Rabbi Marc Gellman: How could Jews not all support Lieberman since he’s a Jew too?
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff: Why can’t I hold subjects of terror investigations for a month without charges? It’s just not fair. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
Sometimes letters to the editor need a bit more scrutiny (Pennsylvania Senate Edition.)
Ahhh, George Allen’s America. Where the borders are secure and dark-complected Americans are derided as monkeys.
What did Allen mean? We now know that not only is ‘macaque‘ a French language slur used to describe North Africans but Allen has a dizzyingly direct way of being familiar with the word. His mother is French Tunisian. Given that it would be amongst the French colonial population in North Africa that the word would have the greatest currency (even if only by familiarity rather than use), it seems close to impossible to believe that Allen didn’t become familiar with the word growing up.
Last night a friend asked me if it’s really believeable that Allen teed off on Sidarth with a racial epithet while he knew he was being videotaped. (My understanding at least is that it was Sidarth himself, the Indian-American Webb campaign volunteer, who was videotaping him as this happened.) I had a couple thoughts along these lines. No, I don’t think Allen would have done it intentionally, at least not in the narrow sense. He may be a closet racist (and there’s actually a pretty good case to be made (sub.req.) that he is, quite independent of this incident) but I don’t think he’s intentionally self-destructive.
What I do think, what I know from experience, is that all sorts of things come out of your mouth when you’re speaking extemporaneously. Ask anyone who’s spent much time on TV or radio. Not things that weren’t in your mind somewhere to say, but some things you might have thought better of if you had a few moments to consider it. If you’re not a racist, in most cases racial slurs don’t come pouring out or, like one conservative yacker, fantasies about sterilizing African-Americans.
I suspect that Allen started off with a pretty crude effort to make fun of Sidarth as an immigrant, an outsider, perhaps by snidely but in his mind jocularly mispronouncing his name. Who knows? But in the moment, when he was looking at this kid who was clearly getting on his nerves, and amongst a lilly white crowd, this is the word that came to his mind and he used it.
To me, that’s actually the most innocent explanation I can think of.
TPM Reader TC has a darker read on the Allen tape …
Josh:
As that blogger you linked yesterday demonstrated, “macaca” and its derivatives are well-known among white supremacists and neo-nazis. What about the thought that Allen used the epithet, knowing it would be reported, as a subliminal way of telling these people (and they’re out there in greater numbers in the south, unfortunately) that “I’m one of you”???
Let’s review that this guy used to have the Stars and Bars on his car in southern California 40 years ago, and was noted in his high school yearbook as being “pro-Confederate” with the things he wore. You weren’t around then, but I was, and I can tell you that any white person doing that was a racist and a white supremacist, identifying with the “southern resistance” to the civil rights movement.
This guy is not just dangerous like Bush is, he’s dangerous as “the next progression” of the Republican far right.
TC
Could be. Could be.
So he’s either a closet racist who let the truth slip. Or a very calculating crypto-racist.
Nice range of choices. And this guy’s a major GOP prez aspirant.
Cheney lawyers up against Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.
More apparent evidence of dirty tricks come to light in Pennsylvania: Backed by a forensic expert, Democrats are charging GOP staffers faked signatures to get a Green Party Senate candidate on the ballot.
If you’re still interested in Republican efforts to phase-out Social Security, read this post from Campaign for America’s Future’s Roger Hickey. They’ve got a good new report detailing where the key 2006 candidates stand on phase-out.
Lieberman commits to caucusing with Dems, supporting Harry Reid if he’s reelected in November.