individual in that party is going a bit nuts just about now, seeing their mother ship springing leaks all over and listing from side to side. It's not a pretty sight--but they sure deserve it!!

[ProSense]

7. Video

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/008474.php

[ProSense]

8. A post on Bolton

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2780300&mesg_id=2780300

[fedupinBushcountry]

9. Allen Apologizes (BS)

Reached Monday evening, Allen said that the word had no derogatory meaning for him and that he was sorry. "I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologize if he's offended by that. That was no way the point."

Asked what macaca means, Allen said: "I don't know what it means." He said the word sounds similar to "mohawk," a term that his campaign staff had nicknamed Sidarth because of his haircut. Sidarth said his hairstyle is a mullet -- tight on top, long in the back.

Allen said that by the comment welcoming him to America, he meant: "Just to the real world. Get outside the Beltway and get to the real world."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589.html

What a douchebag.

[beachmom]

10. It wasn't in our newspaper, though, so it's like it never happened

I haven't seen a whole lot of reporting on this race locally. Word is on the Virginia blogs that the Webb campaign remains hopelessly disorganized with basic things like his website not being updated with his positions. Also, the DCCC, in spite of Chuck Schumer's endorsement of Webb in the primary, is NOT engaged here. He has, like, no money, while Allen has millions. The race in Virginia is not considered in play. Why, I don't know. Webb seems like someone that would appeal to a lot of Virginians, but it looks like the press is too excited about Allen running for prez to actually allow him to lose his Senate seat. I'm just preparing you guys that this race is going nowhere; I'll let you know if things change.

[beachmom]

17. Okay, I stand corrected. Locals are now covering it.

But . . . Webb STILL doesn't have any money. Maybe can JK lend a hand again, or is it just not worth it? Doesn't Webb GET that part of running for Senate is raising money? Arghh, arghh, arghh . . . .

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=109284&ran=91887

You can hear the DISGUST in the editorial board's neutral voice!

[fedupinBushcountry]

21. Good editorial

Allen said he had no idea what the word means, which begs the question of why it would come out of his mouth in a room full of people.

The best possible interpretation of his comments is that Allen is the kind of thoughtless politician who will make a stranger feel like a foreigner in his own state by mocking his name in front of a hostile crowd.

The worst raises anew stubborn questions about Allen's racial attitudes. And about his understanding of what it means to be a hospitable Virginian.

Total disgust.We are still 3 months out before election day, so things will ramp up most probably by the middle of next month and hopefully more money will come in.

[whometense]

11. Did you know that George Allen's sister wrote

a memoir about what it was like to grow up in the Allen family?

Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter

This is what Ryan Lizza has to say about it in the New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060508&s=lizza050806&c=2&pt=q5ZD1vYtZfBvI%2FLJllZIEC%3D%3D

George Allen is the oldest child of legendary football coach George Herbert Allen, and, when his father was on the road, young George often acted as a surrogate dad to his siblings. According to his sister Jennifer, he was particularly strict about bedtimes. One night, his brother Bruce stayed up past his bedtime. George threw him through a sliding glass door. For the same offense, on a different occasion, George tackled his brother Gregory and broke his collarbone. When Jennifer broke her bedtime curfew, George dragged her upstairs by her hair.

George tormented Jennifer enough that, when she grew up, she wrote a memoir of what it was like living in the Allen family. In one sense, the book, Fifth Quarter, from which these details are culled, is unprecedented. No modern presidential candidate has ever had such a harsh and personal account of his life delivered to the public by a close family member. The book paints Allen as a cartoonishly sadistic older brother who holds Jennifer by her feet over Niagara Falls on a family trip (instilling in her a lifelong fear of heights) and slams a pool cue into her new boyfriend's head. "George hoped someday to become a dentist," she writes. "George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession--getting paid to make people suffer."

:wow: He and W make quite a pair, don't they???

[ProSense]

12. .

:wow:

[whometense]

13. I'm no admirer,

but that was shocking.

[ProSense]

14. I know what you mean!

...cartoonishly sadistic older brother who holds Jennifer by her feet over Niagara Falls on a family trip (instilling in her a lifelong fear of heights) and slams a pool cue into her new boyfriend's head.

Presidential material if you live in the twilight zone!

