Just a sincere apology?

A couple of days ago I met two Virginians who hadn't even heard that George Allen -- in a stump speech, no less -- used a common racial slur in speaking about and to a dark-skinned young photographer in his audience. Information on the topic abounds, but they only watch FOX. I was already a Jim Webb supporter, and I was already a George Allen opponent before Jim Webb was a candidate, so I can't say the incident cost Allen my vote. It was never his to lose.

Still, I am always amazed at the persistence of ignorance and always grateful to those who will not only seek out information but will share it.

Jeffrey Feldman at the the Frameshop has done the Google research on the word Allen used:

'Macaca' or 'macaque' is a nasty racial epithet alright. It is often used by American white supremacists to describe black people. In Belgium, it is a racial slur for 'dirty arab.'

The article is worth reading in its entirety, along with the comments that have been posted. It concludes:

The term 'macaque'--also pronounced 'mukakkah'--is a commonly used racial slur on par with the word 'nigger' in the united states.

In Europe, the word 'macaque' is largely a racial slur used to insult people of North African descent. It is roughly synonomous with 'dirty arab.'

Most of the results that came back in these searches took me to well known white supremacy websites--and to posts from the past two or three years. So this is a phrase that is still in use.

We heard George Allen say that he used the word innocently, claiming that he did not know what it meant. I don't believe this is possible.

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger agrees:

If Allen had a sterling record on civil rights, perhaps he'd be given the benefit of the doubt. But he doesn't — we're talking about the same George Allen who revered the Confederate flag during his political career, opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King, referred to the NAACP as an "extremist group," issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War "a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights," and kept a noose alongside a Confederate flag in his law office.

And now, quoting from Bob Lewis, Associated Press, on the CBS website, after we have all seen the video that "shows him [Allen] pointing to Sidarth and singling him out for derision" and we have seen that he "smiled as he needled Sidarth, seemingly enjoying the moment, " George Allen has sought out this young man and apologized personally. The GOP thinks this is enough:

GOP strategists agreed that Allen has damaged himself, but the incident need not doom him politically.

"Senator Allen needs to make it clear that he made a mistake, that this was obviously something he should not have done," said Mike Mahaffey, a former Iowa Republican Party chairman.

Iowa's nominating caucuses rely on one-to-one politics, giving Allen a chance to personally appeal to voters and convince them the incident was an aberration.

"If he can come across as sincere in that regard, it will not hamper him in Iowa," said Mahaffey, a GOP activist with a law practice in Montezuma, Iowa.

As mistakes go, this is the kind kids in fifth grade make, and we ask them to apologize and we forgive them. We even hope the kid they pointed to will forgive. But George Allen isn't in the fifth grade. His disregard for people who are not of his own class and color is apparent. To forgive this kind of "mistake" in the context of a Senate race is an error in judgement.

And as for the GOP activist Mahaffey, note well that he is not asking George Allen to give a sincere apology. He is only asking him to "come across as sincere." He knows as well as I do that an "appearance" is the best Allen will be able to give.

Seeking definition...

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 81% Postmodernist 75% Idealist 69% Romanticist 63% Existentialist 56% Fundamentalist 31% Modernist 31% Materialist 19% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

Nothing like a writing contest!

It is a short story contest with prizes including publication in an anthology, a real one, not one of those that just inserts your poem on page 39 and sells you a copy for $89.99 plus shipping. And if you are one of the top 10 that make it into the anghology, you will even get a free copy of the book and a discount on up to 20 more copies for your friends and cousins.

So turn off the war news, put away the Free Cell, and break out your metaphors and similes. You have to write your story of no more than 4,000 words about someone or something being exposed to the contents of those bins the airlines are having everyone dump their liquids and gels into. It is a little scary, if you remember why we are doing this in the first place. The alleged – not charged -- terrorists presumably had some idea of the effect of what they were planning to mix. We don't think they planned it to be a good effect, but it was predictable. Who knows what will come out of the dump bin?

The rules and submission link are at http://www.ItComesFrom.blogspot.com, and the anthology name will be It Came From Airport Security.

A student of history

Fred Kaplan at Slate is commenting on Condi Rice's tendency to classify herself as a "student of history" who sees the world in such a grand scheme of time that nothing can be done/evaluated/judged in the present. He has this quote:

I'm a student of history, so perhaps I have a little more patience with enormous change in the international system. It's a big shifting of tectonic plates, and I don't expect it to happen in a few days or even in a year.

So people can bomb each other for oh, say, even a year, and then it will take us 20 or 30 years to say whether we think it was a good idea. That is, since we are students of history, we need to have this patience with bombs.

I've been hanging around students of history long enough to know know that they do not necessarily refer judgement of all present decisions and actions to some distant future. They usually have enough examples from the past to be pretty opinionated, and they don't mind telling you about it. Condi Rice is past her sophomore year -- she is a national leader who should at least think something. The history she knows has apparently given her no criteria to help her decide whether an action is good or bad. An actual student of history in her position might use examples from the past to inform the present. She is refusing to process in present time the information that is before her, and I will hazard a guess that history will say she was just along for the ride.

Not to be too critical...

The sign has changed. It now reads "SIGN BROKEN / MESSAGE INSIDE THIS SUNDAY." Now there is a message on the sign, so the sign is not broken. It seems to me that the sign genie is again asserting that something is so when it is obviously not so. I think I have spotted a trend.