If true, that'd really be something to (literally) write home about.

holy shit!

He called an Indian American mukakah? That's it?  Are we sure that the only close match to that name is a monkey? Maybe it affects his Presidential aspirations. But seriously, will this have much of an effect on his senate chances?

I guess the tone of the video might be more illustrative. As an Indian American, it hasn't raised my blood pressure as much as Allen's other crap. Let us not celebrate in advancec.

I am not sure this will have an impact on Virginia voters. This isn't something that historically they would have a context for understanding even if he did mean it the way peo are saying. It's not like when Oliver North talked about Old Virginee and everyone understood from that a historical context of racism that people knew. With this- it will take some explaining and I am not sure if it has the emotional impact

PS

I am not saying peo shouldn't use it,b ut that I am not sure what impact it will have.

When you have a video of him pointing it out, then a picture of Siddarth and/or an interview with him the comparisons to a monkey etc., will be damaging to moderate voters(who will decide the election).

Zzzzzzzzzzz. Like the media will give a shit.  It will probably gain him votes, in any event. At least he didn't dangle a noose or anything.  In a country where Rove skipped on exposing a CIA agent (and thanks again, Fitz) THIS will hurt Allen?  Are you on glue?

.... been rumors that George Allen is a closet racist. Rumors (about Republicans anyway) don't make it into the mainstream press unless there is SOME evidence to stoke the fire. This might be it. If this video is bad as I think it is, it will be my Christmas, new year's and birthday present all rolled into one! Allen was the only CREDIBLE candidate for the '08 nomination who I was truly afraid of. Knock him out the race and the republic might yet have hope.

I can't find it anywhere on the web but here and where you linked to.  This has to cause Allen some heartburn.

Video is on the Post's website; it is bad, real bad.

"I'm not sure what Allen means by Makaka"

it's just an idiotic, 'i bet you have a funny name that's not bill or steve' kind of comment to make; if the gentlemen in question was african-american, i'd bet george would've opted for 'leeroy' or perhaps something else that he thinks sounds like ebonics.  

"Although it might lock up his nomination as the Republican candidate."

exactly

I cannot predict how the video will play and I cannot vouch or criticize others on how they perceive the video. My perception is that the handheld shot has a high emotional content and it shows a rude public official directing snarls and insults at an individual entitled to be there.  George Allen shows himself to be a world class classless individual who believes Virginians are of a certain quality who will see through his not so subtle message to elect him. He may be right.  

split screen.

one side, Allen says what he says.  On the other side, you have Siddarth.

When Allen says "Mukaque" on the other side flash from Siddarth to a picture of a Macaque, and underneath this the dictionary definition:

ma·caque   Audio pronunciation of "macaque" ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (m-kk, -käk)
Any of several short-tailed monkeys of the genus Macaca of southeast Asia, Japan, Gibraltar, and northern Africa.

Then flash back to Siddarth.

Then, as he continues with "Welcome to America"
on the other side of the screen flash "Siddarth was born in (town) Virginia in (year of birth).

Finish up with either voice or text,

"is this the type of person you want as Governor?"

Reminds me of Biden's comments about Seven-Eleven. Both were trying to be funny and said something moderately stupid.

can it be MADE to look really bad?  

The other side does it all the time - twist a vague comment into something sinister.

Don't know if we want to play it that way, but the possibility is certainly there.  Get a good ad producer on the case.

This episode might effect his vote totals in Northern Virginia, but for the rest of the State it will most likely wash.

I can't help but have a "so what" reaction to this, yeah it proves that Allen's a bigot, but anyone in Virginia whose paid attention since Allen came into the spotlight knew that already.

a whole bunch of examples from the internet where 'macaca' or 'macaque' is being used by White Supremacists and the like.

I put it up on Frameshop, but cross-posted here in the diaries.  If anyone has a direct contact with the Webb campaign,  please let them know it is available to them as a resource should they want to use it.

so, turns out that "macaca" is an ethnic slur in Tunisia and Allen's mother is French Tunisian - that explains where he got the slur from.

Also, Raisingkaine has a picture of the staffer up - no mohawk!

If they casually play this video, I doubt it will offend the typical Allen supporter. We Indians have a pretty thick skin compared to many other minorities. I do not know a single Indian who was even remotely offended by Biden's comments which were more intended to pander rather than offend.

But even this video is not an automatic killer for Miller's chances. Coulter indulged in much worse rhetoric and she is lionized by many on the right. So there would have to be some effort to get my community riled up by this video. But it can be done. A lot of Indian doctors tend to be republicans. Maybe the Indians in the Webb campaign can use this to wake up the Indian community that supports Miller or tend not to vote at all.

You know what is going to rile the younger generation more than the Makaka comment - the "welcome to america" reference. Also his smugness in the video is on full display.

Holy shit, that's incredible!  When is the last time you heard such openly racist remarks uttered by a politician?

Well I wasn't a big fan of Jim Webb, but I'm suddenly feeling a lot more motivated to act on this race.

You have to go from "Mukaka" to "macaque". Sure, it's classless and somewhat xenophobic and childish to call someone with a non-Western name a gibberish name, but in itself it's not impressively racist.