[whometense]

15. I think I may have to get this book.

He clearly doesn't take after his mother, who seems to have been something of a firecracker. More: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060508&s=lizza050806&c=2&pt=q5ZD1vYtZfBvI%2FLJllZIEC%3D%3D

Whuppin' his siblings might have been a natural prelude to Confederate sympathies and noose-collecting if Allen had grown up in, say, a shack in Alabama. But what is most puzzling about Allen's interest in the old Confederacy is that he didn't grow up in the South. Like a military brat, Allen hopscotched around the country on a route set by his father's coaching career. The son was born in Whittier, California, in 1952 (Whittier College Poets), moved to the suburbs of Chicago for eight years (the Bears), and arrived in Southern California as a teenager (the Rams). In Palos Verdes, an exclusive cliffside community, he lived in a palatial home with sweeping views of downtown Los Angeles and the Santa Monica basin. It had handmade Italian tiles and staircases that his eccentric mother, Etty, designed to match those in the Louvre. "It looks like a French château," says Linda Hurt Germany, a high school classmate.

Even the elder George Allen wasn't Southern--he grew up in the Midwest--but the oddest part of the myth of George Allen's Dixie rusticity is his mother. Rather than a Southern belle, Etty was, in fact, French, and, as such, she was a deliciously indiscreet cultural libertine. She would do housework in her bra and panties. She wore muumuus and wraparound sunglasses and once won a belly button contest. According to Jennifer, "Mom prided herself for being un-American. ... She was ashamed that she had given up her French citizenship to become a citizen of a country she deemed infantile." When her husband later moved the family to Virginia, Etty despised living in the state. She was also anti-Washington before her son ever was, albeit in a slightly more continental fashion. "Washingtonians think their town resembles Paris," she once scoffed. "If Paris passed gas, you'd have Washington."

[karynnj]

18. He's a worse bully than Bush was

What does this say about the infactuation of the RW with men who desperately needed to be treated as bullies in danger of becoming sociopaths? Do they feel secure only when the meanest bullies are on their side? In both Bush's case (with branding students, blowing up frogs etc) and Allen's, these are known stories. The sad thing is the preference for a bully EVEN over someone who could clearly be shown as braver and morally and phyisically stronger - but who was NOT known to fight dirty.

Is Jennifer campaigning for Webb - if I were her, I would be and it would be for the good of the country.

[whometense]

19. He is. No doubt.

I always thought of him as stupid, but I had no idea until I read this stuff yesterday how truly awful a person he is.

And there's more: The September American Prospect is featuring an article on his corporate connections that is none too flattering either: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11861

Even before leaving the governor’s mansion, Allen made his ambitions to run for the United States Senate in 2000 plain. By spring of 1998, he was waxing enthusiastic about the prospect of seeking a Senate seat: The Senate, he told The Washington Post, is “the best board of directors in the world.”

And on August 11, 1998, he joined a real board of directors -- Xybernaut’s -- where he would serve until December 2000. Upon his nomination, he extolled the firm’s potential, crowing: “This is not science fiction -- the future is here now!”

But today, as Allen runs for re-election to “the best board of directors in the world” and mulls a candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 with the encouragement of conservative insiders, who see him as the affable heir to George W. Bush, troubling questions have emerged about his tenure on the Xybernaut board -- which didn’t turn out to be one of the best.

Little remains of the company except a pile of legal cases, federal investigations, and the faint imprints of furniture and footprints on the worn expanse of dark blue carpet at its longtime Fairfax offices, which have sat empty since early this year. (The remnants of the company, which employed more than 140 people at its peak but just 15 as of its last SEC filing, have moved to Chantilly, Virginia.)

Xybernaut filed for bankruptcy reorganization in July 2005, three months after an announcement by an audit committee of its board that an internal investigation -- established that February at the urging of a whistle-blowing company insider -- found that the firm’s chief executive officer and board chairman, former CIA agent Edward Newman, and his brother, president and chief operating officer Steven Newman, had “improperly used substantial company funds for personal expenses,” engaged in major unreported transactions, and hired family members whose roles with the company were not properly disclosed, in violation of its bylaws. Edward Newman’s attorney declined comment for this story, but Steven Newman predicted vindication in 2005 press reports. Unable to stand by its books in the wake of the audit committee’s revelations, Xybernaut in 2005 had to warn shareholders that its financial statements and disclosures dating to 2002 were unreliable...

I'm often struck by what you mentioned - the bully factor and the right wing. Not to be overly freudian, but I honestly think it's related to:

[karynnj]

20. I was actually thinking of the comments you made

about a year or so ago in response to an article in either the Globe or NYT that interviewed people on why they voted as they did. It was the first time I even thought of the possibility that people actually voted for Bush because he was a bully rather than because they were ignornant of the liklihood that he is one.

