Blog P.I.

The George Allen “Macaca” controversy continues to reverberate around the blogosphere, but as yet I haven’t seen anybody focus on the Virginia bloggers — the ones who will actually be voting to retain or boot him from office, and who first pushed the story into the national media’s consciousness. So I have.

Not all of the Virginia bloggers offered intelligent commentary, but that was certainly no impediment to being included in Blog P.I.’s latest round-up. This is a long, long, long post — and it’s all below the jump. Follow me:

From the Left

Unsuprisingly, one of the most active blogs on the Allen beat is Raising Kaine, which supported Tim Kaine in his successful governor’s bid in 2005 and continues on as one of the higher-profile left-of-center blogs in Virginia. RK wants this incident to have as much political impact as possible:

Given George Allen’s hateful, divisive “macacca” comments, Senator John McCain should cancel his “Veterans Event with Senator George Allen” visit to Virginia scheduled for tomorrow. McCain’s presence alongside George Allen in Norfolk would send a message that he approves of Allen’s remarks. That is not acceptable.

A commenter asks:

I wonder if George Allen will call McCain’s adopted daughter a “Macaca”?

Norfolk-based Vivian Paige isn’t all that exercised about it. In fact she sounds somewhat weary:

Foot-in-mouth disease is something that candidates really have to try to avoid. How long this incident will remain in the public eye no one knows. What affect it will have on Allen’s presidential ambitions remains to be seen. At this point, it is just another addition to the “Allen is a racist” file.

The blog of Al Weed, Democratic candidate challenging Rep. Virgil Goode, weighs in:

For the record, macaque monkeys have mowhawk-like hair, so Allen referred to the brown kid with the mowhawk by the name of a monkey with a mowhawk — and that’s his defense.

The Virginia Progressive splits on the issue, with James Martin hounding Allen’s “latest racial slur,” while Delta Mike gives Allen the benefit of the doubt, up to a point:

I see no reason to continue to take potshots at Felix over this. It was stupid for him to say it, and I don’t think he meant it maliciously in that way, and he apologized, so I would much rather focus on his atrocious record in the Senate than this.

At his SLANTblog, longtime Va. commentator F.T. Rea also thinks strategically about how the incident can “grow legs”:

What you can do is to go all-out making fun of George Allen’s gaffes and goofs. You can make wise cracks about his 97% dittohead voting record and his penchant for gaffes that are so funny people outside of your own clique of fellow Webb supporters will laugh, too. … The racist angle of the most recent gaffe is not going to outrage many independents or moderate Republicans. I’d rather see the Webb campaign try to sell them the notion that Allen is an anti-intellectual faux cowboy, who can’t think for himself, because he’s as dumb as a bag of hammers.

The blog most associated with the breaking story, Not Larry Sabato, speculates that ”Macaca” was not the only alleged racial code word in the passage. What to make of Allen disdaining “the Beltway”?

For those of you who don’t know Northern Virginia- “inside the beltway” are the neighborhoods filled with minority voters… It’s basically the equivalent of having an all white event in Chesterfield County and pointing out the only black person as “living in Eastern Richmond” or being at an all white event in Williamsburg and pointing out the only black person as “living in Petersburg”.

Howling Latina has settled on a message, and ends more than one post with some variation on the theme:

Let’s face it folks. Allen is a racist bigot; and from cradle to tomb, he’ll remain a Dixie flag-waving Southern wanna-be.

Going a bit, shall we say, overboard is The Daily WhackJob, which has assembled a fake GOP/KKK/Nazi flyer.

Virginia Centrist, anti-Allen and anti-illegal immigration (but a contributor to Virginia Progressive, and so for our purposes, of the left) has perhaps the most unique gloss on the whole situation:

Unfortunately, George Allen may have just set back the anti-illegal movement a decade in Virginia. Here’s why: I hate to quote Bush…but we are a country of immigrants. Legal immigrants who play by the rules and work hard should be lauded and championed. Tom Tancredo and other illegal immigration hawks have wisely linked themselves with legal immigration groups and praised legal immigrants who follow the rules and enter the country lawfully. … George Allen just did the opposite! He openly mocked a first generation US citizen whose parents immigrated legally. He sarcastically told him, “welcome to America” and called attention to him in a large crowd. Most shockingly, he made him feel uncomfortable.

It may be worth noting, the site tagline is: “George Allen: Friend of the noose industry!” 

 

From the Right

The Mason Conservative defends Allen, blames the media and lefty bloggers under the header, ”George Allen Needs Your Help NOW!”

