bizarre George Allen "macaca" incident

[opebo]

It seems it has gotten a lot of coverage.  Hannity and Colmes is showing the clip.  I think George Allen is stupid, racist, hateful and incompetent to serve in the US Senate - he deserves to lose for this remark alone and its sad that what many suspect is true; racism hasn't really gone away in America.

Do you know what other politicians are saying behind minority groups backs? No, neither do I, so I wouldn't go off just condemning one man for an insult (against a UVA student of all things ). How many of those rich folks either Republican or Democrat want to deal with lowly blacks, blue collar whites are any group they aren't "as good as them"?

This is why you should be a socialist, worker.

[opebo]

What does the term "macaca" actually mean? A shady definition like "a french ethnic slur" isn't good enough for me.

It's a Belgian/French ethnic slur for people of dark-skinned North African descent.  Allen probably heard the word from his mother, who is an immigrant from French colonial Tunisia (she is of French descent).  What's funny is that Sidarth (I've actually met this guy) isn't even North African at all, but Indian instead.

Ok, but I still don't know what it means. It seems to be as fairly harmless as  the term "cracker".

I believe it literally means Monkey - you know, like Howard Cosell's "look at that monkey run". But it can be used similar to the word "niger" in french.

Thank you for giving me the definition. Probably a dumb thing to say in public when you really don't understand the word, but IMHO people are way to hypersensitive these days anyhow.

Oh yes, it was much better when they had to grin and bear it, or get lynched from a tree.

[opebo]

Not a big deal. A stupid comment based on the idea that he felt shadowed and that he apologized for. Time to move on. Unless one wants to grasp at straws, of course, because their candidate is losing. And a person can do that, fine, that's politics. But to say something like this makes him "not qualified" is the bitterest partisanship of bitter partisanship. Come on. And if that's the case, okay, whatever you are doing, whoever you are, as soon as an insensitive thought or comment or something flashes through your head, you're not qualified to be doing whatever you're doing because chances are you are interacting with people on a daily basis. Because that's how I read the partisans' reaction to this - it's not the comment itself as much as the principle that allegedly behind it.

It's not that this means he's a terrible Senator.  However, this is the kind of behaviour that sends up a red flag for me.  Someone in a position of power can't have a disposition like this.  What he was doing, plain and simple, was singling out the person in the room who disagreed with the majority and making fun of him like a schoolyard bully.  A less than competent one, but still.

He's harmless, but he knows that he had the crowd behind him.  It's not a quality I find particularly attractive in a human being.

Well, this is hardly novel, Alcon.  It is certainly in the nature of most elected leaders, and of democracy itself.  And it is the typical behavior of racists throughout american politics - even if they do not single out a particular present individual, they appeal to the prejudices and hatreds of the majority by attacking the scapegoated minority.