Meet George Allen: Republican 2008 hopeful and blatant racist

Virginia Sen. George Allen is perhaps the most dangerous of the 2008 Republican hopefuls so far (assuming Jebbie doesn't run). Allen is dangerous because like George W. Bush, he seems to be another affable nitwit with a famous father who could easily be made a sock puppet by the warmongers in the current administration (who presumably could rely on Allen to keep them on.

Well, he may be a nitwit, but when you look beyond the grin, affable he's not.

Check out this video on YouTube, in which Allen TWICE refers to a cameraman of Indian descent for the campaign of his opponent, Jim Webb, as "a macaca":



Jeffrey Feldman at Frameshop did some digging, and it turns out that "macaca" sometimes uttered as "macaque"is a racial slur. It's more commonly used in Europe, but it's a racial slur no less inflammatory that "the N word."

WaPo reports on the incident:

S.R. Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, had been trailing Allen with a video camera to document his travels and speeches for the Webb campaign. During a campaign speech Friday in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen singled out Sidarth and called him a word that sounded like "Macaca."

"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."

After telling the crowd that Webb was raising money in California with a "bunch of Hollywood movie moguls," Allen again referenced Sidarth, who was born and raised in Fairfax County.

"Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia," said Allen, who then began talking about the "war on terror."

Last year, Brendan Nyhan reported on some of the less savory racial references in George Allen's past:

I've done some additional digging, and it turns out that George Allen, the Virginia senator who is being touted as the GOP presidential frontrunner for 2008, has more ugly racial history than I first thought.

First, there's the noose he hung from a tree in his law office, which suggests an approving attitude toward lynchings. In 2000, Allen and his Senate campaign manager disavowed any racial connotation, describing the noose as part of a collection of Western memorabilia that represented his law-and-order stance on criminal justice. Then, in February of this year, he tried to claim that it was "more of a lasso" and "has nothing to do with lynching." But reports on the matter that I have read all describe it as a noose, and Allen and his representatives appeared to refer to it as such all the way through 2004. And of course, if the noose "has nothing to do with lynching," why was it hung from a tree? The symbolism seems obvious. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch put it in 2000, the noose was "a reminder that [Allen] saw some justification in frontier justice." Official hangings carried out under the auspices of the law presumably used real gallows, not trees.

Allen also used to display a Confederate flag at his house, which he claims was part of a flag collection.

That's all my initial post covered. But sadly, there's much more to the story.

A March 2005 report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that, "as governor of Virginia, [Allen] signed a 'Confederate Heritage Month' proclamation while dubbing the NAACP an 'extremist group.'" Here's how the Washington Post described his actions in an article last year:

[I]n the late 1990s, former governor George Allen (R) issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War "a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights." It was observed during April, the month in which the Civil War essentially began with the Confederates' attack on Fort Sumter, S.C., and ended with the Army of Northern Virginia's surrender at Appomattox. The declaration made no mention of slavery, angering many civil rights groups.

Allen also opposed the 1991 Civil Rights Act in Congress, and as a state delegate he opposed creating a holiday for Martin Luther King and voted against changing the racially offensive state song (though as governor he later signed legislation dropping the song).

Sorry, folks, but there's a pattern here. This isn't Trent Lott saying once that if Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948 the country would be a better place. This is a long-standing, CONSISTENT pattern of racially insensitive and bigoted behavior that is inexcusable in someone of Allen's generation.

And this is someone the Republicans are touting for 2008?