James Webb does not need to say a word to slime and destroy George Allen, he has an entire army of bloggers who don’t need to justify a word of what they say who will do it for him. Its pretty clear now what the Webb strategy is. Run around the country begging for money, come back to Virginia and play nice while your blogger/masters do all the dirty, and I mean DIRTY, work for the campaign. Secondly, the media has lined up against Allen, lock-stock- and load. The Washington Post had an editorial up before you could finish wathcing the video on YouTube. They are prepared to attack Allen no matter what, and Allen sadly fell into their trap.

CatHouse Chat forgives, and (wait for it) blames the media as well:

Taken in context - even with an excerpt from the Washington Post, which is hardly a friend of conservatives - Sen. Allen obviously misunderstood/misremembered/messed up Mr. Sidarth’s name. He probably remembered that is was an Indian (as in India) name, but couldn’t remember exactly, and improvised.

Conservative Deo Vindice forgets the “they do it too” defense never works:

Allen can apologize forever, but he will never get the R taken off his garments. It stays because he is a Republican and Conservative, regardless of the truth. In fact, for the Liberals the R for Republican is a scarlett R for racist. … The Liberal/MSM paradigm for R = Republican = racist deserves more laughter and abuse. Compare Sen. Allen’s sins with Sen. Robert Byrd’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Consider Jesse Jackson’s ethnic slurs (Hymietown) and Sen. Hillary Clinton’s use of racially tinged language (plantations, etc). A Liberal can earn a scarlett R or A - like President Clinton did in the White House and it doesn’t matter.

Chad Dotson at Commonwealth Conservative mounts the strongest defense, calling it a “manufactured controversy,” comparing this incident to the mostly overlooked Joe Biden “7-11 incident”, and posting a photograph of a mohawk-bedecked Sidarth:

In my neck of the woods, we call that a mohawk. What’s laughable is that the guy says he has a mullet. Listen, I was born and raised in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, on the Kentucky border. I know what a mullet looks like. That ain’t one.

Also, I can verify that the Allen campaign had discussed this guy’s mohawk hairstyle long before the Breaks event. Before noon that day, prior to the Norton event, they called and told me that “a guy with a mohawk” would probably be there; he had been trailing them at other events. So the campaign had been identifying him by his hairstyle.

Richmond-based Jon Henke at QandO pokes a few holes in the controversy as well:

Senator Allen said “macaca”, but the European slur is Macaque. Aside from being a rather obscure slur, the words are pronounced differently. … The “Macaque” slur means “a Negro (originally) or a person of North-African origin”. S.R. Sidarth neither looks nor is African — he is Indian, against whom the Macaque slur is not intended. Which is it, is Allen familiar with the slur or not?

Among the few right-of-center blogs that are more troubled by Allen’s remarks, we have Too Conservative. If not racist in intent, what was Allen’s intent?

I think Allen was trying to say that this is a foreigner (he isn’t, but that’s still what the intent seems to have been).  I’ll try to make him look silly to these Virginians of paler hue, go right into an anti-terrorist rif and then Webb’s operative will leave an impression on the audience that Webb is tied to foreigners.  That’s the only explanation I can come up with.

James Joyner, too, struggles to make sense of Allen’s comments:

The only thing that makes any sense to me is that this was much in the same vein as Dick Armey’s infamous “Barney fag” moment a few years ago, with his subconscious brain overriding his control in a free-flowing moment.

Virtucon seems to think the costs associated with sending a volunteer around the state are comparable to buying television advertising:

My only question is, why is the Webb campaign wasting money sending a staffer around to videotape George Allen on the stump when they don’t have and never will have enough money to buy any real advertising to show any of it on.

The tact- and spelling-challenge SkepticalObservor, better known as DC attorney James Young, an attorney just outside the Beltway, slings a slur or two of his own:

Well, I’m convinced. George Allen, who won’t even discriminate against people for their perverse sexual behavior — he has been described by one homosexual publication as having the most fag-friendly [paraphrasing here] office on the Senate side — is truly a goober and a racist, making judgments about people’s skin color. Nevertheless, he’s sophisticated enough to use a racial epithet that would only be recognized in obscure corners of the world.  

Richmond War Room, curiously based in Pentagon City, seeks enlightenment:

I’ve been watching George Allen for more than a decade now, and it seems like there are two kinds of people in this state — those that like him, and those that burn with a hatred for him hotter than a billion suns. … So I ask, why do Georgee Allen’s opponents loathe him so much? Enlighten me.

As of this writing, nobody has.