[beachmom]

22. All of this better explains the fact that I have, in fact, only one

senator representing me in Virginia. It's not just ideology or philosophy -- John Warner is far more conservative than I am, yet when I call his office I feel like I am given the respect that a constituent deserves. This is not the case with Allen. Every time I call his office, I feel like the people on the other end are laughing at me. They're condescending and in no way "political" with me. They just don't give a shit, because I'm not one of "them".

Call it a hunch, but I bet you that Kerry's staff doesn't treat right wingers in Massachusetts like that. I am sure there are people who sincerely and vehemently disagree with Sen. Kerry on everything from abortion rights to the war in Iraq, and no doubt they call his office to say as much. I do hope that the staff considers their calls just as important as calls from liberals, because they are constituents, too. Not everyone is going to think alike, but it is job #1 for a senator to serve his/her constituents.

Allen isn't even doing THAT job. If I had a problem for which I needed congressional help, I would call Senator Warner, and skip Allen. That is how bad a senator he is.

[whometense]

26. It's pretty pathetic that

he even has 48% support, then.

Kerry's staff would never respond like that - and neither would Kennedy's.

The right wing republicans seem to be motivated in everything they do and say by a deep-seated anger - which probably derives from deep-seated fear. Allen's treatment of that young man from Webb's campaign brought to mind Bush's habit of derision-by-nickname. Peas in a pod.

[JI7]

16. this will probably HELP him when it comes to winning the GOP

Presidential Primary. as will his attacks on minorities. that's how the Republicans reach out to their base.

[whometense]

23. It's true that

this is the way they choose to energize their base.

But I heard someone comment yesterday - can't remember where - it might have even been on Hardball, that this sort of wink wink nudge nudge tactic used to work great at small local events, but with the web and you tube, nothing anyone says stays local anymore. So this has the potential to boomerang on Allen. I read he has something like 48% support, but there are 20% undecided, and something like this, in addition to the closer look it causes everyone to give Allen, could end up biting him in the ass. Look at that TNR info above - I might never have seen it if it hadn't been for the renewed scrutiny the racist pig brought on himself.

[babylonsister]

25. I'm speechless; too bad this meme isn't spread far and wide.nt

[sandnsea]

31. Holy crap!!

You know, Tom Delay didn't have a particularly happy upbringing either. Are these just a bunch of abused kids projecting all that rage onto society at large - much like a sociopathic criminal except they've figured out a way to make people suffer legally?? Good christ what a crew.

[whometense]

24. Digby makes a great point.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_digbysblog_archive.html#115568794639574550

There is some debate as to whether George Felix Allen was making a deliberate slur or whether he was just repeating his French mother's phrase for "dirty arab" without fully realizing what he was saying (or thinking nobody would know what he was saying.)

I don't think so. I think this is racist code of the worst sort. Allen isn't just another southern good old boy who can't tell the difference between his family heritage and racism. He chose to become a neoconfederate long after it was out of fashion, in defiance of accepted norms of his time and he has built his good old boy reputation partially because of it. He didn't inherit his brand of racism --- he chose it.

The evidence suggests that "macaca" is a slur that American white supremecists have adopted from European white supremecists to apply to dark skinned people. And what this means is that George Allen is conversant in the language of white supremecists and he uses that language in his conversation. And while it's impossible to prove, I believe he used that word deliberately because it is a word that a racist like him would know that "certain" people would correctly identify.

[whometense]

27. How on earth did I miss this?

A great point made in Digby's comments:

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/digby/115568794639574550/#574031

I also noticed that in the middle of Allen's remarks, he said that his opponent wasn't there because he was with "Hollywood movie moguls". Among the mouth-breathing racist set, "Hollywood movie moguls" is established code for Jews. This guy Allen is a piece of work.
anon | 08.15.06 - 9:19 pm | #

[TayTay]

28. Wow Whome, I agree

That is just amazing and disgusting. The aptly named, Sen Barfbag, is just awful. I think he knew what he was doing. What a piece of work he is.

[whometense]

29. I have no doubt at all

that his choice of words was an entirely conscious one. He's so much worse than I'd even imagined.

[ProSense]

30. Great find!

Exposed!

[fedupinBushcountry]

32. Video reports on our local media

http://www.wvec.com/news/local/stories/wvec_top_081506_allen_slur_apology.20fc8a7.html

Also on WTKR but IMO it was lousy reporting. Go to feature videos. http://www.wtkr.com/

We have one other (NBC affiliate)WAVY and they had nothing.