And I'm not convinced that Allen is clever enough to know from macaques.

And the "Welcome to America, welcome to our state" comment may have been about race, but from the context it definitely he seemed to be saying "we rural Republicans are real Americans, not you liberal city-folk Democrats".

So he comes off as a pompous right-wing jerk, not an out-and-out racist.

But maybe I'm giving him too much credit.

Smarmy pseudo subtlety is the standard operating procedure for self conscious stealth racists and such. They think they are being cute. Sometimes it can be very difficult to decode whether you have a  self conscious stealth racist being cute, or just some unfortunate person making a bad choice of words. It definitely does become an issue of statistical summation. You have to look at the whole picture.

Calling the cameraman "Mukaka" is akin to calling an Italian "Guido".  If you want to wonder about Allen's intent, keep in mind the other things he said:  "Welcome to America", "Hollywood types", "inside the beltway" - all code for pandering to rural whites.  

I wouldn't advise getting bogged down in debating whether this is "racist" or not.  It clearly shows Allen to be an ass.  

Of course, the sitting VP told a Senator to go F himself on the Senate floor, so we already know civility isn't to terribly important to Republicans.

Let's go through the levels of being offensive.  In a civil society, a normal political figure would go up to the cameraman and get his name.  You really don't want to add fuel to the fire by making him have a deep personal reason to find something truly embarrassing.  You wouldn't just call out "Joe" even.  On that first level he is just plain rude.  

Then he makes up a name like a Kindergarten taunt. Of course it's racist.  I remember some of the taunts thrown at the first unfortunate Black boy at my school before integration. I'm Southern.

In the order of good manners of the "Old South" you can kick up but you can't kick down.  He could say to Webb's face that he was a scoundrel, but he has to be polite to a waiter, for example.  Even vile politicians follow this principle.  As a matter of fact, if he doesn't know that, it kind of makes me think maybe George Allen isn't really Southern. (wink, wink)

My husband is from Virginia.  I asked him if people would be dismayed by what Allen said, and he said that he would hope so.

Imagine a group of black politicians and a mostly black audience, and a white cameraman shows up.  

So one of the black politicians immediately decides to single out the cameraman, and says, "Now look at Whitey over there, or whatever his name is....."

Are you telling me this would be seen as the politician honestly "guessing at" the cameraman's name and trying to be "friendly"?  On what planet?

At best the remark was mindless, but I don't consider Allen a real smart dude.  Certainly his votes demonstrate that he doesn't represent regular Virginians and he doesn't think about how they will affect Virginians.  He votes with the pres 97% of the time for the wealthy and big business.  As a Virginian who knows a little bit about the kind of folks who live in Breaks, I doubt Allen ever represents their interests.  Virginia deserves a new senator and while I live far away now, I intend to give financial support to Jim Webb.

At best the remark was mindless, but I don't consider Allen a real smart dude.  Certainly his votes demonstrate that he doesn't represent regular Virginians and he doesn't think about how they will affect Virginians.  He votes with the pres 97% of the time for the wealthy and big business.  As a Virginian who knows a little bit about the kind of folks who live in Breaks, I doubt Allen ever represents their interests.  Virginia deserves a new senator and while I live far away now, I intend to give financial support to Jim Webb.

   ...but that's a big reason he's so popular in downstate Virginia.

  Say what you will about the Southern Strategy, but IT WORKS. It gets people voting Republican who have no business doing so. And race-baiting is a huge part of the equation.

  So I doubt this video will hurt him all that much....

If I may complain just a little -- we had a consensus on what the word "makkak" meant by roughly 1515 EDT, and still this thread has a multitude of posts by people saying macaque is a kind of monkey (which it is), and other musings which were a total waste of disk space, bandwidth, and whose only contribution was to increase the universe's entropy.

However, it's clear that our collective "google" prowess is far better than WaPo's. Their article had no reference to a racial slur, almost made it sound like Allen was trying to clear his throat. So I e-mailed WaPo with a link to the "slur list."

HOLY MOLY. Just re-checked the WaPo article. An excerpt: "In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants, according to several Web sites that track ethnic slurs."

OK. Now someone has to plant the bug in WaPo's ear that Allen's mother would have known (and obviously used) that word.
 

who watched the video, what struck me was not so much the slur, macacca, but Allen's condescending tone and his obliviousness to the fact that, heaven forbid, someone of Indian descent was actually born in the ol' USA.

I've been the target of such behavior, though not from a US Senator.

For the record, I was born in the States.
Yet, there are people who ask me whether my parents live in the USA.

I just tell them that they've been here longer than I have.

Does that mean anybody can make such remark and we ignore it. Typical racist remarks followed by explanation: Oh It was a joke or we were kidding around.

As a Jewish-American, Senator George Allen should have shown a higher degree of sensitivity and care with regards to racist conduct. His mother, Henrietta Lumbroso, was a Jewish immigrant of Tunisian/Italian/French background.

Trying to portray himself as a WASPY "good old boy" from Virginia just shows how dishonest, elitist, and racist he actually is.